The shocking and exciting answer is that more often than ever, the Internet breaks news and then the TV news covers it. Have you noticed that practically everyday the TV news is covering something found on YouTube.com or Twitter.com or FaceBook.com? What’s going on here? Are TV stations getting lazy? No! Internet sources are fast and broad and traditional reporters just can’t compete with the masses.

So what happens when the general public becomes the source of news? We get faster news and a lot more of it. Just watch YouTube.com and you will see video coverage of every fishing trip, wedding, natural disaster, and sporting fiasco. Wherever it happens, someone has a video recorder. How can reporters compete with that? Of course the weakness is that reliability of information could be a real problem. Not only will untrained people misreport the truth (as if reporters were honest, but that’s another story), they will go to great lengths to create a hoax. In this new world of news, tabloid style reporting will dominate and the truth is out the window.

The driving force behind this transition will be bigger than anyone realizes. Audiences want instant real-time news. Not five minutes from now. Right now! What is happening RIGHT NOW? The impatience of people in this new age of real time information is going to destroy the TV news model in favor of the interactive model. Why would I sit through the weather and the world news to finally get to the bit I’m interested in? I want to read the story I want to know about right now. If I want to know if Michael Jackson really died, I can’t wait for the news to circle around to it, I must find out right now! Don’t believe me? When you first heard about Michael Jackson’s death, were you one of those who jumped on Twitter.com? Or did you get on the phone and start calling friends? Did you run to the TV? News of that magnitude put the whole world into a sense of urgency to confirm the news or to spread it. Everyone wants to be the one who knew it first. It’s crazy. But that phenomenon is important. It shows you exactly how important it is for people to give and receive information RIGHT NOW! And TV news, not to mention print news, just can’t get the job done.

The Internet is clearly where the real time information age was born and that is the catalyst for transforming how we give and receive information. The urgency that is associated with this new real time information age has been grossly underestimated by businesses. Think about it. If your customers can’t wait five minutes for the TV to give them the news, then they don’t want to wait two hours for a phone call or three days for a shipment. They want what they want and they want it now! We are in the age of the two year old shouting “give me!” “give me!” “mine!” “mine!”.

Speed is everything! Depending on your business, you may have to balance quality, service, speed, and costs. Do some tests with your marketing materials or customer surveys and find out how important FAST is to your customers. We’ve evolved from just-in-time inventory to real time everything. McDonald’s just isn’t fast enough sometimes.

If your Internet business does not have current information (real time, preferably), instant order fulfillment, and hyper-fast delivery of products and services, then there is room for your competition to jump in. Half the time my customers fill in a contact form on my website, they jump to another site two seconds later and continue shopping. The difference between calling them right now or calling them in an hour could cost me the sale. An hour is just not fast enough.

Want to discuss the impact of real-time demands on your business? Please contact me for a consultation at www.theEbizGuy.com .