“Free” is a key word in 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 porno sites (this is reminiscent of the early days of the Video Cassette Recorder – VCR). A- propos video : people dedicate the same amount of time to watching video cassettes as they do to surfing the net.
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.
The Internet has more than 100 virtual shopping malls and they were visited by 2.5 million shoppers in 1995 (probably by double this number in 1996).
The predictions for 1999 : 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 and varied banking and investment services will be provided through it. Basically, everything can be done through the Internet : looking for a job, for instance.
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 of them. Browsers already display a button labelled “What?s New” and another one called “What’s Hot”. Most Search Engines recommend specific sites. Users are cautious. Studies discovered that no user, no matter how heavy, has visited more than 200 site, a minuscule number. Also, a random – at times, the wrong – selection for the user.
Web Critics, who work today mainly for the printed press, will publish their wares in the net and will attach themselves to intelligent software which will hyperlink, recommend and refer. Some web critics will be identified with specific applications – really, expert systems which will embody their knowledge and experience.
The MoneyWhere will the capital needed to finance all these developments come from?
Again, there are two schools :
One that says that sites will be financed through advertising – and so will search engines, applets and any other application accessed by users.
The second version is simpler and allows non-commercial content to exist :
It proposes to collect negligible sums (cents or fractions of cents) from every user for every visit. These accumulated cents will enable the owners of old sites to update and to maintain them and encourage entrepreneurs to develop new ones.
The adherents of the first school point 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 think that even half of 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 estimate that Internet related industries scoop up 23.2 billion USD annually (A report released in mid-1996).
And what will follow advertising?
The consumer will interact and the product will be posted to him. This is a much slower and more enervating epilogue to the exciting affair of ordering through the net at the speed of light. Too many consumers still complain that they did not receive what they ordered.
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 (active screen saver and ticker). 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 highly needed. There is also the question of what does the advertiser pay for?
Many advertisers (Procter and Gamble, for instance) refuse to pay by 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
.
This different basis for calculation will adversely influence all the above elaborated calculations.
All the 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 MetaphorThree metaphors come to mind when looking at the Internet “philosophically”.
The Internet as a Chaotic Library 1. The Problem of Cataloguing The Internet is an assortment of millions of pages containing information.
It displays no discernible order, classification, or categorization. As opposed to “classical” libraries, no one invented a cataloguing standard (remember Dewey ?). This is so needed that it is amazing that it has not been invented yet.
Had such a standard existed (an agreed upon numerical cataloguing method) – each site would have self-classified. Sites would have interest to do so to increase their penetration rates and their visibility. This, naturally, will eliminate the need for today’s clumsy 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.
Users will not be required to remember reams of numbers. Future browsers will be converted to catalogues, very much like the applications used in modern day libraries. Compare this utopia to the current dystopy : a user has to struggle through mountains of irrelevant material to finally reach a partial and disappointing destination. At the same time, there are bound to be sites which exactly match the poor user’s needs. Yet, what determines the chances of a happy encounter between user and content – are the whims of the specific search engine used and things like meta-tags, headlines and the right opening sentences.
2. Screen versus PageThis is an old one: 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 information. Granted : a computer screen is better at highlighting discrete units of information. So, this draws the lines: structures (printed pages) versus units (screen), the continuous and easily reversible versus the discrete.
The solution is an efficient way to translate computer screens to printed matter. It is hard to believe, but no such thing exists. Computer screens are still hostile to off-line printing. In other words : if a user copies information from the Internet to his Word Processor (or vice versa, for that matter) – he will end up with a fragmented, garbage-filled and non-aesthetic document.
Very few site developers try to do something about it – even fewer succeed.
3. The Internet and the CD-ROMOne of the biggest mistakes of content suppliers is that they do not allow to mix contents or to have a “static-dynamic interaction”.
The Internet can now easily interact with other media (especially with audio CDs and with CD-ROMs) – even as the user surfs.
Examples abound:
A shopping catalogue can be distributed on a CD-ROM by mail. The Internet Site will allow the user to order a product that he previously selected from the catalogue, while off-line. The catalogue could also be updated through the site (as is done with CD-ROM reference books).
The advantages of the CD-ROM are clear: very fast access time (dozens of times faster than the access to a site using communication lines) and a data storage capacity tens of times bigger than the average website.
Another possibility : a CD-ROM can be distributed, containing hundreds of advertisements. The consumer will select the ad that he wants to see and will connect to the Internet to see it in video (admittedly, only in the near future).
He could then also have an interactive chat (or a conference) with a salesperson, receive information about the company, about the ad, about the advertising agency which created the ad – and so on.
CD-ROM based encyclopedias (such as the Britannica, Encarta, Grolier or Compton’s) already contain hyperlinks which carry the user to sites selected by an Editorial Board.
