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Articles
A company I'm doing some consulting for had a list of a few hundred names and addresses in a database. This company produces a publication, with a print edition and an online edition, and with paid advertising in each. As a separate Web site, they had this database of vendors with products and services of interest to readers of the publication. The database was awkward to update. And visitors at that site had to enter information and click several times and put up with slow response time to get a single name and address. The system was set up to make it possible add listing enhancements -- bold and large type and display ad options like you see in a printed yellow pages. But you would have to go through the whole database search process to arrive at a page that showed such enhancements. In other words, you already selected that company for detailed information -- the enhancements weren't at a level where they could catch someone's attention to the benefit of the advertiser. And, in fact, no one had ever chosen to advertise in it.
I suggested that with a list that small it would be far simpler and more effective to create static HTML pages that listed all the information. One large page could list all the companies, with their addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and a quick summary of the kinds of products and services they offer. Then separate pages could list the companies offering specific categories of products or services. And simple links could tie these directory pages together in a variety of ways.
In a case like this, a simple list has many advantages over a database:
1) Visitors could print an entire list with one simple command, instead
of having to first do a series of database queries.
2) You could add enhancements (bold, italic, large type, graphics)
as easily as you add to a Word document, without the need for special software
or for any technical skills.
3) Visitors would see the enhanced listings side-by-side with the unadorned,
free listings; so you might be more inclined to pay attention to them;
and so advertisers could easily imagine the benefit that they are paying
for.
4) Visitors could also see all the entries in context, companies listed
with their competitors, making it easy to do followup comparisons of offerings.
5) All the listings could easily have links to related Web pages and
email addresses, making followup all the more easy.
6) Unlike with a database, the content could be indexed by search engines,
bringing more traffic to your site, and hence raising advertising revenue
based on impressions.
7) Some search engines, like AltaVista, give more weight to large informative
pages than to short ones with little text; so when the search engines index
this page it is likely to get relatively high ranking.
8) Also, the variety of text on that page -- with all those company
names -- is likely to serve as a magnet for search engine queries.
Many Web page designers, as a rule, don't create large pages. They tend to limit the size to what you can see on the screen without scrolling, or maybe no more than twice that size. But large pages can be far more convenient for visitors than a multitude of small ones. Visitors can always use the Search or Find function in their browser to go right to the content they want. And it is easy to add internal links from an alphabet displayed at the top of the page, as an extra aid to navigation. It is also easy to link from any place on any page to any place on any other page of yours.
So don't presume that a high tech solution is the best solution. Beware
of over-engineering. Always consider the possibility that a simple
direct approach, that anyone could implement, might lead to better business
results.
When the music industry killed Napster in the courts they probably did away with their last, best opportunity to generate significant revenue from online downloads. Napster had tens of millions of users and central control over their activities. It did such a great job and offered easy access to so much music that competitors faced a very difficult challenge. Napster was in such a dominant position that it could have begun to charge modest fees and used that revenue plus ad revenue to pay royalties to music producers.
Napster created a marketplace, trained tens of millions of people in use of P2P applications, and got them addicted to seeking new music online. The death of Napster cleared the way for new companies to fill that role, companies with lots of incentive to come up with alternative ways to do the same thing without central control, without any way for anyone to track what was going on, beyond the legal reach of the music industry. These Napster wannabes have the additional advantage that today the typical new computer system has far more disk space and that many more people have high speed Internet access through cable and DSL.
One of the most successful of the Napster wannabes is Kazaa. My 13-year-old son Tim is an avid user of that service, and hence we have a daily battle for access to my desktop computer.
To join that community, you go to http://www.kazaa.com and download their software. On installation, that software sets up a "shared" directory on your PC. You can move whatever files you want to that directory, and any music that you download from Kazaa, as a default, goes to that directory. When you do a search for files, your search is propagated through computers running the Kazaa software and you get back a list of matches that appear in those shared directories. As a default, your computer also becomes a Kazaa "supernode," so when new users sign up, randomly, some of them will fetch the Kazaa software from your computer. Also, as a default, anyone can upload anything from your shared directory at any time, without warning, and without leaving a trace that they were ever there.
