Giraffe Forum

The Web is showing us that in a great many areas of human endeavor the best intelligence lies in the network as a whole, rather than any one element.
‘The Origin of Wealth’ by Eric D. Beinhocker is full of wisdom. In it, Beinhocker challenges a lot of the principles of traditional economics. Like, for […]

The Web allows us to marry collective intelligence with expert knowledge. This is an unbeatable combination.
I grew up in a small farming community in Ireland. You never questioned the expert. The teacher, the priest and the doctor ruled. The idea that they might ever be wrong was not even an idea.
Well, the teacher, priest […]

The Web offers one of the most significant opportunities to communicators in modern history, but requires a total redefinition of what communications is.
Traditional communications is one-way, passive and past-tense. It is all about telling people what you have done, what you are doing, or what you are about to do. There is a core belief […]

The absolute essence of being customer-centric on the Web is a relentless focus on saving customers time and money.
In the Internet world, being customer-centric is not a like-to-do. It is a must-do. On the Web, only the customer-centric will survive. Why?
Because on the Web the customer is in control. Offline marketing treats customers […]

Website success has as much to do with figuring out who is NOT your customer, and the information you will NOT provide, as anything else.
Some customers are not worth the effort. They say that the customer is king, but on the Web the customer is dictator. The customer is impatient and demanding, with their finger […]

The Web customer is increasingly immune to marketing hype and advertising dream-making.
Ryanair sells cheap flights. Over 40 million people bought cheap flights from them in 2007. But Ryanair is a company that many love to hate.
It’s partly an Irish thing. Ryanair was this tiny Irish company and now they’re hugely successful. They’ve become too big […]

What is good for the organization and what is good for the customer are not always the same thing.
Organizations are used to saying to customers: “Here’s what we have. If you like it, you’re going to have to adapt to how we do business.” But on the Web, the customer has much more control. The […]

Those who enjoy serving customers will be the ones who create successful web careers.
A website is self-service. Customers do things on websites that they would otherwise have needed help doing. Self-service is attractive to organizations because it reduces staff costs. It is attractive to customers because it is convenient, fast and generally discounted.
Self-service is […]

The Web is the network. The Web is the organization. Your website is not important. Reaching your customers is.
A website has substance. You can count the number of webpages and the number of visitors. It is something you can show to your manager. It is something you can talk about in a way that others […]

Organizations have an overwhelming desire to own and control. Even within organizations, each unit/department is constantly trying to prove that it is important.
The intranet emerged as a classic organization chart structure. Each unit wanted its own website and everyone wanted a link on the homepage. Each unit was not so much concerned with helping […]