Salebarn 1.0 is about live marketing and auction events ... sometimes the live auction itself is the event, other times it might be held in conjunction with some other form of big event such as a organization fund-raising dinner, county or state fair, industry conference or tradeshow, rock concert or entertainer performance, flea market or swap-meet or some other major rendezvous or gathering that synchronizes the attendance of a buyers and sellers at a common point in space and time. The most compelling element of live auctions is the depth and breadth of information that an auction conveys; beyond reported data (e.g. seller, buyer, price) the live auction also provides attendees with opportunities to meet others, to learn more about items being sold and to "take a thorough inventory" of buyer interest / sentiment.
As anyone who attends a live auction will tell you, live auction events are still every bit as relevant today as they were 10 or 20 years ago ... perhaps, even more so today than ever ... live auction is about much more than foreclosure and liquidation auctions [althogh that's still part of the business.] A lot serious collectors and businesspeople still derive a lot of value from attending live auctions in person (e.g. Barrett Jackson automobile auctions, Ritchie Bros equipment auctions, Rock Island Auctions for firearms, Sotheby's or Christie's auctions). Most of the bids in these live auctions come from bidders who are there in person [to bid on items AND meet others in the business], but sellers also have the assurance that they received the best price because the attendance at major events has global representation ... especially, now that these auctions have been augmented with technology that allows for proxy bidding and involvement by people who cannot or prefer not to attend. Salebarn 1.0 about Salebarn's efforts to develop and extend technology that serves the needs of auctioneers who serve their patrons continuing demand for outstanding live events.
Salebarn 2.0 is about online auction and social commerce ... Amazon is the bellwether of online retailers, there are plenty of other forms of social commerce are being built in someway on Facebook, Twitter or Google technologies. The most familiar example for online auction is still eBay but there are other forms of online auctions like Priceline.com, Liquidation.com, DoveBid.com. For people who want to run their own auctions or social networks, there plenty of online auction software alternatives including online auction plug-ins for WordPress blogs or Drupal content management systems ... there are ways to integrate online auction with CRM tools. There are many business models that are based upon adding necessary accoutrements to social commerce or online auction service like PayPal and financing, shipping and auction logistics, verification services. Online auction continues to spur innovation and new internet startups ... it will for sometime and will will definitely continue to be a space that Salebarn participates in one way or another.
There are technical challenge to be overcome, especially for really large movers of data like Facebook or Google, yet the mechanics of social communities and online auction are relatively simple. In some form or another, these sites can be boiled down to web/mobile interface that allows individuals, bidders and sellers to enter their own data -- the data [with a database and business logic] is used to do things with other people, e.g. running an auction that ultimately determines the price that the winning bidder will pay to the the seller. The simplicity of the mechanism, widespread acceptability and consumer familiarity with online auction make online auction valuable tool in a larger marketing strategy for many businesses that are not primarily in the auction business. Salebarn 2.0 about Salebarn's efforts to provide cloud-based services that serves the needs of eBay entrepreneurs, proprietors of online auctions, and others who wish to develop some sort of social commercial channel a a component in their overall marketing plans.
Salebarn 3.0 is about Big Data, smarter systems of ubiquitous sensors and operating in a transparent world ... it not just billion of people with phones generating data with their msgs, tweets and photos -- there are plenty of other sensors also generating data whether those sensor are in satellites, buildings and places or things like equipment. Big Data allows for smarter systems. For example, the world of business intelligence and reliability condition monitoring systems is driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence systems that boil down Big Data individual interaction in various social communities, data APIs from various organizations and systems of sensors gathering data from things ... scalable cloud computing power brings this world within reach of the small business and opens up some terribly compelling and extremely exciting possibilities like going beyond reliability centered maintenance and condition monitoring to drive asset optimization and smarter, next-generation social commerce tools like better recommendation engines and professional social recruiting systems that allow professionals/users to offer and/or locate expertise on a JIT basis ... in general, more data and smarter systems mean that world is going to get a lot smaller -- technologically-leveraged markets can offer a radical "orders of magnitude" expansion in more information, more transparency, more interaction. Economist have long understood that markets were primarily about information (Salebarn 1.0 world) -- they recognized that access to electronic financial markets and online social networks enabled far more globally-efficient markets (Salebarn 2.0 world) -- nobody yet fully understands what more interaction and radical transparency means in the marketplace of the Salebarn 3.0. world
Reputation matters more than ever but not as much as they will ...managing reputations is a matter of customer responsiveness and web analytics, really solving problems for customers where/when/how customers need solutions -- our vision is that business processes will increasingly need have a mobile-centric architectures. Most phones are still marketed on the basis of features and gee-whiz factor ... this will change. As phones become more affordable, more reliable and easier to use, people will take their mobile phones for granted, but they will NEED their phones; they phones will offer them ways to get things done when they have a few moments of downtime; customers will be captive to applications on their mobile phone, but they will no longer need dial-up internet or TV or cars to drive to shopping centers. This evolution is already underway, but will accelerate as more and more mobile-centric businesses offer customers with solutions to have more mobile lifestyles and move their own lives and careers to a mobile-centric prosumer architecture. Geographic distance will matter even less; reputation will matter even more as the shift for a relationship interface moves to the mobile phone.
