The second wave of businesses that, perhaps reluctantly, ventured out into cyberspace were traditional retail business that you would not associate with cyberspace at all. This includes sport teams, restaurants and even retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Border’s Book Stores. In fact, the wave of change in how products and services are sold has been so rapid that entire market niches have been virtually revolutionalized by internet sales techniques. Book and music outlets have been virtually hard hit as a large percentage of their customers have abandoned the “brick and mortar” sales outlets entirely to use the more convenient tools of internet shopping.

This has made it tough on some retailers to keep up. For the “mom and pop” business, the change has been particularly devastating. Already small, home grown businesses were struggling to compete with the giant mega-stores like Wal-Mart to keep their loyal clientele coming back. Add to that the migration of customers to the internet and the need for change just to stay in business became even more urgent.

But even businesses who do not depend on marketing at all have seen the need to build and maintain a well functioning business web site so they will have a “face” in cyberspace. In the modern marketplace, the consumer will go to the internet first to find out about a company and it’s goods and services. This has turned traditional ways of connecting with existing and new customers upside down entirely.

The good news is that these rapid changes in how modern markets work have made the business world more diverse, more able to adjust to changing business dynamics and more open to the creative and innovative minds that have always been the real life blood of the business world. And, ironically, it is often the small business that is most capable of making rapid changes to its online presence and ways to doing things.

In that the internet is a phenomenally dynamic place, new ways of reaching our customers change almost annually. Where one year a simple web page may have been sufficient, soon we had to have chat rooms, MySpace pages and YouTube compatibility. Any business that sees these changes as chances to do something new and exciting with their business will be the companies that thrive in this modern world. And, as always, those who do not thrive with change will be destined to be made obsolete by it.