College of Accounting Education

3F, Business & Engineering Building

Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Big Picture

Week 6-7: Unit Learning Outcomes (ULO): At the end of the unit, you are expected to

6. Understand the principles of e-business.

7. Understand the evolution of e-business technologies.

Big Picture in Focus:

ULO 6. Understand the principles of e-business.

Metalanguage

The following terms will be used in this ULO.

1. Disruptive technology refer to a new way of doing things that initially does not meet the
needs of existing customers
2. E-Business includes ecommerce along with all activities related to internal and external
business operations such as servicing customer accounts, collaborating with partners, and
exchanging real-time information
3. Ecommerce is the buying and selling of goods and services over the internet. Ecommerce
refers only to online transactions
4. Niche Market - A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is
focused.
5. Internet is a massive network that connects computers all over the world and allows them
to communicate with one another.
6. Sustaining technology produces an improved product customer are eager to buy, such as
a faster car or larger hard drive
7. HTTP or Hypertext Transmission Protocol is the underlying protocol used by the World
Wide Web to define how messages are formatted and transmitted and what actions Web
servers and browsers should take in response to various commands.
8. Internet Protocol is he address system of the internet and has the core function of delivering
packets of information from a source device to a target device.
9. Transfer Control Protocol is a standard that defines how to establish and maintain a network
conversation through which application programs can exchange data

Essential Knowledge

DISRUPTIVE VS SUSTAINING TECHNOLOGY

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

According to the concept of digital Darwinism an organization which cannot adapt to

the new demands placed on them are unlikely to survive in the information age. The Polaroid
downfall is one of the best examples of this theory.
Polaroid was founded in 1937 by Edwin Land and became one of America's early
high-tech success stories. Its main product is a camera that prints finished photographs in a
minute. This invention was an immediate success and became widely used camera over two
decades. However, when digital cameras flooded the market the company was failed to
innovate. As a result, they began to lose big customers in their businesses and filed
bankruptcy in 2001. Many organizations face the same dilemma as Polaroid: what is best
for the current business might not be what is best for it in the long term. Some observers of
our business environment have an ominous vision of the future—digital Darwinism.
A disruptive technology is one that displaced current technology and destroy old
market with new one. The following are among the best examples of disruptive technology
for the last three decades.
1. The personal computer (PC) displaced the typewriter.
2. Email displaced letter-writing and shook the postal and greeting card industries.
3. Mobile phones disrupted the telecom industry.
4. Smartphones affects various forms that manufactures pocket cameras, MP3 players,
calculators, and GPS devices.
5. Social networking disrupted picture album, long-distance call, email, and instant
messaging.

On the other hand, a sustaining technology improves disruptive technology.

Sustaining technologies tend make established market products better, faster, and cheaper.
For example, the smartphone manufacturer improves its products by adding new features
and expanding the RAM.

THE INTERNET AND WORLDWIDE WEB

Brief History

One of the biggest forces changing business is the internet. The internet is the most popular
disruptive technology during this period. It displaces and improve many industries. In 1960,
computers were very large and not portable. Magnetics tapes were sent through postal
office. This will take days before it reaches its destination. During the cold war, the US
Defense Department think about a system that could still disseminate information after a
nuclear attack. This idea is in response to the Sputnik satellite launched by the Soviet Union.
It led the US government to fund a research project to build a system that share information
faster across the country. The project is called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects
Agency Network). ARPA-funded researchers developed many of the protocols used for
Internet communication today. The following timeline summarizes the evolution of the
internet:

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Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Year Events
1965 MIT Lincoln Lab successfully make two computers share data with one another
using packet-switching technology
1972 Email was introduced by Ray Tomlinson introduces network email.
1973 The University College of London (England) and Royal Radar Establishment
(Norway) able to connect to ARPANET. These global connections is the birth
of the internet.
1974 Telenet was born the first Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (the Fathers of the Internet) publish "A Protocol for
Packet Network Interconnection," which details the design of Transfer Control
Protocl
1982 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol
suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, emerge as the standard protocol for
internet.
1983 The Domain Name System (DNS) establishes the familiar .edu, .gov, .com,
.mil, .org, .net, and .int system for naming websites. Easier to remember than
123.456.789.10.
1990 Tim-Berners Lee developed the WorldWideWeb the first web browser.