But CD-ROMs are probably a doomed medium. The leaders of their industry chose to emphasize the wrong things. Storage capacity increased exponentially and, within a year, desktops with 20 Gb hard disks will be common. Moreover, the Network Computer – the stripped down version of the personal computer – will put at the disposal of the average user terabytes in storage capacity and the processing power of a supercomputer. What separates computer users and this utopia is the communication bandwidth. With the introduction of radio broadband services, cable modems and compression methods – video (on demand), audio and data will be available speedily and plentifully. The CD-ROM, on the other hand, is not mobile. It requires installation and the utilization of sophisticated hardware and software. This is no user friendly push technology. It is geek-oriented. As a result, CD-ROMs are not an immediate medium. There is a long time lapse between the moment they are purchased and the moment the first data become accessible to the user. Compare this to a book or a magazine. Data in this oldest of media is instantly available to the user and allows for easy and accurate “back” and “forward” functions. Perhaps the biggest mistake of CD-ROM manufacturers has been their inability to offer an integrated hardware and software package. CD-ROMs are not compact. A Walkman is a compact hardware-cum-software package. It is easily transportable, it is thin, it contains numerous, user-friendly, sophisticated functions, it provides immediate access to data. So does the discman. This cannot be said of the CD-ROM. By tying its future to the obsolete concept of stand-alone, expensive, inefficient and technologically unreliable personal computers – CD-ROMs have sentenced themselves to oblivion.
4. On-line Reference LibrariesThis already exists. A visit to the on-line Encyclopaedia Britannica exemplifies some of the tremendous, mind boggling possibilities:
Each entry is hyperlinked to sites on the Internet which deal with the same subject matter. The sites are carefully screened (though short descriptions of each site should be available – they could be prepared either by the staff of the encyclopaedia or by the site owner). Links are available to data in various forms, including audio and video. Everything can be copied to the hard disk or to CD-ROMs.
This is a new conception of a knowledge centre – not just an assortment of material. It is modular, can be added on and subtracted from. It can be linked to a voice Q&A centre. Queries by subscribers will be answered by e-mail by fax, posted on the site, hard copies will be sent by post. This “Trivial Pursuit” service could be very popular – there is considerable appetite for “Just in Time Information”.
5. The Feedback OptionHard to believe, but very few sites encourage their guests to express an opinion about the site, its contents and its aesthetics. This indicates an ossified mode of thinking about the most dynamic mass medium ever created, the only interactive mass medium yet. Each site must absolutely contain feedback and rating questionnaires. It has the side benefit of creating a database of the visitors to the site.
Moreover, each site can easily become a “knowledge centre”.
Let us consider a site dedicated to advertising and marketing:
It will contain feedback questionnaires (what do you think about the site, suggestions for improvement, mailto and leave message facilities, etc.)
It will contain rating questionnaires (rate these ads, these TV or radio shows, these advertising campaigns).
It will allocate some space to clients to open their home pages in (these home pages could lead to their sites, to other sites, to other sections of the host site – and, in any case, will serve as a display of the creative talent of the site owners). This will give the site owners a picture of the distribution of the areas of interest of the visitors to the site.
The site will include statistical, tracking and counter software.
Such a site will refer to hundreds of useful shareware applications (which deal with different aspects of advertising and marketing, for instance). Developers of applications will be able to use the site to promote their products. Other practical applications could also be referred to from – or reside on – the site (browsers, games, search engines).
6. Internet Derived CD-ROMSThe Internet is an enormous reservoir of freely available, unprotected, information.
With a minimal investment, this information can be gathered into coherent, theme oriented, cheap CD-ROMs. Each such CD-ROM will contain:
Addresses of sites specific to the subject matter
The first pages of each of these sites
Hyperlinks to each of the sites
A browser
Access to all the important search engines
Recommended search strings (it is extremely difficult to formulate a successful search in the Internet, it takes expertise. “Ready-made searches” will be a hit in the future, as the number of sites grows)
A dictionary of professional terms, a speller and a thesaurus
A list of general reference sites
Shareware
Specific to the field
7. PublishingThe Internet is the world’s largest publisher, by far. It publishes FAQs (Frequent Answers and Questions regarding almost every technical matter in the world), e-zines (electronic versions of magazines, not a very successful pursuit), the electronic versions of dailies (together with on-line news and information services), reference and other books, monographs, articles and minutes of discussions (”threads”).
Publishing an e-zine has a few advantages : it promotes the sales of the printed version, it helps to sign subscribers and, in the future, it will lead to the sale of advertising space. The electronic archive function (see next section) saves the need to file back issues, the space required to do so and the irritating search for data items.
The future trend is a combined subscription : electronic (mainly for the archival value and the ability to hyperlink to additional information) and printed (easier to browse).
The electronic daily presents other advantages:
It allows for immediate feedback and for flowing, almost real-time, communication between writers and readers. The electronic version, therefore, acquires a gyroscopic function : a navigation instrument, always indicating deviations from the “right” course. The content can be instantly updated and immediacy has its premium (remember the McVeigh affair).
Strangely, this (conventional) field was the first to develop a “virtual reality” facet. There are virtual “magazine stalls”. They look exactly like the real thing and the user can by a paper using his mouse.
Specialty hand held devices already allow for downloading and storage of vast quantities of data (upto 4000 print pages). The user gains access to libraries containing hundreds of texts, adapted to be downloaded, stored and read by the specific device. Again, a convergence of standards is to be expected in this field as well.
8. The Archive FunctionThe Internet is also the world’s biggest cemetery : tens of thousands of deadbeat sites, still accessible – the “Ghost Sites” of this electronic frontier.
This, in a way, is collective memory. One of the Internet’s main functions will be to preserve and transfer knowledge through time. It is called “Memory” in biology – and Archive in library science.