The Kazaa software includes a "theater" which makes it easy to sample the files you are interested in before downloading them, and also to play the ones that you already have.
The fact that high speed cable and DSL access keeps you continuously connected to the Internet, and that many people who are connected that way leave their computers on lots of the time if not always, makes this service far more efficient and effective that something similar would have been a few years ago, with intermittent, slow dial-up access.
And the combination of high speed access and gigabytes of unused disk space means that it is easy to fetch not just music, but also far larger video files. The typical files my son Tim gets are well over 100 Megabytes, and consist of combinations of music and video adapted and cleverly edited from his favorite TV shows, such as Gundam Wing and Dragonball Z. And some of the files available consist of complete episodes of those animated TV shows.
Sounds great, feels great. And this is all "free". But beware. On the Internet, you often pay a price for free services, a price that isn't measured in money paid.
If you want to venture into this untamed realm, you should take a very close look at the default settings. First, keep in mind that while Kazaa can provide some level of virus filtering, the default setting turns that off. Be sure to turn it on; and also make sure that you have good up-to-date anti-virus software running on your PC.
Also, keep in mind that you do not have to make your PC a supernode and stock your shared directory with interesting files, and allow other people to upload from your shared directory. That is not a condition for participating in the community. In fact, if you wish, you can shut your computer off from access by other Kazaa members, either all the time, or when you are doing serious work on your computer, and don't want your system resources to be randomly taken over by strangers as they upload your files.
Also, while with Napster you could select a dozen songs and let Napster fetch them as quickly as possible while you did other things; at Kazaa, even with high speed access, it often takes quite a while to get the tunes and videos that you want, one at a time; and sometimes, but rarely, after repeated tries, you still don't get what you want.
Also, whenever you use Kazaa, your eyeballs will be bombarded with annoying animated popup ads, often cleverly disguised to fool you into clicking on them.
And use of Kazaa drains your computer's short term memory; so no matter how much RAM you have (and we have 256 Megabytes), sooner or later you won't be able to see animations and won't be able to play music, and if Kazaa is running in the background the other applications you are running will slow down or even freeze, and you have to reboot.
But even with these drawbacks, the challenge of the hunt is often as
satisfying as enjoying the music itself. I suspect that even people who
have enough money so it means nothing to them to buy music, would prefer
to hunt it down this way, for that extra jolt of excitement that comes
from playing this wild file-fetching game.
The proposition looks too good to be trude. And maybe it is.
Managing a large email distribution list in today's spam-polluted environment can be both time-consuming and frustrating.
On the one-hand, people change email addresses at a rapid rate, moving from one free service to another, trying to cut down on the number of unsolicited commerical messages and virus messages they receive. That means that your list "ages" fast, and you continually have to go through the rejected messages that bounce back to you and distinguishing between the ones that are "transient" errors and those that are "fatal" and that you should delete from your list; and you also have to spend time adding new subscribers, and changing email addresses of old subscribers who let you know that they moved.
And no matter how useful your messages, no matter how well you do your list maintenance, and how careful you are to only add people who explicitly request inclusion, every time you send out a mailing you'll get at least a few nasty notes from people who don't remember having subscribed and want to get off the list.
So you are tempted to turn to a paid service to help you deal with your email distribution problems. And then it finally dawns on you that Yahoo Groups would do that for you for free.
Go to http://groups.yahoo.com and sign up to create a new group.
You can create a Yahoo group such that anyone can sign up to receive your messages and only you can distribute over the list. Then the subscribers do their own additions and deletions and changes. And when emails bounce back, the ones with fatal errors get automatically deleted.
Once you've set up your group, you have a variety of ways you
could manage it to take advantage of this
capability:
1) Use this simply as a supplement to your existing list. People searching at Yahoo Groups may find your postings and may choose to subscribe through Yahoo. I wouldn't expect to hook lots of people this way, but it's free and easy to use, and you have nothing to lose.