E-BUSINESS

Ecommerce is the buying and selling of goods and services using the internet. On the other
hand, e-business is the online activities related to internal and external business operations
such as servicing customer accounts, collaborating with partners, and exchanging real-time
information. Whereas e-business refers to all aspects of operating an online business, e-
commerce refers specifically to the transaction of goods and services. E-business provides
companies a new marketplace platform for those who are willing to move their business
operations online. This paradigm shift from the traditional business model to an online
business model is mandatory for big business. E-business created a paradigm shift,
transforming entire industries and changing enterprise-wide business processes that
fundamentally rewrote traditional business rules. The effect could be fatal if companies do
not decide to shift to e-business. Figure 1 shows the advantages of e-business.

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Figure 1 Advantages of E-business (Source: Baltzan, 2019)

Expanding Global Reach

E-business able to make information can be access anytime, anywhere all over the
globe. Information reach measures the number of people a firm can communicate with all
over the world. Customers need rich information to make the right purchase decision. Sellers
need the information to reach the market and differentiate themselves from the competition
properly. Also, e-business reduces transaction costs since it operates 24/7. It also boosts
customer satisfaction for a faster delivery cycle.

Opening New Markets

E-business is perfect for offering a new line of products especially in the niche market.
Companies may have worldwide launching of their new product since product information
could reach anywhere.

Reducing Costs
A physical store has limited shelf space when selecting products to sell. Because of
this, store owners limit the item they display on the shelves. Only those items wanted or
needed by the masses should be put on the shelves as much as possible. E-businesses
such as Amazon and eBay eliminated the shelf-space dilemma and were able to offer infinite
products. Another best example is cinema vs. NetFlix. Cinema has limited seats, while Netflix
is unlimited.

Improving the Effectiveness

E-business improves the marketing aspect of the business. The company will be able
to analyze if those people visit their website also bought an item. Using this information, the
company can strategize how to improve the effectiveness of their online store.
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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

E-Business Models

Ebusiness model is plan that details how a company creates, delivers, and generates
revenues on the internet. Figure 2 shows the four e-business models.

Figure 2 E-Business Models (Source: Baltzan 2019)

Business-to-Business (B2B)

Business-to-business (B2B) pertains to businesses buying from and selling to each

other over the internet. This type of e-business model represents 80 percent of all online
companies. Also, it is more complicated with more significant security needs than the other
types. B2B examples include Oracle and SAP, which offer ERP software online to big
businesses.

Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

Business-to-consumer (B2C) pertains to the process of selling products and services

between a company and consumers. Even though it applies to any type of direct selling to
consumers, it is also associated with online selling. Examples are fast-food chains that sell
their food online. Another example is Amazon.com who sells book to the consumers.

Consumer-to-Business (C2B)

Consumer-to-business (C2B) pertains to a business model where a consumer sells

a product or service to a business over the internet. In this model, the consumer initiates
their own price, and the company (e.g., airline company) will respond to the request of the
consumer. One example is customers of Priceline.com, who set their own prices for items
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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

such as airline tickets or hotel rooms and wait for a seller to decide whether to supply them.
The demand for C2B e-business will increase over the next few years due to customers'
desire for greater convenience and lower prices.

Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) applies to customers offering goods and services to

each other on the internet. Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook marketplace are three wellknown
examples. These sites link people (buyers and sellers) who think the same products. The e-
bay and Craigslist role is a middleman between the seller and buyer.

CHALLENGES OF E-BUSINESS

E-business provides valuable benefits to business establishments. However, there is

no such thing as a perfect system. Developing, deploying, and managing e-business
systems are not always easy. Figure 3 shows the challenges faced by companies' using e-
business.

