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Matt Friedman champions e-commerce
by MICHEAL CITROME
Through stints at the Gazette and Internet Week, 36-year-old Concordia professor Matt Friedman has always been a spirited voice of technological progress.
His latest book, B2B Canada, co-authored by partner Marlene Blanshay, is a playful look at a serious subject: business-to-business electronic commerce. Friedman says that the challenge in writing the book was making e-commerce's dense jargon accessible to the average reader. "People hear these acronyms all the time and they don't really seem to exist in any kind of context," says Friedman. "What we were trying to do is put it into context."
But Friedman makes it clear that he wanted to avoid writing what he calls a "consultant-type" book. "I find those books empty and meaningless and they're not really fun to read. They're all like '10 steps to global domination in electronic commerce.'"
Right now, Friedman and Blanshay are hard at work on the American version of B2B, due out in the coming year. "It's an ironic twist on cultural imperialism," comments Friedman. "We Canadians are going to tell the Americans how to do electronic commerce."
Despite fears that the Internet economy may be in trouble, Friedman is sure B2B e-commerce is a growth industry. "People come up to me all the time and say that the only people who make money off e-commerce are the porno people. But business-to-consumer e-commerce only accounts for a 10th of what's going on."
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