2) You could send out invitations to part of your current email subscriber list, telling them that if they prefer, they can now get the newsletter by way of Yahoo, which gives them two benefits: they can quickly and easily change or remove their address, and they will be able to view past issues on the Web in the Yahoo Groups area.
3) You could directly subscribe the folks in your present email list
by way of your Yahoo Group. In other words, instead of asking them what
they would like, you simply move them over to the Yahoo service. This doesn't
happen automatically, because the Yahoo folks need to take a look at your
list first, to make sure that you aren't just using them to send out spam.
But in about a week, when you clear their review, you would only need
to send each new issue of your newsletter to a single email address (e.g.,
financialengineeringtimes@yahoo.com) and it will be distributed by Yahoo
to everyone on your list.
I have set up a few of Yahoo Groups to get a concrete feel for how that works and what's possible. I'm very impressed with the functionality, and very disappointed in the practical results.
They have good management tools. And you can extract a complete list of email addresses any time you want, for instance to sell/rent the list to a complementary business, whose messages your subscibers would welcome (and not consider spam).
Unfortunately, the messages you send for your business, get delivered with ads tacked on at the end. Those ads may or may not be compatible with your messages. In any case, you get no money for them -- Yahoo does.
Also, if you choose to send out a Yahoo Groups invitation instead of just moving everyone over without asking them, you will be very lucky is as many as 5% of the recipients go to the trouble of signing up. And if you move them without asking, many people will be confused and remove themselves.
In addition, the Yahoo process for letting people subscribe gives you no way to capture demographic or qualification information about your subscribers. All subscribers need to enter is their email address.
On the plus side, Yahoo Groups is a very flexible tool, giving you an
opportunity to test a variety of business models. Yes, you can set up so
you are the only person who can send messages, as is typical for email
newsletters. I do that for notices related to my weekly chat program, Business
on the Web, which I've run since 1996. The chats themselves take
place at
www.samizdat.com/chat-intro.html and edited transcripts and schedule
are available at www.samizdat.com/chat.html The format is a group of peers
discussing subjects of common interest, sharing with and learning from
one another. I send out email notices once or twice a week. If Yahoo was
the only way I sent these messages, I could save a lot of time and hassle.
But I gave people a choice of signing up for Yahoo Groups, and very few
people did. So I continue to use my personally maintained list, in addition.
(URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/businessonthewebchats
Subscribe: businessonthewebchats@yahoogroups.com)
So, for this activity, the business benefit of Yahoo to me is minimal.
I also publish plain text books (unencrypted) on CD ROM, and wanted to provide a simple way for customers and other interested people to share their insights into how to get the most out of this new way of reading and studying. You can see our offerings at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat and can see our initial suggestions for creative uses at http://www.samizdat.com/guide.html For this activity, I set up a Yahoo Group that I manage "moderated" style, filtering messages before they go out to the whole group, to control the volume of the messages and to make sure that they are on-topic. (URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plaintextbooksoncd Subscribe: businessonthewebchats@yahoogroups.com) In this case, I didn't have a pre-existing list. I just include a mention of the Yahoo Group in normal correspondence and on related Web pages. So far few people have signed up and fewer still have posted useful messages. But I'm optimistic that over time this could become an important part of the business.
In addition, since early in 1994, I have published a free electronic newsletter, Internet-on-a-Disk. Each issue includes articles related to business on the Internet, as well as brief notes and pointers to interesting new Web sites and related technolgy, as well as sources of public domain booksOriginally, I distributed it by email, maintaining the list by hand. When the email distribution became a logistical nightmare, with list maintenance taking up far too much of my time, I dropped it, and simply posted issues at my Web site instead (http://www.samizdat.com/ioad.html). Now I've set up a Yahoo Group so that once again people can sign up to receive the newsletter by email. (URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ioad Subscribe: ioad@yahoogroups.com) I was tempted to have this one available for totally open discussion, so subscribers could also share their insights with other subscribers on the topics covered. But I soon realized that spammers and virus distributors have ways of culling addresses of people who post at Yahoo and disguising their messages so they look like they are being sent by those individuals. In self-defense, I had no choice but to make this discussion group moderated, as well, so I could filter out that nonsense before it annoyed or hurt the subscribers. So far the response has been disappointing. But, over time, maybe this too might prove useful. Meanwhile, there's no cost and maintenance takes minimal effort.