Fig. 3 Challenges Facing E-Business (Source: Baltzan, 2019)

Identifying Limited Market Segments

The primary e-business obstacle is the lack of growth in some industry. The reason is
product or service constraint. Consumer favor to purchase perishable food in the
supermarket than to buy it online. Other sectors with limited e-business appeal include fragile
or consumable goods and highly sensitive or confidential businesses such as government
agencies.

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Managing Consumer Trust

The most significant challenge for e-business growth is the lack of consumer trust.
Purchasing an item from a seller or person you do not know needs high level of trust. It
requires deeper relationship between the seller and the buyer. The physical separation of
buyer and seller, the physical separation of buyer and merchandise, and customer
perceptions about the risk of doing business online provide unique challenges. As
technology evolves, trust becomes the currency for interactions beyond simply purchasing
a product. Trust in the e-business exchange deserves special attention. Internet marketers
must develop a trustworthy relationship to make that initial sale and generate customer
loyalty. A few ways to build trust when working online include being accessible and available
to communicate in person with your customers; using customers' testimonials that link to
your client website or to provide their contact information; and accepting legitimate forms of
payment such as credit cards.

Ensuring Consumer Protection

Protecting consumers data privacy should be one of the priorities of every businesses. An
organization who want to improve their competitive advantage must not only serve but also
protect its customers. They must guard their customers against unsolicited goods and
communication, illegal or harmful goods, insufficient information about goods and suppliers,
invasion of privacy and misuse of personal information, and online fraud. System security,
however, must not make e-business websites inflexible or difficult to use.

Adhering to Taxation Rules

In USA, many believe that tax policy should provide a level playing field for traditional
retail businesses, mail-order companies, and online merchants. Yet the Internet marketplace
remains mostly free of traditional forms of sales tax, partly be-cause ecommerce law is
vaguely defined and differs from state to state. For now, companies that operate online must
obey a patchwork of rules about which customers are subject to sales tax on their purchases
and which are not.
In Philippines, President Joseph E. Estrada signed into law R.A. 8792 "An Act
Providing For The Recognition And Use of Electronic Commercial And Non-Commercial
Transactions, Penalties For Unlawful Use Thereof, And Other Purposes, also known as the
"Electronic Commerce Act" on 14 June 2000. In its Declaration of Policy (Section 2), it is
declared that "The State recognizes the vital role of information and communications
technology (ICI) in nation building. This Act aims to facilitate domestic and international
dealings, transactions, arrangements, agreements, contracts and exchanges and storage of
information through the utilization of electronic, optical and similar medium, mode,
instrumentality and technology to recognize the authenticity and reliability of electronic data
messages or electronic documents related to such activities and to promote the universal
use of electronic transactions in the government and by the general public.

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Self-Help: You can also refer to the sources below to help you further
understand the lesson:

Baltzan, P. (2019). Business Driven Information Systems (6th Ed.). McGraw Hill: New York

Smith, A. (2009). What was Polaroid Thinking? Retrieved from

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-was-
polaroidthinking#:~:text=As%20digital%20cameras%20flooded%20the,2001%2C%20Polaroi
d%20filed%20for%20bankruptcy.

Let's Check

Activity 1. True or False.

1. Lack of information system what causes the downfall of Polaroid.

2. Digital Darwinism implies that organizations that cannot adapt to the new demands placed
on them for surviving in the information age are doomed to extinction.
3. Disruptive technologies tend to open new markets and retain old ones.
4. The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) are not synonymous.
5. ARPANET was funded by Universities.
6. Computers connected via the internet can send and receive information, including text,
graphics, voice, video, and software.
7. A paradigm shift occurs when a new, radical form of business enters the market that
reshapes the way companies and organizations behave.
8. One of the advantages of e-business is it operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
9. E-business will make companies spend more.
10. B2B represents majority of all online business model.

