| The reliability of Web content is an important
issue that you must manage carefully. Consider the following situation. If you hear,
"Buy IBM stock because it will double over the next month," your reaction should
depend on who made that statement and in what context. Was it a random conversation
overheard on the subway, a chat with a friend over dinner, or a phone call from a trusted
financial advisor? The same is true with judging the reliability of Web content. Most
people have the "flake free" image of Web content. In reality, the Web is a
global bulletin board where the wise and the foolish have equal space. Acquiring
content from the Web should not reflect positively or negatively on its quality.
 Think of Web resources in terms of quality and coverage.
Toward the top are information resources of high quality (for example, accuracy, currency,
and validity), while resources toward the right have a wide coverage (for example, scope,
variety, and diversity). The interesting aspect of the Web is that its information
resources occupy all the quadrants in this figure.
In the upper center of the figure, the commercial online databases from Dialog
Information Services and similar vendors have traditionally supplied businesses with
high-quality information about numerous topics. However, the complexity of using these
services and the infrequent update cycles have limited their usefulness.
To the left, government databases have become tremendously useful in recent years.
Public information was often available only by spending many hours of manual labor at
libraries or government offices. The Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval
(EDGAR) database maintained by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission contains
extensive information on publicly traded companies and is updated daily.
In the upper left, corporate Web sites often contain vast amounts of useful information
in white papers, product demos, and press releases, eliminating the necessity to attend
trade exhibits to learn the "latest and greatest" in a marketplace.
Finally, the flaky-free content (in the lower half of the figure) can have significant
business value. Its value is not in the quality of any specific item but in its constantly
changing diversity. In combination with the other Web resources, the flaky-free content
acts as a wide-angle lens to avoid tunnel vision within one's marketplace. |
