E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (essential reading .TXT) 📕

financial interest of site developers and owners). Statistical

software which tracks (“how long was what done”), monitors

(“what did they do while in the site”) and counts (“how many”)

visitors to sites already exists. Some of these applications

have back-office facilities (accounting, follow-up,

collections, even tele-marketing). They all provide time

trails and some allow for auditing.

This is but a small fragment of the rapidly developing net-scape: people and enterprises who make a living off the

Internet craze rather than off the Internet itself. Everyone

knows that there is more money in lecturing about how to make

money on the Internet - than in the Internet itself. This

maxim still holds true despite the 32 billion US dollars in E-commerce in 1998. Business to Consumer (B2C) sales grow less

vigorously than Business to Business (B2B) sales and are

likely to suffer another blow with the advent of Peer to Peer

(P2P) computer networks. The latter allow PCs to act as

servers and thus enable the swapping of computer files asmong

connected users (with or without a central directory).

Content Suppliers

This is the underprivileged sector of the Internet. They all

lose money (even etailers which offer basic, standardized

goods - books, CDs - with the exception, until September 11,

of sites connected to tourism). No one thanks them for content

produced with the investment of a lot of effort and a lot of

money. A really qualitative, fully commerce enabled site costs

up to 5,000,000 USD, excluding site maintenance and customer

and visitor services. Content providers are constantly

criticized for lack of creativity or for too much creativity.

More and more is asked of them. They are exploited by

intermediaries, hitchhikers and other parasites. This is all

an offshoot of the ethos of the Internet as a free content

area.

More than 100 million men and women constantly access the Web

- but this number stands to grow (the median prediction: 300

million). Yet, while the Web is used by 35% of those with

access to the Internet - e-mail is used by more than 60%. Email is by far the most common function (“killer app”) and

specialized applications (Eudora, Internet Mail, Microsoft

Exchange) - free or ad sponsored - keep it accessible to all

and user-friendly.

Most of the users like to surf (browse, visit sites) the net

without reason or goal in mind. This makes it difficult to

apply traditional marketing techniques.

What is the meaning of “targeted audiences” or “market shares”

in this context?

If a surfer visits sites which deal with aberrant sex and

nuclear physics in the same session - what to make of it?

The public and legislative backlash against the gathering of

surfers’ data by Internet ad agencies and other web sites -

has led to growing ignorance regarding the profile of Internet

users, their demography, habits, preferences and dislikes.

People like the very act of surfing. They want to be

entertained, then they use the Internet as a working tool,

mostly in the service of their employer, who, usually foots

the bill. Users love free downloads (mainly software).

“Free” is a key word on the Internet: it used to belong to the

US Government and to a bunch of universities. Users like

information, with emphasis on news and data about new

products. But they do not like to shop on the net - yet. Only

38% of all surfers made a purchase during 1998.

67% of them adore virtual sex. 50% of the sites most often

visited are porn sites (this is reminiscent of the early days

of the Video Cassette Recorder - VCR). People dedicate the

same amount of time to watching video cassettes or television

as they do to surfing the net. The Internet seems to

cannibalize television.

Sex is followed by music, sports, health, television,

computers, cinema, politics, pets and cooking sites. People

are drawn to interactive games. The Internet will shortly

enable people to gamble, if not hampered by legislation. 10

billion USD in gambling money are predicted to pass through

the net. This makes sense: nothing like a computer to provide

immediate (monetary and psychological) rewards.

Commerce on the net is another favourite. The Internet is a

perfect medium for the sale of software and other digital

products (e-books). The problem of data security is on its way

to being solved with the SET (or other) world standard.

As early as 1995, the Internet had more than 100 virtual

shopping malls visited by 2.5 million shoppers (and probably

double this number in 1996).

The predictions for 1999 were between 1-5 billion USD of net

shopping (plus 2 billion USD through on-line information

providers, such as CompuServe and AOL) - proved woefully

inaccurate. The actual number in 1998 was 7 times the

prediction for 1999.

It is also widely believed that circa 20% of the family budget

will pass through the Internet as e-money and this amounts to

150 billion USD.

The Internet will become a giant inter-bank clearing system

and varied ATM type banking and investment services will be

provided through it. Basically, everything can be done through

the Internet: looking for a job, for instance.

Yet, the Internet will never replace human interaction. People

are likely to prefer personal banking, window shopping and the

social experience of the shopping mall to Internet banking and

e-commerce, or m-commerce.

Some sites already sport classified ads. This is not a bad way

to defray expenses, though most classified ads are free (it is

the advertising they attract that matters).

Another developing trend is website-rating and critique. It

will be treated the way today’s printed editions are. It will

have a limited influence on the consumption decisions of some

users. Browsers already sport buttons labelled “What’s New”

and “What’s Hot”. Most Search Engines recommend specific

sites. Users are cautious. Studies discovered that no user, no

matter how heavy, has consistently re-visited more than 200

sites, a minuscule number. The 10 most popular web sites

(Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) attracted more than 50% of all Internet

traffic. Site recommendation services often produce random -

at times, wrong - selections for their user. There are also

concerns regarding privacy issues. The backlah against

Amazon’s “readers’ circles” is an example.

Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, will

publish their wares on the net and will link to intelligent

software which will hyperlink, recommend and refer. Some web

critics will be identified with specific applications -

really, expert systems which will incorporate their knowledge

and experience.

The Money

Where will the capital needed to finance all these

developments come from?

Again, there are two schools:

One says that sites will be financed through advertising - and

so will search engines and other applications accessed by

users.

Certain ASPs (Application Service Providers which rent out

access to application software which resides on their servers)

are considering this model.

The second version is simpler and allows for the existence of

non-commercial content.

It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of

cents) from every user for every visit (“micropayments”) or a

subscription fee. These accumulated cents or subscription fees

will enable the owners of old sites to update and to maintain

them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new ones. Certain

content aggregators (especially of digital textbooks) have

adopted this model (Questia, Fathom).

The adherents of the first school pointed at the 5 million USD

invested in advertising during 1995 and to the 60 million or

so invested during 1996.

Its opponents point exactly at the same numbers: ridiculously

small when contrasted with more conventional advertising

modes. The potential of advertising on the net is limited to

1.5 billion USD annually in 1998, thundered the pessimists

(many thought that even half that would be very nice). The

actual figure was double the prediction but still woefully

small and inadequate to support the Internet’s content

development.

Compare these figures to the sale of Internet software ($4

billion), Internet hardware ($3 billion), Internet access

provision ($4.2 billion) in 1995.

Hembrecht and Quist estimated that Internet related industries

scooped up 23.2 billion USD annually (A report released in

mid-1996).

And what follows advertising is hardly more enocuraging.

The consumer interacts and the product is delivered to him.

This - the delivery phase - is a slow and enervating epilogue

to the exciting affair of ordering through the net at the

speed of light. Too many consumers still complain that they do

not receive what they ordered, or that delivery is late and

products defective.

The solution may lie in the integration of advertising and

content. Pointcast, for instance, integrated advertising into

its news broadcasts, continuously streamed to the user’s

screen, even when inactive (they provided a downloadable

active screen saver and ticker in a “push technology”).

Downloading of digital music, video and text (e-books) will

lead to immediate gratification of the consumer and will

increase the efficacy of advertising.

Whatever the case may be, a uniform, agreed upon system of

rating as a basis for charging advertisers, is sorely needed.

There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay

for?

Many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) refuse to

pay according to the number of hits or impressions (=entries,

visits to a site). They agree to pay only according to the

number of the times that their advertisement was hit (page

views).

This different basis for calculation is likely to upset all

revenue scenarios.

Very few sites of important, respectable newspapers are on a

subscription basis. Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) and The

Economist, to mention but two.

Will this become the prevailing trend?

The Internet as a Metaphor

Three metaphors come to mind when considering the Internet

“philosophically”.

The Internet as a Chaotic Library

The Internet is an assortment of billions of pages containing

information. Some of them are visible and others are generated

from hidden databases by users’ requests (“Invisible

Internet”).

The Internet displays no discernible order, classification, or

categorization. As opposed to “classical” libraries, no one

has invented a cataloguing standard (remember Dewey?). This is

so needed that it is amazing that it has not been invented

yet. Some sites indeed apply the Dewey Decimal Syatem

(Suite101). Others default to a directory structure (Open

Directory, Yahoo!, Look Smart and others).

Had such a standard existed (an agreed upon numerical

cataloguing method) - each site would have self-classified.

Sites would have an interest to do so to increase their

penetration rates and their visibility. This, naturally, would

have eliminated the need for today’s clunky, incomplete and

(highly) inefficient search engines.

A site whose number starts with 900 will be immediately

identified as dealing with history and multiple classification

will be encouraged to allow finer cross-sections to emerge. An

example of such an emerging technology of “self

classification” and “self-publication” (though limited to

scholarly resources) is the “Academic Resource Channel” by

Scindex.

Users will not be required to remember reams of numbers.

Future browsers will be akin to catalogues, very much like the

applications used in modern day libraries. Compare this utopia

to the current dystopy. Users struggle with reams of

irrelevant material to finally reach a partial and

disappointing destination. At the same time, there likely are

web sites which exactly match the poor user’s needs. Yet, what

currently determines the chances of a happy encounter between

user and content - are the whims of the specific search engine

used and things like metatags, headlines, a fee paid, or the

right opening sentences.

The computer screen, because of physical limitations (size,

the fact that it has to be scrolled) fails to effectively

compete with the printed page. The latter is still the most

ingenious medium yet invented for the storage and release of

textual information. Granted: a computer screen is better at

highlighting discrete units of information. So, this draws the

batlle lines: structures (printed pages) versus units

(screen), the continuous and