Let's Analyze

Activity 1. Case Analysis

Slack—Be Less Busy (Source: Baltzan, 2019)

Slack is one of the fastest-growing collaboration companies ever started and is
used by millions of people every day to collaborate at work. In two short years since its
inception, Slack has become a $3billion company. Slack is like Twitter for businesses.
Slack is a centralized group chat platform for the enterprise. With its advanced search
and file-sharing functionalities, it can also be linked to third-party apps, such as Google

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Drive, Dropbox, and Twitter. Slack has long advertised itself as a "freemium" product,
where an unlimited number of users can use it for free before deciding to upgrade and
pay money for a more robust package with better features.
In time—and it won't be long—Slack will morph into the spinal cord of the office
nervous system, connecting numerous third-party business apps and eventually
becoming the gateway to a workplace artificial intelligence system that will answer
routine questions and proactively seek out information you might otherwise miss.
Slack's founder Stewart Butterfield, also the founder of Flickr, was building a gaming
company when the team created Slack to help developers and employees
communicate. When the gaming company went bankrupt, Butterfield used the
opportunity to launch the company's home-grown collaboration tool Slack and the rest
is history. And like a game, Slack is fun and engaging and beating up its boring
traditional enterprise application competition. Butterfield attributes his company's
success to its focus on education, feedback, customer happiness, and metric analysis.
Butterfield's vision is for Slack to become the single source of company information.

Slack's AI Vision
The future of Slack is being sketched out by Noah Weiss, Slack's head of
search, learning, and intelligence. Weiss envisions Slack communicating with its
customers using advanced AI software bots, allowing the application to understand
your role inside a company, anticipate your day-to-day needs, and act like a welltrained
office assistant.
The information employees share with their colleagues within their many Slack
channels creates a valuable trove of a company's collective memory, one that can be
mined for training an AI system about how things get done inside that company and
even who does what.
"Workers spend about 20 percent of their time looking for information, or looking
for a person who has the information they need," Weiss said. "And we've found that a
lot of the questions people have are asked over and over again."
Those questions can be basic—"What's the password to the office Wi-Fi
network?"—or weightier—"Who's in charge of sales in Berlin?" In time, Slack itself will
be smart enough to answer. Combine this with the more than 430 third-party apps that
connect to it and Slack becomes the place where you get information and then act on
it. Approving expenses and tracking projects are already routine tasks that appear in
Slack.
As Slack becomes smarter, it will seek out and present you with information
that it thinks you might want to know. This will become especially useful as Slack scales
up to work with ever-larger companies. Weiss likens the AI layer to your personal chief
of staff. "Slack will know the people you trust and the topics you tend to care about, and
over time it will figure out how to better route information to you," he said. "It becomes
a robot that's working behind the scenes on your behalf to find things you should know
about but might otherwise never see."

Question

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

1. Do you consider Slack a form of disruptive or sustaining technology? Why or why not??

2. What is the e-business model implemented by Slack? Explain

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In a Nutshell

Internet and communication technologies have revolutionized the way business

operates, improving upon traditional methods and even introducing new opportunities
and ventures that were simply not possible before. In section, you are required to
summarize what you have learned in this ULO.

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

1. Disruptive technologies redefine the competitive playing fields of their respective

markets, open new markets and destroy old ones, and cut into the low end of the
marketplace and eventually evolve to displace high-end competitors and their
reigning technologies

Your Turn

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Q&A List

Do you have any questions for clarificationt

Questions/Issues Answers

Keywords Index
This section lists down the keywords that help you for recall the discussions.

• Business model
• Digital Darwinism
• Disruptive Technology
• E-business
• Internet
• Sustaining Technology

Big Picture in Focus:

ULO 7. What a relational database is and how it organizes data.

Metalanguage

The following terms will be in this ULO.

1. Email is short for electronic mail, is the exchange of digital messages over the internet.
2. Instant Messaging is a service that enables instant or real-time communication between
people.
3. Podcasting is the practice of using the internet to make digital recordings of broadcasts
available for downloading to a computer or mobile device.
4. Information Vandalism is the willful destruction or defacement of public or private
information

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

5. Internet service provider (ISP) refer to a company that provides access to the Internet for
a monthly fee
6. Videoconferencing (or video conference) means to conduct a conference between two or
more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and video
data.
7. A collaboration system is a set of tools that supports the work of teams or groups by
facilitating the sharing and flow of information.
8. Open Sourcing is a computer software for which the source code is freely available

Essential Knowledge

Baltzan (2019) divides the history of e-business into three eras: Business 1.0, Business 2.0,
and Business 3.0. Each era employed different technology to support online business
transactions.

