The success of e-commerce I

IDC, ACM & Alibaba are commercial websites, which more or less have adopted the characteristics of Online Community such as issuing membership, linking with local sense, providing blog and forums for sharing and etc. On the other hand, they all have differences in their approaches of Online Community.

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets (written in its website), which is profitted by selling their research papers and giving consultions. As an IT research company, she keeps in touch with the IT markets and IT professionals. To achieve this, IDC issue questionairs and news updates to their members regular and awards those who participate with the research with credit points and members can use those credit points t o purchase articles or research papers and the places for events/forums. Of course, you can choose to pay online by credit card. This is a typical e-commerce website and provides very little online community activities.

ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources (written in its website). Certainly, ACM is very different from IDC as it is a professional body. The members are governed by the code of ethics and Professional Conduct of ACM and are required to pay the membership fees yearly. ACM offers many news update, online forums and blogs. However, generally the particition rates are pretty low. It also accept online payment by credit card.

Alibaba is B2B e-commerce/e-auction company and claims as the world's largest B2B online marketplace, which offers membership, forums, trade shows, free websites and news. Besides, members can post their purchase requests and display their products for free. Members can trade wide range products through Alibaba. The side product of Alibaba, aliblog is very successful, which can draw many sellers and buyers to participate. Like ebay, it has very strong local sense of community and highly regards locality. But Alibaba is a free platform for buyers and sellers. The owner of Alibaba makes profit through advertising and therefore, it assumes no responsibility for transactions. This is purely the deal between the seller and the buyer. That's why the high participation rate is very vital for its success. Over 23 millions people visited the site in 2008 only (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009).

Reference

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2009, Alibaba Group, Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, last modified 14 April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., US, viewed 25 September, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group>.