Comments on: The Virtues of Virtual http://www.tradeshowstartup.com/2006/10/27/the-virtues-of-virtual/ Lessons From the Launch of Tradeshows & Internet Media Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:08:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: RichW http://www.tradeshowstartup.com/2006/10/27/the-virtues-of-virtual/#comment-2788 RichW Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:52:25 +0000 http://www.tradeshowstartup.com/?p=79#comment-2788 Tim, Millions have been thrown down that black hole already. While you can validly argue the merits of meeting face-to-face, I've alwasy found the problem with the "virtual trade show" was that whomever was designing or specing the show project always confined themselves with some type of physical show model in mind - which meant they built it from the exhibitor's needs outward, not from the attendee side. They never used the intraweb for what it was good for. You recall seeing any virtual trade shows that have an Amazon-like recommendation system (people who visited this booth also visited...)? An eBay-like rating of sellers (or tire-kicking attendees)? Hell, let's go more basic than that - ever see one with a live chat feature? Reed was getting somewhere with its old manufacturing.net portal in the late 90s - that was actually pretty well done - better than Vertical.net (remember when we were all worried about Walsh taking over the world?). Anyway, good points all around. Tim,
Millions have been thrown down that black hole already. While you can validly argue the merits of meeting face-to-face, I’ve alwasy found the problem with the “virtual trade show” was that whomever was designing or specing the show project always confined themselves with some type of physical show model in mind - which meant they built it from the exhibitor’s needs outward, not from the attendee side. They never used the intraweb for what it was good for.

You recall seeing any virtual trade shows that have an Amazon-like recommendation system (people who visited this booth also visited…)? An eBay-like rating of sellers (or tire-kicking attendees)? Hell, let’s go more basic than that - ever see one with a live chat feature?

Reed was getting somewhere with its old manufacturing.net portal in the late 90s - that was actually pretty well done - better than Vertical.net (remember when we were all worried about Walsh taking over the world?).

Anyway, good points all around.

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