BUSINESS 1.0: CATALYST FOR E-BUSINESS

When companies learn to use the internet in their business operation, it became the catalyst
for conducting business over the internet. The competitive advantages for first movers would
be enormous, thus spurring the beginning of the Web 1.0 Internet boom. Business 1.0 (or
Web 1.0) is a term to refer to the World Wide Web during its first few years of operation
between 1991 and 2003. Figure 1 shows the e-business tools first used in Business 1.0.

Email

Electronic mail (email) is the exchange of digital message or documents on the internet. In
1971, Ray Tomnilson believed to sent the first email across a network. The same message
also initiate the first use of "@" sign to separate the username and the domain. This protocol
of sending email is still use today.
During early 90s, business people are relying their information dissemination on postal
services. The shift to electronic mail increased the speed of business by allowing the transfer
of documents with the same speed as the telephone. The ability to communicate faster to
many people simultaneously is an additional business advantage. There are no time or place
constraints, and users can check, send, and view emails whenever they require. Email
equipped the companies to send important documents efficiently like purchase orders and
sale invoice, which reduces ordering and collection cost. Common examples of email
appliactions are Gmail, Outlook, and YahooMail.

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Figure 1 E-Business Tools

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging or IM, is the trade of near real-time messages using IM application. Unlike
chat rooms with many users engaging in multiple and overlapping conversations, IM
sessions usually take place between two users in a private, back-and-
forth style of communication. Real-time communication occurs when a system updates
information at the same rate it receives it. Email was a great advancement over traditional
communication methods such as the US mail, but it did not operate in real time.

One of the core features of many instant messenger is the ability to determine whether
a co-worker is online or not. This feature gives the company an ability to monitor their staff.
IM features and capabilities are evolving. Many IM developers have added support for
exchanging more than just text-based messages, allowing actions like file transfers and
sharing documents like images, pdf, and office files. Examples of IMs are FB messenger,
skype, WhatsUp, and Viber.

Podcasting

A podcast is just like FM or AM radio program but broadcast over the internet. It converts an
audio broadcast to a digital music player. It can significantly affect the marketing reach and
build customer and awareness and loyalty. Companies use podcasts as marketing

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

communication channels discussing everything from corporate strategies to detailed product

overviews. The senior executive team can share weekly or monthly podcasts featuring
important issues or expert briefings on new technology or marketing developments.
Podcasting is only one-sided communication.

Videoconferencing

Unlike IMs, a videoconference allows people at two or more locations to interact via
two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. IMs only share text between two or
more people. In video conferencing, business people can share documents, data, computer
displays, and whiteboards. Participants at the conference can see and hear each other
according to rules defined by a video conference mode. Users can also exchange various
media assets (content).
Contrary to web conferencing, the participants are required to install special client
applications or equipment. It can work without any Internet connection as long as there is a
server that controls multipoint video conferencing sessions. Depending on the system's
capabilities, users can organize various types of conferences, including webinars (web
conferences). Videoconferences added value to the business by increasing its productivity
because the employee participates without leaving their offices. It can also save costs by
reducing meeting expenses like fare, foods, and room rental.

Webconferencing

Web conferencing, or a webinar, is a mix of videoconferencing with content sharing. It allows

the user to deliver a presentation over the internet to a group of geographically dispersed
participants. Unlike video conferencing, web conferencing requires a web browser. Schools
use web conferencing tools such as google meet to deliver lectures to students, and
businesses use tools such as WebEx to demonstrate products.

Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is an application that manage web content.

