Notes from the on-line revolution."There is no business on the Info Highway yet," Microsoft's Nathan Myhrvold Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, which is seeking to build a large invention portfolio. He personally holds more than 18 U.S. patents and has applied for more than 100. recently told Business Week. "Anybody who says they're ahead must be in their own private Idaho." Maybe so, but lately the on-line revolution has been the catalyst for some of the most interesting entrepreneurial insights we've seen. Three examples: * WebConnect: Links between Web pages can be a great way to pull in highly-qualified marketing prospects. But the pricing of links (not to mention measurements of traffic) is still total chaos Total Chaos is a series of simple turn based strategy game / card game / board games for the Amiga. They were written by James Conwell and a group of developers known as Team Chaos. . Enter Worldata, a leading high-tech list broker, which just launched a new Web site-link brokerage service called WebConnect. WebConnect makes link selection and acquisition look just like a traditional mailing list An automated e-mail system on the Internet, which is maintained by subject matter. There are thousands of such lists that reach millions of individuals and businesses. New users generally subscribe by sending an e-mail with the word "subscribe" in it and subsequently receive all new rental, complete with standardized profile sheets, brokerage commissions, and boilerplate A phrase or body of text used verbatim in different documents such as a signature at the end of a letter. Boilerplate is widely used in the legal profession as many paragraphs are used over and over in agreements with little modification or no modification. terms and conditions. Worldata chairman Roy Schwedelson points out that list brokers--who deal with thousands of specialized customer lists--are better positioned than anyone else to serve electronic marketers. "The whole concept of interactive is that it's a targeted medium," he says. Worldata, 5200 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton Boca Raton (bō`kə rətōn`), city (1990 pop. 61,492), Palm Beach co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic; inc. 1925. Boca Raton is a popular resort and retirement community that experienced significant industrial development in the 1970s and 80s. , Fla. 33486; 407/393-8200. * MediaMap MediaManager 2.0: With the proliferation of fax and e-mail addresses, journalists (and, we suspect, many other information-gatherers) often become quite passionate about how they're contacted. Some want nothing but electronic news releases; others insist on mailed copies, faxes, or even personal phone calls. All these choices can gum up the works every time a company sends out a simple press announcement, so the folks from MediaMap (who publish profiles of some 3,200 computer trade and business journalists) have produced media contact software that automatically dispatches releases in whatever electronic or physical format a recipient prefers. MediaMap's OneLink feature is strictly for managing press contacts--but the concept has obvious potential for just about anyone who sends out customized marketing pitches. If contact management software developers are looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. a next-generation killer feature, this could be it. MediaMap, 215 First St., Cambridge, Mass. 02142; 617/374-9300. * Software.net: The dropout (1) On magnetic media, a bit that has lost its strength due to a surface defect or recording malfunction. If the bit is in an audio or video file, it might be detected by the error correction circuitry and either corrected or not, but if not, it is often not noticed by the human rate for virtual software stores has been high, but CyberSource has prospered by relying on a very traditional retailing formula--a huge selection of titles (almost everything in the Ingram catalog), aggressive prices, and immediate credit-card processing. So far, only a few dozen titles can be downloaded directly from CyberSource's Internet-based Software.net service (most orders are filled by mail), but vice president John Pettitt says these titles already account for a third of his company's sales. CyberSource's biggest discovery: Electronic customers generally don't care
"Don't Care" is a 1994 (see 1994 in music) single by American death metal band Obituary. whether they get printed documentation with their orders--but "on-line marketing brochures are essential." CyberSource, 1050 Chestnut, Menlo Park Menlo Park. 1 Residential city (1990 pop. 28,040), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. Electronic equipment and aerospace products are manufactured in the city. Menlo College and a Stanford Univ. research institute are there. 2 Uninc. , Calif. 94025; 415/473-3065. |
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