News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 6/12/97 | |
This literally made my jaw drop.
From: wesf@mail.utexas.edu (Wesley Felter);
Sent at 6/14/97; 3:21:37 PM;
WebTV to go proprietaryEveryone knows that WebTV has some special tags that make pages looks better on TV screens; I think it's a good idea. They're documented on the Web site, so it's really no big deal. You have to have a WebTV box to test pages that use the special tags, but they're really not that expensive.
And then WebTV announced their PrimeTime developer program. Not only is it $750/year (reminiscent of Netscape), but it includes documentation on new tags that, according to WebTV's site, are "not for public usage". Excuse me? I understand that the price of the developer program includes a free WebTV box, the WebTV software simulator, and some marketing reports, so that's not really my complaint. But WebTV has essentially announced that they will charge for the documentation for the HTML tags that the browser supports!
They need to take a lesson from Be: if you want developers, feed them lunch! Developing for WebTV is not a priviledge that many people will be willing to pay for. It's a Chinese household: the answer is always Yes!
Just read your piece on the development of ThinkTank and More. It brought back great memories.
From: jmgreen@gate.net (John M Green Jr);
Sent at 6/13/97; 7:25:56 AM;
ThinkTank and MoreI started with the first Apple 2 and progressed up through all of the Macs to the color notebooks. Finally, about three years ago I gave up on Apple and made the transition to Windows.
One of the most used programs I had was your ThinkTank in the earlier days and then More. To say I was disappointed when More was no longer supported is an understatement. After going to Windows 3.1 and now Win95, I have looked for a program that has the functionality of More and have not found one. Inspiration is probably the closest I have found and the poor outlining programs in WordPerfect and WinWord are laughable. Still, I miss More and what ya'll included in it.
I believe there is still a strong place for an excellent program such as More in the Win95 environment. I'll keep hoping that it makes a comeback. Thanks for the memories.
As one of the founders of what has become DoubleClick (we were the rep firm for Netscape when the first banners were sold on that site), and as a longtime high tech and Internet ad guy (the non-gender-specific term for people in advertising), I have a lot of thoughts on online advertising.
From: carlick@poweragent.com (David Scott Carlick);
Sent at 6/12/97; 3:09:32 PM;
Web AdvertisingFirst, banners are actually a pretty nice trade-off - a bit of screen space and bandwidth time for the banner sponsors a web page, which is inherently a service delivered by a software application. Users get better ratios of relevance and time than television; banners make it easier to pursue more information; the creative is getting better -- banners are a reasonable sponsorship method.
The TV networks are 100% sponsor paid. Print publications range from 100% sponsor paid (such as controlled circulation trade publications) to 100% subscriber paid (such as newsletters).
Find a good way to sponsor more web services, and everyone will benefit from the host of new services, ideas, entertainment, business, and other sponsored services that crop up.
The real problems in the pace of acceptance for online advertising are several, and they are changing fast.
1. Creative. Advertisers are recognizing that banners, and the presumably interesting next page that follows a click, can be creatively executed, and that the interactive nature of the computer means that the messages are noted.
2. Inertia: Advertisers are learning to understand the online world, as they become online users. They are slowly changing their ways.
3. Audience definition: This is the biggest kicker. In fact, People Magazine had more ad revenues in 1996 than all the web advertising banners combined! The online sites have not been able to define and deliver their users in the audience terms by which major advertisers buy. This too, will change. At PowerAgent, we are working on this bigtime.
One final note: The web service, whether Excite or Yahoo! or C/Net or ESPN Sportzone, is itself delivered via a software application. The application is paid for by the sponsor. When the user 'strips' the ad banner from the application, the user is effectively 'pirating' the service from the software application, just like illegal copies of software, creating usage without fair compensation for the application creator. I am opposed to software piracy.
Enjoy the column as always.
You should charge for it!
I personally don't see how commercial web sites with a large staff can possibly support themselves through banner advertising, but I don't think that means that no web site can be supported that way. Case in point: my own starmax.net. It's a modestly popular web site, receiving about 65,000 hits a month. It caters to an extremely specific readership: owners, system managers, and enthusiasts of Motorola's StarMax line of Mac OS compatible computers. It provides all kinds of useful information, news, and (most importantly) _community_ to those readers, allowing them to post their own experiences, and troubleshoot problems others are having.
From: ben@starmax.net (Ben Kimball);
Sent at 6/12/97; 2:30:41 PM;
Re:Web Economicsstarmax.net would most likely have disappeared four months ago had I not found companies willing to sponsor the site through banner advertising. Instead, I found a Win-Win(-Win): I get compensated for the time I spend maintaining the site, site sponsors get exposure to an extremely focused group of readers, and readers get relatively unobtrusive access to companies whose product lines complement their interests nicely, at the expense of an extra 10k GIF.
There's one simple reason this works: razor-sharp ad targeting. It's for this reason that I think smallish web sites like my own are the only ones that can make banner advertising profitable. Because I can offer exposure to a specific crowd (and, naturally, it doesn't hurt that the crowd is computer-related and therefore usually in a buying mood), I believe the value of banner advertising on starmax.net is higher than, say, news.com, even though my hit rate isn't even close.
One last thought: the money I receive from banner advertising really isn't very substantial. I could never support another writer, for example. Therefore, any tool that lets me produce the site faster, ship more content per day, is very important. starmax.net would never have become the success it is today without Frontier. Period. With Frontier, a single webmaster can produce a site rivaling (surpassing!) the big sites, and still have time for supper!
About a year ago I had a nice piece of sw running on the past version of Netscape for Windows. It was called Internet Fast Forward (IFF) I believe. Worked beautifully, filtered all the ads and did not compromise throughput.
From: priviet@sirius.com (Steven Gilman);
Sent at 6/12/97; 12:22:50 PM;
Re:Web EconomicsA sad story... The company that created IFF was bought by PGP, they discontinued upgrading, and pulled the shareware off the market. They bought the company for the technology, I believe, and buried a useful gem. I'm still looking for something like IFF shareware on the net.....
As for ads, right-on, they aren't the only way to make money on the net. Unfortunately, when you talk about other ways, while mentioning Intel, Netscape, et allllll, they are not really web-site firms. They use the web to offer their message and products. It's not a web-business, it's a business that uses the web just like print, billboards, radio, etc...
How many 'free' magazines are out there (aside from the volumes of IT journals I receive), that are supported soley through ad-sales? It's an interim thing, while people seek and grasp deeper relevency and utility.
ps... Hhihh hihhih! Still Diggin?