NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> WB '97#10: So What Should I Do?
ONLINE-ADS>> WB '97#10: So What Should I Do?
rhoy_at_tenagra.com
Thu, 19 Jun 1997 05:33:37 -0500 (CDT)
This is the final report in a series of 10 reports from Richard Hoy
covering the Web Broadcasting '97 conference. You will receive
these reports in addition to your normal Online Ads posts/digests.
An archive of all the reports is availabe at:
http://www.o-a.com/webbroadcasting/wb-archive.html
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Web Broadcasting '97 coverage
June 17, 1997 / Issue 10
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So What Should I Do?
session:
Choose Your Partners: Winners
and Losers In the 90s and beyond.
speakers:
Tim Bajarin
Industry Analyst and Consultant
Mitch Ratcliffe
Co-founder, Internet / Media Strategies, Inc.
Editor, Digital Media
Gregory Wester
Director of Internet Marketing Strategies
The Yankee Group
The final session was really a freeform discussion
about the future. In the course of that discussion,
the speakers hit on the major conclusions that
seemed to reoccur throughout the conference:
The Shakeout is Coming! The Shakeout is Coming!
-----------------------------------------------
Its coming. The Yankee Group actually has numbers
on how many of us believe its coming. Their recent
industry survey showed more than 40 percent of
the respondents felt users will explore new
solutions within the next six months. The survey
punctuates that there are no clear winners yet.
Who are you again?
------------------
In the same Yankee Group survey mentioned above,
only a little over 30 percent of the sites
surveyed have personalization as part of their
push mechanism. The reason the Yankee Group was
able to identify for this is that personalization
is expensive to do, and if you don't do it
correctly you actually create a negative
experience for the user. The net result is
tearing your brand down rather than building
it up. But it is personalization that makes
push useful. So the mandate seems to be cheaper
intelligent agents that are REALLY intelligent.
"Personalization makes push. We are a long
way from being there," said Tim Bajarin
Push content = Recycled crap
----------------------------
The majority of people don't seem to be pushing
anything too terribly interesting. Gregory Wester,
the Yankee Group representative, recounted an
encounter with the folks at AOL Driveway (AOL's
push product) that hits this point home. The
content on the current incarnation of Driveway
is fairly bandwidth friendly - a couple hundred
words and a few graphics. Wester asked how
Driveway's content will evolve as larger bandwidth
pipes start coming into the home. AOL's answer
was it wouldn't, all bigger pipes meant to them was
they could deliver the existing content faster.
Mitch Ratcliffe felt that many parents will
most certainly get on the web out of a desire
to give their children a better opportunity.
"But," he added,"people will churn when they
don't find good content."
Hello, is anybody out there?
---------------------------
Something that doesn't just affect push,
but the whole gambut of Internet technologies
is the question of when will the critical
mass arrive.
Bajarin, who does consumer research for a
living, told the story of showing a group
of consumers the ESPN web site using Web TV.
They apparently didn't get the static,
point-and-click environment of the web because
after staring at the screen for about 30 seconds
one guy asked, "When does the movie start?"
Bajarin is not convinced the TV and computer
will merge. In fact he is not convinced the
answer will be Web TV either. What he thinks
could be the answer is is the new Digital
Video Disk (DVD) players, which will not only
show movies but double as as a web box.
Ratcliffe predicts that other devices, besides
the TV or computer, will be the avenue with
which most get on the web.
Though he believes most of us will be accessing
the web via other means, Ratcliffe offered his
hypothesis on why Microsoft bought Web TV. The
U.S. Government has mandated that broadcasters
will switch over to the HDTV format, which means
all of us will need to buy new TVs in the coming
decade. The Web TV operating system would be the
perfect software to run your new HDTV. Gates
will own the OS for every television in the
country.
"Bill Gates is a rapacious man," added Ratcliffe.
So What Should I Do?
--------------------
In an effort to give us some quantifiable advice
to take home with us, the speakers created two
hypothetical situations and advised what sort of
push solutions fit best:
hypothetical situation #1:
You are a Fortune 1000 Company that wants to
push information out to the public.
push solution: Wait for the shakeout.
hypothetical situation #2:
You are a mid-size newspaper that wants to
push its content to readers.
push solution: Use email.
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