All in all, if you regularly send email over a large list that you now maintain yourself, and if you don't maintain any statistics about the demographics of your list, Yahoo Groups might be a good alternative for you -- saving time and hassle. And if you want, you can use the Yahoo service to add moderated email discussion, letting readers submit reactions and comments for you to review before they get posted and forwarded to the list. This could be a good way for you to generate Letter-to-the-Editor style copy, as well as to build loyalty among your most active fans. But don't expect miracles. It could take months or even years before you build a large enough audience and find ways to motivate them to generate interesting and useful discussions. The service is free, but it's not easy to get business benefit from it.
It's now 8 in the morning on Sunday while I write this, and in the background I hear Tim, my 13-year-old son. He got up at dawn to play a videogame he just got yesterday. That's not unusual. But I'm not just hearing game sounds. No, he's talking, almost non-stop. And he doesn't have a friend over. And he isn't talking to himself. Rather he has his XBox Live headset on, and he's talking with half a dozen other kids from all around North America, playing MechAssault, an interactive XBox war game.
What's going on?
Tim has dozens of Xbox games, including several other brand news ones that he long anticipated, like House of the Dead III, complete with a gun that you can use instead of the usual controller to blast away at Zombies and other monsters. But for now, at least, the other games are forgotten. Only games that you can play online and chatter away with have any claim on his attention.
Keep in mind that Tim had played online games before. We have Starcraft from Blizzard, which for a couple years has had an online version known as Battlenet. You play on your Internet-connected PC with other players around the world. And interactive online chess has been available for seven years or more. But in those cases, the chatter among players happens in text, by typing (unless you use the phone in parallel and incur long-distance charges), so "talking" gets in the way of playing.
With X-Box Live, the hands-free microphone/earphone headset lets you play and talk. And the voice goes out over the Internet (voice over IP) with no long distance charges for what amounts to a conference call typically among a dozen people scattered across the country. The player doesn't have to do anything special to connect for the conversation -- that happens automatically once you set up the game. And then all you do is talk out loud. It's totally different from anything Tim or I have experienced before.
Actually, when we opened the XBox Live starter kit box on Friday night, we were annoyed and frustrated. There were very few instructions on how to get set up; and there was practically no information about how to connect and get a game going. Our previous online game experience didn't help much. Fortunately, we already had cable-modem Internet service, and already had a router so we could connect two computers at the same time, and an open port to add another; and I even had a spare Ethernet cable long enough to go to the livingroom where the XBox is set up. So we put in the CD that came in the starter kit, and tried to go through the installation instructions we got there. But we soon came to a screeching halt when asked to input the "subscription" number. This isn't just a one-time purchase, like with games. XBox Live is a service that you pay $50 per year for. And the Microsoft marketing folks, in their infinite wisdom, hid the subscription number and gave no clue at all of its location in the starter kit. So I had to call an 800 number, which, to my surprise, was answered within a minute. Then, also to my surprise, it turned out that the person at the other end didn't have and apparently had never seen the starter kit. He, too, didn't know where to find the subscription number. Inside the cardboard case that the starter CD came in, I could see the words "subscription code" with an arrow beside it pointing to the left. But to the left was just silver ink with nothing printed on it. The help person suggested that I take it back to the store and get one with the number printed there. That didn't make much sense since this package had been wrapped in layer after layer of thick plastic packaging. Finally, it dawned on both of us that that silver ink was like the scratch pad on an instant lottery card. I scratched it with a coin and the number appeared. What a way to package a new kind of product! Anyway, with that number, signing on for the service still took another ten minutes, inputting personal information and credit card information that I really didn't want to enter. Finally, we were done; or were we? There was no confirmation that we were connected to anything over the Internet; and we had never entered any network settings.
