Time permitting, I track the following business models, summarized below, which are reshaping commerce, community, wealth, influence, knowledge, opportunity and power around the globe. Each of them represents significant business opportunities for those that can leverage the trends.  They represent commerce in this era of the Great Leveling.

Together, these trends are driving the spread of virtually free, widely accessible, infinitely scalable and exceedingly powerful technologies and platforms. As such, they are actively and rapidly destroying existing markets, industries, leveling competition, shifting power, redistributing wealth and creating a fundamentally new world. These business models represent the future of prosperity!

FREE

Free is the new black! Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

• Zillow offers in-depth real estate, property tax, housing sales, housing trends and mapping features. All for free.
• Google and their Android OS
  

REALTIME

The world demands realtime and continuous feedback.  Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

Layar is building out an augmented reality infrastructure enabling information to be layered over maps and visual data via your smartphone:

HYPERLOCAL is HYPERGLOBAL

In a globally connected world, where you are at the time is more important than ever: Think locally. Scale globally. Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

• MerchantCircle counts over 1 million businesses in its hyperlocal online business directory.
• Refinery29 provides hyperlocal fashion news.
• Tasting Table is seeking to provide daily news on the hot food, bars and restaurants in your city.
• BlockChalk is building a service for neighbors to leave messages and post information to a virtual street block kiosk. A similar service, by Nixle, is designed to allow community services (e.g. police, school) send instant texts to residents re traffic concerns, school reminders and other civic concerns.
  

BlockChalk: The Voice of Your Neighborhood from BlockChalk on Vimeo.

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE MONETIZED

Data + access + analysis + aggregation + socialization = wealth. Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

• SeekingAlpha is a free online community aggregating experts, insiders and all interested parties in discussing stocks, businesses and actionable financial analysis.
• You don't have to be ATT to manage billing customers. Recurly lets anyone, any site or business, quickly begin charging customers for content. Takes about 30 minutes to set-up.

VALUES = PROFITS

Anyone can get anything anytime from anywhere. Counter-intuitively, this makes values-based businesses more important than ever. Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

THE VIRTUAL IS THE REAL

Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

SLIDE started as a social media ad company, but now makes their money from selling virtual goods, primarily on Facebook.

YOUNG BROWN WOMAN CHILD

Seize the biggest market in the world -- ever. Examples of businesses leveraging this business model:

Healthcare by SMS and financial transactions over the mobile phone are driving the growth of mobile phones to over 5 billion.

THE SPICE MUST FLOW!

Government is the biggest growth industry. The West cannot function without it.  Examples of businesses leveraging this business model: