Staying human in digital times Session Summary Picking up on the theme of the previous session on Blogging and other community based internet activities and applications, Yossi Vardi started the session by stating that the winning strategy for businesses on the Internet is achieved through incorporating and empowering the end user. "If you can integrate what users thing about a product or a service, and make this public, you got a profitable formula" exclaimed Vardi, citing Amazon, eBay and Google as benchmark examples. Vardi explained that one of the problems with the Internet being a tool which provides so much information at our fingertips, is that we often lack orientation and knowing how to decide what is "bad versus good" and what is "irrelevant versus what is useful". Contrary to the pre Internet days where people based decisions on professional critics, in today's experience economy, a key factor in making choices comes from inputs and reviews from other people. Vardi reminded the audience the obvious, "the beauty of the Internet is that every user has a voice". Concluding his remarks, Vardi outlined the four pillars of the Internet which include: collaboration, participation, self expression and sharing. Elaborating upon Vardi's the "power of the user" principal, Hubert Burda focused his remarks on the importance of the human interface in media and in particular the Internet. "All interfaces, be it movies, TV, print, mobile and online are about communications, and media needs to understand the human emotion plays into this", explained Burda. Burda went on the stress that with digital communications, both content and and aesthetics are important. Each type of media has a different set of aesthetics and understanding this is a key to success. Burda noted the Internet, similar to magazines, has a particular advantage, namely the ability of combining text and images. Burda acknowledged however that "the Internet is still mainly a semantic medium and we are only beginning to realize the possibilities of engaging users with textual and visual content". Finally, Burda spoke of the sociological dimension of the Internet, namely that unlike other media, in the online world, we are seeing the development of communities. Each of these communities have individualized tastes, habits and needs, and the successful marketers, will be those who understand the importance of targeting and personalization. Last Updated 02. March 2005