Business 2.0
Online Advertising After the Bust
If you think today's Web ads are in your face, wait until tomorrow's barge in. In 2001, when I was an editor for Inside.com, I proposed a column on why Web advertising didn't work. My boss approved the column, but by the time I'd written it, Inside.com had gone under, in part because it hadn't taken in enough advertising. Usability experts have been heralding the uselessness of online ads since at least April 1997, when Jakob Nielsen wrote -- and gave evidence showing -- that only the top 0.01 percent of websites could take in enough advertising to make a business of it. "Banner blindness" was what worried online advertising agencies back then. It's six years later, we've seen boom and bust, yet one thing has not changed: Advertising is still the overwhelming source of revenue for many sites, even profitable ones like the highbrow NYTimes.com and lowbrow Drudge Report.
woensdag 7 mei 2003
zondag 4 mei 2003
Business 2.0
How to Make Money on the Net
The second Internet boom is quietly taking shape -- and this one looks like it's going to last. Here's how six innovative businesses learned from the past and have begun to make the Web work for them. When Wells Fargo (WFC) was a startup, broadband meant 5 mph. That was the average speed of the Wells Fargo stagecoaches that carried bullion and financial documents between the boomtown of San Francisco and cities to the east. The system had its problems -- bandwidth was limited by the need to replace the horses every 12 miles, and then as now, online security was an issue. (Hackers today, bad guys with six-shooters back then.) But the stagecoach beat shipping by sea, which took upwards of six months. Mail delivery from St. Louis to San Francisco in less than four weeks? That was revolutionary technology.
How to Make Money on the Net
The second Internet boom is quietly taking shape -- and this one looks like it's going to last. Here's how six innovative businesses learned from the past and have begun to make the Web work for them. When Wells Fargo (WFC) was a startup, broadband meant 5 mph. That was the average speed of the Wells Fargo stagecoaches that carried bullion and financial documents between the boomtown of San Francisco and cities to the east. The system had its problems -- bandwidth was limited by the need to replace the horses every 12 miles, and then as now, online security was an issue. (Hackers today, bad guys with six-shooters back then.) But the stagecoach beat shipping by sea, which took upwards of six months. Mail delivery from St. Louis to San Francisco in less than four weeks? That was revolutionary technology.
zaterdag 3 mei 2003
Business Week
The E-Biz Surprise
It wasn't all hype. For companies as well as consumers, e-commerce is hotter than ever. Since mid-2000, when the stock market slump began turning dot-coms into dot-goners, the popular perception of the Internet has spiraled ever downward. By last year, Internet bankers and analysts, those onetime masters of the business universe, were targets of government investigations. A book titled dot.con, deriding the Net as "the greatest story ever sold," became a best-seller. One academic even claimed that porn, gambling, drug-dealing, and the like comprised more than 70% of e-commerce. The bold and transforming vision of the Net, it seemed, had dissolved into a digital dud.
The E-Biz Surprise
It wasn't all hype. For companies as well as consumers, e-commerce is hotter than ever. Since mid-2000, when the stock market slump began turning dot-coms into dot-goners, the popular perception of the Internet has spiraled ever downward. By last year, Internet bankers and analysts, those onetime masters of the business universe, were targets of government investigations. A book titled dot.con, deriding the Net as "the greatest story ever sold," became a best-seller. One academic even claimed that porn, gambling, drug-dealing, and the like comprised more than 70% of e-commerce. The bold and transforming vision of the Net, it seemed, had dissolved into a digital dud.
donderdag 1 mei 2003
Wall Street Journal
If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight
Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean. But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change its "mind": outfox it.
If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay, Here's How to Set It Straight
Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean. But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change its "mind": outfox it.
The Christian Science Monitor
Hard drives make inroads into rural India
Molly Ninan is about the last person on earth you'd expect to have a handheld computer. A field nurse in this rural Indian village, she sets out on foot every day to monitor the basic medical needs of roughly 7,000 residents of an area rife with poverty and illiteracy. But in this hamlet 25 miles south of New Delhi, Ms. Ninan is using state-of-the-art technology to track patient medical histories, immunization and natal-care needs, and education and literacy levels. As she does, she joins a major government undertaking to develop useful technologies for common people in India's countryside which could serve as models for the whole developing world.
Hard drives make inroads into rural India
Molly Ninan is about the last person on earth you'd expect to have a handheld computer. A field nurse in this rural Indian village, she sets out on foot every day to monitor the basic medical needs of roughly 7,000 residents of an area rife with poverty and illiteracy. But in this hamlet 25 miles south of New Delhi, Ms. Ninan is using state-of-the-art technology to track patient medical histories, immunization and natal-care needs, and education and literacy levels. As she does, she joins a major government undertaking to develop useful technologies for common people in India's countryside which could serve as models for the whole developing world.
woensdag 30 april 2003
Business 2.0
Physician, Sell Thyself
AmeriScan's Craig Bittner wants consumers to take health care into their own hands with his high-tech medical scans. But how does an MD balance an oath to heal with a promise to pay back his creditors? It's hard to miss AmeriScan. I first notice it while standing in a Pottery Barn at San Francisco's Embarcadero Center. Across the street, draped in front of a conservative blue storefront, a large banner says, "Call 1-866-4 MY SCAN." There's also a sign that proclaims, "Now Open! No Doctor's Referral Needed." Pictures of mature, active couples wearing comfy sweaters and offering testimonials are in the window. "My full body scan was the best gift my wife ever gave me," reads the caption on one.
Physician, Sell Thyself
AmeriScan's Craig Bittner wants consumers to take health care into their own hands with his high-tech medical scans. But how does an MD balance an oath to heal with a promise to pay back his creditors? It's hard to miss AmeriScan. I first notice it while standing in a Pottery Barn at San Francisco's Embarcadero Center. Across the street, draped in front of a conservative blue storefront, a large banner says, "Call 1-866-4 MY SCAN." There's also a sign that proclaims, "Now Open! No Doctor's Referral Needed." Pictures of mature, active couples wearing comfy sweaters and offering testimonials are in the window. "My full body scan was the best gift my wife ever gave me," reads the caption on one.
dinsdag 29 april 2003
Fortune
Where the Action Is
Some in Silicon Valley have learned to stop worrying and love the bust. Here's why. The blessings were bouncing off the walls of New York's Carnegie Hall. It was a late February evening, and the banquet crowd of 350, dressed in everything from jeans to suits, sat silently as six Tibetan monks chanted a guttural prayer. Once it was over, everyone dug into the sushi and waited for Marc Benioff to tell them where to go next. Benioff, the CEO of a company called Salesforce.com, had arranged the event to precede a benefit concert for New York's Tibet House, a cultural preservation group. Tall and boisterous, Benioff gave a brief talk, then led the assembled customers, analysts, press, and hangers-on into the adjacent auditorium to hear performances by David Bowie, Ray Davies, Lou Reed, and Laurie Anderson.
Where the Action Is
Some in Silicon Valley have learned to stop worrying and love the bust. Here's why. The blessings were bouncing off the walls of New York's Carnegie Hall. It was a late February evening, and the banquet crowd of 350, dressed in everything from jeans to suits, sat silently as six Tibetan monks chanted a guttural prayer. Once it was over, everyone dug into the sushi and waited for Marc Benioff to tell them where to go next. Benioff, the CEO of a company called Salesforce.com, had arranged the event to precede a benefit concert for New York's Tibet House, a cultural preservation group. Tall and boisterous, Benioff gave a brief talk, then led the assembled customers, analysts, press, and hangers-on into the adjacent auditorium to hear performances by David Bowie, Ray Davies, Lou Reed, and Laurie Anderson.
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