The Digital Divide.

I was attending a eMarketing (or Digital Marketing or Internet Marketing or Online Marketing... whatever) event at Monash Uni and one point that was brought up by one of the speakers from GIST Communication (gistcommunication.com.au) was the concept of a "digital divide".

What could this be? Another wanky business term that's doing the rounds of a lecture theatre near you? Probably. But at it's core it raises a more important question; Who can communicate online? Or from a business's point of view, which customers can we communicate with.

Every lazy Uni student's favourite resource Wikipedia defines this divide as "the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information... and their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities".

Most eMarketing at it's most basic, in the form of online commerce (a digital shop) requires at least some form of live internet connection, but the rich, multimedia heavy interactions of today require a pretty decent broadband connection to make possible. And the cost of these connection's can be prohibitive for many people. And that's if you live in Australia. If you live in say... India, what kind of internet service can you expect?

Additionally, who is sufficiently active online to make these marketing efforts worthwhile? Nan and Pop probably don't have a Google or Facebook account. In fact, they might not even have a computer. Or what about those cousins from rural Queensland you only see at Christmas? They'll have internet but it'll probably be slow. Maybe that's why you never visit... Anyway.

eMarketing is an exciting and promising field of Marketing, but this is something that limits businesses and individuals capacity to interface with each other in the online space. Overcoming it is a critical challenge, partly met by the National Broadband Network (NBN) but the issue of affordability comes up once again with leaked plans starting at $40 per month for a very basic connection.

Still chasing that utopia of everyone online, blogging, tweeting, receiving relevant and targeting marketing all the while holding hand and singing songs. Am I asking too much?!