Web content includes text, image, videos, and sounds. Content in a CMS is typically stored
in a database and displayed in a presentation layer based on a set of templates. CMS allows
users to easily create and format content, stores in one place, and assigns privileges and
responsibilities based on roles such as authors, editors and admins. Lastly, CMS publish the
live content over the web.

BUSINESS: 2.0 TOOLS FOR COLLABORATING

The boom of web 1.0 positively affects the stock prices of those companies that took
advantage of the technology. Many were hyped and believed that the internet was the wave
of the future. However, when these online business earnings expectations began to fail,
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3F, Business & Engineering Building
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Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

some then believed the e-business boom was over. They might be wrong when another
generation of internet use arises.
Web 2.0 (or Business 2.0) is the next era of internet use. Compare to web 1.0, web 2.0 is
more mature. Its unique communications platform is characterized by new qualities such as
collaboration, sharing, and free. Web 2.0 encourages online citizens to contribute to web
content. In this era, technical skills like software programming are no longer needed to
publish content on the web. Figure 2 highlights the typical characteristics of Web 2.0.

Figure 2 Business 2.0 Characteristics (Source: Baltzan, 2019)

Content Sharing through Open Sourcing

Open-source software is a nonproprietary software in which source code is open for

inspecting, modification, and enhancing by anybody. Nonproprietary means that a license or
legal right is not needed to use the software. The source code contains instructions
written by a programmer. It specifies the actions to be performed by computer software. The
very essence of the concept of open-sourcing is that other programmers can modify and
improve the source code. The best example of open-source software is the Linux operating
system, and the majority of web servers in the world are using Linux.
Business 2.0 is capitalizing on open-source software. Another example is Mozilla,
which offers its Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email software free. Mozilla believes
the internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. It continuously
develops free products by bringing together thousands of dedicated volunteers from around
the world. Mozilla's Firefox now holds over 20 percent of the browser market and is quickly
becoming a threat to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

User-contributed Content

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Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

User-generated content (UGC) is any form of web content, like images, videos, texts,
and audios. Users post these contents on free online platforms such as Facebook,
WordPress, and YouTube. Consumers create these contents to disseminate online products
or the firm that markets it. Netflix and Amazon both use user-generated content to drive their
recommendation tools. Websites such as Yelp use customer reviews to express opinions on
products and services. E-business was characterized by a few companies or users posting
content for the masses. Business 2.0 is characterized by the masses posting content for the
masses. Companies are embracing user-generated content to help with everything from
marketing to product development and quality assurance.

Collaboration Inside the Organization

Collaboration happens when two or more people or organizations completing a task

by working together. It enables users to contribute their ideas and skills in a single project.
This process generates information faster from a wider audience. Collective intelligence is
collaborating and tapping into the core knowledge of all employees, partners, and customers.
One of the best examples is Microsoft Office 365, where employees can share their Word
and Excel file to their officemate. Once the file was shared, users are free to edit the content
of the said file.

Collaboration Outside the Organization

The most common form of collective intelligence found outside the organization is
crowdsourcing, which refers to the wisdom of the crowd. The idea that collective intelligence
is greater than the sum of its parts has been around for a long time. With Business 2.0, the
ability to tap into its power efficiently is emerging. For many years, organizations believed
that good ideas came from the top. CEOs collaborated only with the heads of sales and
marketing, the quality assurance expert, or the road warrior salesman. The organization chart
governed who should work with whom and how far up the chain of command a suggestion
or idea would travel. With Business 2.0, this belief is challenged as firms capitalize on
crowdsourcing by opening up a task or problem to a broader group to find better or cheaper
results from outside the box.

Tools of Collaborating

Social networking and collaborating lead the business organization into new
directions. Figure 3 provides an overview of the tools that harness the power of the people,
allowing users to share ideas, discuss business problems, and collaborate on solutions using
snackable content.

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Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Figure 3 Communication and Collaboration Tool (Source: Baltzan, 2019)

Blogs

A blog, or web log, is an online journal that allows users to post their own comments,
graphics, and video. Unlike traditional HTML web pages, blog websites let writers
communicate—and readers respond—on a regular basis through a simple yet customizable
interface that does not require any programming. A selfie is a self-photograph placed on a
social media website.