The starter kit included two demo games, scaled-down versions of games that sell for $50 each. Tim tried the racing game, which worked fine locally as a one-player game; but there was no clear way to set up a game with others. So we weren't even sure that we had completed the setup and were connected. I called the 800 number again, and got another friendly person who really wanted to help but had no clue about the problem I was facing. While I was on the phone with her, Tim tried the second demo, called Whacked. Now he quickly got to an area where you set up games with others. Within less than a minute he was in a game and chattering away on his headset with a huge smile on his face. And as soon as the store opened the next day, we were back to buy his first full-fledged XBox Live game, MechAssault. And we weren't alone. XBox Live was announced on Friday. We never saw any ads for it. We just saw a brief segment about it on CNN and ran out to get it. And by the time we were set up, many thousands of others were also, so connecting with others for an online game was easy and immediate. And as soon as we got MechAssault the next day, thousands were already online playing that as well. And now at 8 on Sunday morning, thousands are connected now too, all not only enjoying the games they are playing, but also getting acquainted, building relationships with one another. Everyone you play with automatically gets added to your "Friends" list, making it easy to get back in touch again and form new games. And you can easily add and delete from Friends, recruiting real-world friends to join you and share experiences in this new world.
So Microsoft made many mistakes in how they packaged this new service and how they explained it to new users, but the service itself is so amazing, so attractive and addictive that any such mistakes will soon be forgotten. Within a few days, this will take off so fast and so far by word of mouth that 800 number calls will decline even as the number of new users increases, because friends will be explaining everything to friends.
What's going on? It's not the game play that has Tim hooked. It's the live interaction and the talk -- natural talk without technology getting in the way -- that makes the difference.
My quick take on this is that it is like the going from silent movies to talkies. The change is immediate, crushing everything that came before.
Keep in mind that XBox Live uses Internet lines, either DSL or cable, the same lines that you use to connect your PC. This is a new and different kind of service, like doing email or instant messaging or Web browsing or listening to Internet radio or watching movies or using P2P services like Kazaa to fetch music or video. Only, unlike those other services, XBox Live doesn't require a computer.
Imagine the implications for cable and DSL ISPs. Expect millions of people to get Internet connections who don't have PCs and may never browse the Web, who simply want to connect their Xboxes. You don't need to type. You don't need to use a mouse. You don't need to know anything at all about computers. And once you get over the hassle of connecting for the first time, everything is ultimately simple and natural.
Keep in mind that to sign up for XBox Live, you not only need to pay for the starter kit, but also need to provide your credit card information, so you can easily buy games online, without having to go back to the store, as well as buy enhanced services, and automatically renew your annual subscription.
Imagine the implications business-wise. Microsoft, with one brilliant stroke, just gained access to millions of homes for online commerce, and at the same time expanded the Internet beyond the PC.
Microsoft doesn't own the Internet. Even with Microsoft dominating the desktop with Windows and the IE browser, millions of little companies do business and flourish over the Internet. But Microsoft does own the XBox, which is opening new business models and promises to generate enormous profits. And everyone who connects using an XBox does so only by way of Microsoft's servers. And this service provides a very addictive experience, the addiction coming not from the technology, but rather from the social experience, people bonding to like-minded people in new ways. And it will probably be a year or more before any competitor has anything comparable to offer.
So cable and DSL ISPs should see their business grow far more rapidly
than previously anticipated. And Microsoft should take off to new levels
of profitability. And the social relations of people around the world will
undergo unpredictable changes as what is now a novelty becomes a natural
taken-for-granted part of every day living. Already I'm used to hearing
Tim chatter in the background, "Watch out or I'll hand you your head!"
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