NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Push
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Push
Greg Bulmash (greg_at_bulmash.com)
Sat, 11 Oct 1997 01:42:32 -0800
On 10 Oct 97 Mauricio GARCIA PONTE <mgp_at_aboard.co.uk> wrote:
> I will welcome any ideas or experiences in this "Push" field.
> How is it been accepted? How to promote the idea?, etc.
> Also any advice on technical solutions available.
Here's MHO on push.
1: Push is still pull
We do not "visit" web sites, we send requests to the web server to have
their content sent to us. In essence, web sites visit us. "Visiting"
a site is a convenient fiction that plays into the concept of
cyberspace and "travelling" around the web.
Push is a similar fiction. You cannot force anything onto anyone's
desktop. A push program like Pointcast is essentially a meta-browser.
It downloads a set of pages of information, pretty much similar to web
pages, which are categorized into "channels." Added to that are things
like a corner window (in Pointcast) which displays ads and other
options like a screen-saver module and a stock ticker.
If you have your push client constantly loaded and set-up to
automatically refresh itself then it seems as if the information is
"pushed" to you. If, on the other hand, you run a dial-up connection
like I do, then you might well load the push program only when you want
it and hit the "update" button when you want the new content. Then
it's little more than a glorified browser.
2: It's a great promotional tool only if people subscribe
Pointcast 2.0 comes with a "connections builder" which allows you to
build your own channel. Problem is, people must still subscribe.
It's pretty simple. I just did it with the Internet Movie Database
(subscribed to their Pointcast channel), but I won't bore you with the
details. Let's just say that it took me less than two minutes from
start to finish.
Thing is, even if you build it (the channel) they may not come. Those
journalists you mention in your letter would have to subscribe to your
push channel and then get their updates regularly (either through
scheduled refresh or remembering to load their push program and hitting
"update").
Before you go about building the channel, you need to make damn sure
that the journalists you want to target have the right push client, are
interested in your channel, can understand how to subscribe to your
channel, will subscribe, and will ensure that it's updated regularly
enough so you get all the information to them on a timely basis.
That's really asking them to do a lot, don't you think?
3: E-mail is the closest thing to true push there is
Unless your press releases need lots of formatting like pictures, font
sizes, etc., why push?
If you have a significant number of releases, send the journalists an
e-mail about them, including for each the headline and a 1-2 line
abstract with a URL where the full release resides at your web site.
If they want to read it, in most mail packages all they'll have to do
is click on the URL in the e-mail. It may not be quite as fast as if
they had pre-loaded all the releases into a push client, but all they
have to do to get the summaries is check their mail.
The advantage is that they need no special software as most mail
packages now handle URL's in e-mail and just about everyone on the net
has a browser (even if it's only Lynx).
Of course, if they would consider your e-mail intrusive (i.e. spam),
why would they subscribe to your push channel? If they wouldn't mind
the e-mail, why not use it instead as it would be cheaper and probably
more effective?
As I said, all this is MHO.
-Greg
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