LAUREL PAPWORTH

LAUREL PAPWORTHi, is a social networks, Online Communities, participatory marketing, citizen journalism, user generated content, virtual economies, online loyalty programs, blogs, wikis, web 2.0, social media, seminars, courses, blog, workshop.

There are definite differences in these countries approaches to the internet, she says: “the Singapore government does not want to do anything on third party networks, preferring to do everything “on their own branded site” an approach springing from the Singaporean adversion to inserting themselves into and their affinity with “defined boundaries”..whereas legal issues in the Middle East dictate that many companies prefer to do marketing fully on third party sites so as to avoid direct responsibility.

The Australian webscene is full of people with “good ideas” and the possibility to find pre-angel funding amongst friends, family and fools (the three F’s as she calls them) but the Australians lack the determination to “follow-through” Laurel says.

This is partly to do with the lack of infrastructure support for web companies by the Australian government and industry, but also about many founders’ intention to be acquired by larger companies such as Google.

In her work Laurel comes across a lot of misunderstandings on how important online communities are, and companies that just shut down sites without informing or migrating users to other sites, frustrate her, after all she believes: “the internet is all about interaction”