Wiki

A wiki (the word is Hawaiian for “quick”) is a type of collaborative web page that allows
users to add, remove, and change content, which can be easily organized and reorganized
as required. Although blogs have largely drawn on the creative and personal goals of
individual authors, wikis are based on open collaboration with any and everybody. Wikipedia,
the open encyclopedia that launched in 2001, has become one of the 10 most popular web
destinations, reaching an estimated 217 million unique visitors a month.28 A wiki user can
generally alter the original content of any article, whereas the blog user can only add
information in the form of comments. Large wikis, such as Wikipedia, protect the quality and
accuracy of their information by assigning users roles such as reader, editor, administrator,
patroller, policy maker, subject matter expert, content maintainer, software developer, and
system operator. Access to some important or sensitive Wikipedia material is limited to users
in these authorized roles.

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Mashup

A mashup is a website or web application that uses content from more than one
source to create a completely new product or service. The term is typically used in the context
of music; putting Jay-Z lyrics over a Radiohead song makes something old new. The web
version of a mashup allows users to mix map data, photos, video, news feeds, blog entries,
and so on to create content with a new purpose. Content used in mashups is typically
sourced from an application programming interface (API), which is a set of routines,
protocols, and tools for building software applications. A programmer then puts these building
blocks together.

Challenges of Business 2.0

Technology Dependence

Many people today expect to be continuously connected. Their dependence on

technology glues them to their web connections for everything from web conferencing for a
university class or work project to making plans with friends for dinner. If a connection is
down, how will they function? How long can people go without checking email, text
messaging, listening to free music on Pandora, or watching on-demand television? As
society becomes technology-dependent, outages hold the potential to cause even greater
havoc for people, businesses, and educational institutions.

Information Vandalism

Open source and sharing are both significant advantages of Business 2.0, and
ironically they are significant challenges as well. Allowing anyone to edit anything opens the
door for individuals to damage, destroy, or vandalize website content purposely. Wiki
vandalism is a hot issue. Wiki software can now store all versions of a web page, tracking
updates and changes and ensuring that the site can be restored to its original form if the site
is vandalized. It can also color-code the background, ensuring that the user understands
which areas have been validated and which areas have not. The real trick to wiki software is
to determine which statements are true and which are false, a huge issue when considering
how easily and frequently wiki software is updated and changed.

Violations of Copyright and Plagiarism

Online collaboration makes plagiarism as easy as clicking a mouse. Unfortunately, a

great deal of copyrighted material tends to find its way to blogs and wikis where, many times,
blame cannot be traced to a single person. Clearly stated copyright and plagiarism policies
are a must for all corporate blogs and wikis.

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 College of Accounting Education
3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

BUSINESS 3.0: DEFINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ONLINE BUSINESS

