People at home, otherwise known as consumers, largely use the Internet for recreation, for shopping, for personal research, etc. People at home prefer their privacy, more than not, and have very individual (and wide ranging) interests to pursue online.
People at work, on the other hand, are happy to fill out online forms giving all kinds of personal work information such as the type of business which they are in, whether they are buyers or suppliers, etc., if giving this information lets them find other people in their same line of work.
People at work are looking for the exact needle in the haystack which fits their company's particular needs whether it be bidding for contracts, researching prices, seeking requests for proposals, purchasing supplies, etc. B2B (business to business sales) sites understand this and so vertical communities (such as Vertical.Net & BizProLink) have been created to allow businesses in the same industry to not only find one another but do business together more efficiently.
B2B sites are also sometimes known as exchange markets because they provide a meeting place for businesses to both find one another and to profit from doing business with one another. Of course, there are already specialized B2B search engines, such as the Yahoo! Business to Business Marketplace.
To get an overview, you could start with ebizChronicle, "an on-line daily newspaper that will cover, not the technical details of e-business, but instead the business of e-business. Our coverage will focus on the world of Business To Business (B2B). Sometimes, there may be an overlap B2C, but by and large our focus will be B2B. ebizChronicle will summarize the day's important e-business stories as they break, anywhere in the world, with a special focus on North America and Europe –because that's where over 80% of the Internet usage is happening today, and because of Europe's emergence as the world's largest economic power.
EBC will be about e-business strategy, as it develops. Presented through the experiences of the winners and losers of e-business. EBC will present these in conjunction with columns, backgrounders and special reports, to place the breaking news into perspective, and to provide a more complete business picture to our readers."
B2B on the Net is just now coming into its own. Stay tuned because no doubt new players will enter the fray and sites currently providing the B2B vertical communities or conducting exchange markets may fall by the wayside in the inevitable shake-out which will happen as this type of Internet use matures.
For more information see: