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Anvil
Issue Three
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*Welcome to Anvil - a weekly newsletter providing insight into online
industry news, issues and trends. In this week’s issue:
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TOP
INDUSTRY NEWS
*Understanding the Web’s Real Market Potential
*Don’t Get Caught NAPing
*Electronic Publishing on the Internet
DESIGN
*Personal Information Delivery- the Future of the Internet
*Individual News Service
HOSTING
*Death Cookies
*Household Internet Access Doubles
MARKETING
*Consumer Trends and the Effects of New Media
*Travelers Increasingly Use the Web
TOP
WEB PICKS
*Luckman Interactive WWWYP
*Manna Mir Research editorial database
*Mr. Smith E-Mails The Media
*Press Access Online
*The DJ Player
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TOP INDUSTRY NEWS
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*Understanding the Web’s Real Market Potential
Nobody can be sure about the true size of the Internet. Many research
studies have generated vastly different numbers ranging from 9 to
50 million users. One study, Inter-NOT by New Networks Inc. (NNI),
is a cross-referenced analysis incorporating studies from respected
research companies including: Yankelovich Partners, Intelliquest,
Nielsen Media Research, FIND/SVP, Jupiter/Yahoo, Georgia Tech, Project
2000, The NPD Group and in-depth interviews, ranging from 1994 to
September 1996. The study is unique as it applies a new market segmentation
method called Layer Analysis, based on 15 years of historical telecom
new media rollout data. The report outlines some of the major flaws
found in many research studies, including: Variable terms, definitions
and criteria, inflation of numbers, skewed self-selecting surveys
and application breakouts. The overall message from the report is
there were never 25 million U.S. online users. NNI believes there
are only 15 million people online (encompassing the Internet, World
Wide Web and commercial services), accounting for only 6 percent
of the entire U.S. population and 11 percent of total households.
In short, the overwhelming majority of the US population is NOT
online today. The executive summary and full report are available
on the Web for review and purchase.
http://www.newnetworks.com/
*Don’t
Get Caught NAPing
Excitement concerning the collapse of the Internet has increased
lately as millions of AOL users were left in the dark for hours
while technicians updated server software. Concerns have also heightened
as download times seem to increase daily. Bob Metcalfe, a networking
pioneer predicts the entire Internet will crash by the end of 1996.
The current Internet bottlenecks Metcalfe speaks of are the network
access points, or NAPs located in Sacramento, Chicago, New York
and Washington DC. Large ISPs and startups with heavy funding are
providing incredible new technologies allowing for greater bandwidth
and performance to combat the bottlenecks. Separately, Microsoft,
Motorola and assorted partners are creating multi-billion dollar
satellite systems which will allow for global wireless communications,
including Internet access. While this solution will greatly increase
bandwidth and reach, it’s still 5 to 10 years away from public consumption.
One of the most revolutionary solutions to the bandwidth problem
is currently available from a privately-funded Seattle startup.
InterNAP Network Services provides high performance fault-tolerant
direct backbone access through their P-NAP (private NAP). They can
guarantee high-volume bandwidth for Internet access and co-location
hosting services. "There has been far too much focus on the
limitations of existing public infrastructure and technology,"
said Anthony Naughtin, president and CEO of InterNAP. "The
true culprit is the deployment and administration of these technologies.
We provide high performance value-add services that addresses these
problems in a more meaningful way." Keep an eye out for InterNAP
in the very near future.
http://www.internap.com
http://cnn.com/TECH/9610/19/internet.collapse.ap/index.html
*Electronic
Publishing on the Internet
Along the same lines as the above article regarding custom information
delivery is the issue of electronic commerce and delivery. While
industry experts shun the possibility of a per-transaction cost
basis for news articles and published work, major corporations are
leaning the other way due to a combination of common logic and technological
developments like CyberCash. In the October 21 Digital Commerce
article by Denise Caruso, Hewlett-Packard discusses the possibilities
of personalized magazines that will be compiled and sent directly
to your printer. The problem with this is electronic piracy. The
information will be copied and illegally distributed over the Internet
for free, destroying the commerce model. Others disagree. Secure
transaction technology like CyberCash and watermarks which indelibly
identify copyrights will help deter this problem. Another factor
is common sense. It will be easier for a person to pay $1.25 for
a book through proper channels, than having to search out a black
market vendor who can’t beat the price as the cost and risk of stealing
information is high.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/digicom/1021digicom.html
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DESIGN
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*Personal Information Delivery- the Future of the Internet
As technology evolves rapidly in the online realm, companies are
beginning to merge toward a common goal: customized personal information
delivery or narrowcasting. As this paradigm forms, designers will
have to learn effective methods of incorporating graphics and multimedia
into delivery. Customized content delivery was originally developed
by the tremendously successful PointCast Network and persued most
recently by After Dark Online. For those unfamiliar with the overnight
success of PointCast, this shareware (free) screen saver offers
users a customizable multimedia interface which delivers news and
information regularly through the Internet connection. The screen
saver runs as a separate browser-like desktop application, and users
can select from various news and industry topics, stocks, sports
scores and weather. The success can be measured by the pricey ad
rates, $13,000 per week, with over 4 million views. The phenomenal
growth spurred competition from After Dark, known for their entertaining
screen savers, which were quickly replaced by PointCast users early
this year. After Dark Online is virtually identical to PointCast,
yet has powerful media partners including ESPN and Wall Street Journal.
These two companies are no longer alone in this realm. The latest
players to join this market are Intermind, BackWeb and Marimba.
I have reviewed each of these technologies and found that none so
far have reached the functionality of PointCast or After Dark Online,
however they are on the right track. Intermind uses a browser and
email interface to deliver information. The availability of information
is currently limited, but growing rapidly. The primary drawbacks
for this technology is the confusing Web interface and backwards
marketing strategy- targeting publishers rather than end-users.
BackWeb utilizes a Windows 95 interface to achieve the same goal,
and is much more effective, yet lacks the customization of PointCast.
Marimba is a browser-based Java application that has great promise.
The major liability of this product is that I couldn’t get it to
work. The race to dominate delivery is fierce. Only time will tell
which methods will succeed. Either way, Web designers must be able
to leverage this technology to create multimedia-rich Web sites
and applications. Please see the related links below for more information.
http://www.pointcast.com
http://www.afterdark.com
http://www.intermind.com
http://www.backweb.com
http://www.marimba.com
*Individual
News Service
Individual Inc., customized news delivery service, is experienced
substantial growth in membership over the past quarter, rising by
52 percent, or 145,000 new users, according to the company. Third-quarter
revenue should be approximately $6.1 million, yet will suffer a
loss for the quarter of $4.2 million to $4.4 million. This is somewhat
of an industry standard, as Yahoo! and Wired experienced similar
growth in revenue and loss in income. Individual operates both NewsPage,
a service that culls news for individuals, and First!, a service
for the corporate market. The services monitor 700 news sources
and are distributed via fax, e-mail, Lotus Notes and the Internet.
The company went public in March and expects to reach the break-even
point sometime in the next few months.
http://www.newspage.com/
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HOSTING
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*Death Cookies
One of the greatest roadblocks to successful online commerce is
the transaction security issue. Many options are available, most
very secure, but the general public is still wary of supplying a
credit card number over the Internet. Web servers use cookies to
identify users and provide specific information. This raises the
question of exactly what information is stored and available to
the public. Some users believe any private information exchanged
between PC and Web server can somehow be accessed by a third party
and used in an illegal or immoral manner. The truth is, only the
domain server which sends and receives the cookie can read it. For
those people not wanting to take any chances there are options:
do not send any information over the Web you would not want an unknown
party accessing, or view your existing cookies via the browser cookie.txt
files and delete the unwanted cookies. For more information about
cookies and links to other cookie-information sites, visit:
http://www.linkexchange.com/cookieinfo.html
*Household
Internet Access Doubles
A recent survey by Find/SVP and Jupiter Communications reveals the
number of U.S. households with access to the Internet more than
doubled to 14.7 million in the past year while growth at Internet-access
providers outstripped commercial on-line services. As mentioned
in an earlier article, these numbers are subjective, yet map closely
to the Inter-NOT study by New Networks Inc. The important trend
is that commercial online services are growing at a much smaller
rate than ISPs, and are losing market share. Prodigy, one of the
first commercial online services, has recently transitioned over
to ISP service providing Internet access for $19.95 a month with
20 free hours. Industry experts and I agree that Prodigy is doing
too little to late to succeed in this rapidly evolving and growing
industry. For more information, visit the following sites:
http://www.prodigy.com
http://www.jup.com
http://www.wsj.com
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MARKETING
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*Consumer Trends and the Effects of New Media
The Portland chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA)
recently hosted a luncheon with guest speaker Paul Leinberger, vice
president of Roper Starch Worldwide, Inc. In his presentation, he
discussed consumer trends in the past 23 years of comprehensive
studies, which are conducted 8 times each year, with 2,000 in-home
interviews per study. The primary focus of the presentation was
the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In today’s high-tech
information-rich society, self-reliant individuals (Haves) are thriving,
while all others (Have-nots) are left behind. These self-reliant
individuals desire more ’real’ information from all mediums including
print, television and online, while the balance desire basic entertainment.
The disparity over the use and understanding of information technology
is expected to come to a critical mass in the next 25 to 50 years.
Consumers are lowering expectations to meet reality, and as such,
money has changed meaning from status to security. To the 90s consumer,
the value equation equals quality over price with a stress on value-added
services. Marketers must maintain dual traditional and new media
strategies for many years as the Have-nots catch up to the Haves.
For now, new media targets are young, affluent, early adopters.
Roper Starch, in partnership with HotWired Online, has developed
a new service called WebVantage which will provide answers to questions
on Web statistics addressed throughout this newsletter. For more
information, contact Roper Starch at 714-756-2600.
*Travelers
Increasingly Use the Web
A recent Associated Press article by Karen Schwartz indicates travelers
are surfing the Web more than the average online user. A recent
survey by the Travel Industry Association of America indicates that
nearly half of frequent business travelers, 47 percent, use online
services. A third of frequent leisure travelers, those taking five
or
more trips a year, log onto the Internet. People able to take frequent
trips, either for business or pleasure, often are better educated
and more affluent and are more likely to have computers at work
and home. Travelers are most interested in using on-line services
to find directions and maps, places to go, sites, costs and schedule
information. These numbers will substantiate the current explosion
of online and CD-ROM travel resources. In general, 19 percent of
adult travelers use on-line services, compared with 6 percent of
the U.S. population overall, but as noted in the Inter-NOT article,
these numbers could be highly inaccurate, however, the numbers are
supported by the Roper Starch data.
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TOP WEB PICKS
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*Luckman Interactive WWWYP
The 1997 World Wide Web Yellow Pages includes over 10,000 sites
which have been selected from over 100,000 reviewed by Luckman’s
staff of editors and writers. Each site is rated by content, design,
organization and downloading time. There are 18 general site categories:
Art, Business, Children, Computers, Education, Entertainment, Government,
Health, Humanities, Internet and the Web, Life Styles, Music, News,
Regions, Science, Shopping, Sports and Recreation, and Travel. Luckman’s
staff is currently evaluating web sites at the rate of more than
10,000 per month.
http://www.luckman.com.
*Manna
Mir Research Editorial Database
This online media directory offers editorial information similar
to popular media software such as Media Map or Press Access. Users
can search by editor, beat or publication in the following mediums:
newspaper, newsletter, TV, radio and Internet. The cost per search
is $0.15 or $15 per 100 searches. This includes all basic information
about the reporter, editor, section, bureau or publication such
as phone number, fax number, address and beat information. Unfortunately,
I have been unable to generate matches in their trial service to
verify the value of the service.
http://www.mannamir.com/
*Mr.
Smith E-Mails The Media
INFOSEARCH "Mr. Smith E-Mails The Media" site provides
a graphical user interface for sending email to members of the media
in a "Letter to the Editor" format. While not a substitute
for good old fashioned media relations and database services, this
service can be used to get general information in a quick and easy
manner.
http://www.searcher.com/media.html
*Press
Access Online
Press Access, one of the PR industry’s most popular resource software
database providers has recently migrated and expanded their services
to the Web. Their site features up-to-date information on editors
and editorial calendars, links to publication web sites, news and
awards. A host of other services include Hot News, PR Resources
and PressDirect. WEBCals, a new online editorial calendar service,
loads directly into existing Press Access on databases.
http://www.pressaccess.com/
*The
DJ Player
TheDJ Player is the first Windows (95 and NT) application built
on the RealAudio player engine. Delivering a wide selection of commercial
free music, TheDJ Player offers listeners a powerful yet easy-to-use
desktop application linked to one of the largest libraries of songs
on the Internet. While still in it’s beta stage I’ve used it frequently
as background music, and although it’s not CD quality sound, it’s
very usable at 28.8 bps and better speeds.
http://www.thedj.com/
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JOKE OF THE WEEK
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The local bar was so sure its bartender was the strongest man around
they offered a standing $1,000 bet. The bartender would squeeze
a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon
to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out
would win the money. Many people had tried over time (weightlifters,
longshoremen, etc.) but nobody could do it. One day this scrawny
little man came in, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit,
and said in a quiet, squeaky voice, "I’d like to try the bet."
After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed
a lemon, and squeezed away. Then he handed the wrinkled remains
of the rind to the little man. The crowd’s laughter turned to total
silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops
fell into the glass. As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the
$1,000, and asked the little man," what do you do for a living?
Are you a lumberjack, a weightlifter, or what?" The man replied,
"I work for the IRS."
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