OPPORTUNITIES

Business 1.0 refers to static text-based information websites and Web 2.0 is about
user-contributed content, Business 3.0 is based on intelligent web applications using natural
language processing, machine-based learning and reasoning, and intelligent applications.
Business 3.0 is the next step in the evolution of the Internet and web applications. Business
leaders who explore its opportunities will be the first to market with competitive advantages.
Business 3.0 offers a way for people to describe information so that computers can
start to understand the relationships among concepts and topics. To demonstrate the power
of Business 3.0, let’s look at a few sample relationships: Adam Sandler is a comedian, Lady
Gaga is a singer, and Hannah is friends with Sophie. These are all examples of descriptions
that can be added to web pages, allowing computers to learn about relationships while
displaying the information to humans. With this kind of information in place, interaction
between people and machines will be far richer with Business 3.0.
Applying this type of advanced relationship knowledge to a company can create new
opportunities. After all, businesses run on information. Whereas Web 2.0 brings people
closer together with information by using machines, Web 3.0 brings machines closer together
by using information. These new relationships unite people, machines, and information so a
business can be smarter, quicker, more agile, and more successful.
The deep web, sometimes called the invisible web, is the large part of the Internet
that is inaccessible to conventional search engines. Deep web content includes email
messages, chat messages, private content on social media sites, electronic bank
statements, electronic health records, and other content that is accessible over the Internet
but is not crawled and indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
It is not known how large the deep web is, but many experts estimate that search
engines crawl and index less than 1 percent of all the content that can be accessed over the
Internet. That part of the Internet that is crawled and indexed by search engines is sometimes
referred to as the surface web.
The reasons for not indexing deep web content are varied. It may be that the content
is proprietary, in which case the content can only be accessed by approved visitors coming
in through a virtual private network. Or the content may be commercial, in which case the
content resides behind a member wall and can only be accessed by customers who have
paid a fee. Or perhaps the content contains personal identifiable information, in which case
the content is protected by compliance regulations and can only be accessed through a
portal site by individuals who have been granted access privileges. When mashups have
been generated on the fly and components lack a permanent uniform resource location, they
also becomes part of the deep web.
The term deep webwas coined by BrightPlanet in a 2001 white paper entitled “The
Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value” and is often confused in the media with the term dark
web. The dark web is the portion of the Internet that is intentionally hidden from search
engines, uses masked IP addresses, and is accessible only with a special web browser.
The key takeaway here is that the dark web is part of the deep web. Like deep web
content, dark web content cannot be accessed by conventional search engines, but most

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Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

often the reason dark web content remains inaccessible to search engines is because the
content is illegal.
One goal of Business 3.0 is to tailor online searches and requests specifically to users’
preferences and needs. For example, instead of making multiple searches, the user might
type a complex sentence or two in a Business 3.0 browser, such as “I want to see a funny
movie and then eat at a good Mexican restaurant. What are my options?” The Web 3.0
browser will analyze the request, search the web for all possible answers, organize the
results, and present them to the user.
Tim Berners-Lee has described the semantic web as a component of Business 3.0
that describes things in a way that computers can understand. The semantic web is not about
links between web pages; rather it describes the relationships between things (such as A is
a part of B and Y is a member of Z) and the properties of things (size, weight, age, price). If
information about music, cars, concert tickets, and so on is stored in a way that describes
the information and associated resource files, semantic web applications can collect
information from many sources, combine it, and present it to users in a meaningful way.

Self-Help: You can also refer to the sources below to help you further
understand the lesson:

Baltzan, P. (2019). Business Driven Information Systems (6th Ed.). McGraw Hill: New York

Let's Check

Activity 1. For the following statements, indicate whether TRUE or FALSE.

1. Windows 10 is an example of open-source software.
2. Email was a great advancement over traditional communication methods such as the
Yahoo mail, but it did not operate in real time.
3. Instant messaging eliminates long-distance phone charges.
4. Videoconferences can increase productivity because users participate without leaving
their offices.
5. Webinar is the shortcut of Web Conferencing.
6. Web contents includes image and text but not audio.
7. In Business 2.0, businesses used static text-based information websites.
8. NetFlix is a tool of collaborating outside the organization.
9. In Business 3.0, search engines able to respond complex queries from the user.
10. GetHub is an example of collaboration tool.

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

Let's Analyze

Activity 1. Based on the “Slack-Be Less Busy” (ULO 6) case answer the following.

1. Categorize Slack as an example of Web 1.0 (ebusiness) or Web 2.0 (Business 2.0). Explain
why.

2. Explain the four characteristics of Business 2.0 and how each applies to Slack?
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3. How could Slack use social networking analysis to help organizations function more
efficiently?
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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

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In a Nutshell

The fast-changing e-business technology requires business organization to be more flexible.

In section, you are required to summarize what you have learned in this ULO.

1. Although the benefits of ebusiness are enticing, developing, deploying, and managing
ebusiness systems is not always easy.

Your Turn

2. ________________________________________________________________
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3. ________________________________________________________________
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4. ________________________________________________________________

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3F, Business & Engineering Building
Matina, Davao City
Phone No.: (082)300-5456 Local 137

________________________________________________________________
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5. ________________________________________________________________
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