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>
>Suzanne:
>
>I sincerely appreciate your fascination about capital markets and capital
>formation, but what has all this specifically have to do with online
>publishing -- this discussion list's chartered topic?

Since the beginning of this list, we have talked about audience building,
community building,  business plans, banner advertising, classified
advertising, school lunch postings, ISP portals, etc.

Venture capital/IPOs do affect online publishing because that is where the
capital is going right now. While many publishing ventures have been slow
to develop, others, with less well defined business plans, are bringing in
a huge amount of money. For example, SportsLine gets money and attention
even though in my opinion it is not nearly as good a site as Nando.Net.

Granted not everyone in this forum wants to talk about the business
environment and how it affects online news, but many good projects have
disappeared because of financial realities.

We can confine our discussions to technical issues and whether or not riots
in Indonesia are being covered by the American press and whether papers
should have interactive real estate sections, but I'm inclined to think the
future of online publishing does have something to do with GeoCities and
the like. I'm also inclined to think that if the market rewards
entrepreneurs at a rate of 100 times more than reporters, the talent will
flow there. Is this a good thing? No. But I see it happening to a degree
that I have never seen before. This is a societal issue which I think will
have major impact in the future.

Are there other issues we should be talking about instead?

>BTW, successful websites don't have to pay or force consumers to visit. All
>the commercial ventures that have offered consumers either money or barter
>to visit have failed. And as for forcing an entire country's Internet users
>to visit, even http://www.kcna.co.jp and http://www.cubaweb.cu are too
>enlighted or savvy to do that.

I was being facetious about paying people. Although, given today's
investment market, I'm not sure it is any worse than any other business
plan going on right now. If the name of the advertising game is volume, why
don't newspapers give away free services in exchange for signing up every
email address in their communities? In terms of cash flow, this isn't the
best approach. But if you are planning to go public and can interest
venture capitalists, you might decide the investment is worth it.

The business models we were talking about five years ago aren't relevant
now. Putting content on CDs was a short-lived idea. We've abandoned
subscriptions. We don't talk much about archive fees. Few papers have
bundled articles together into useful reports. We're not sure about
advertising. We've debated whether or not to link to companies selling
books. So now let's look at investment money.

As far as portals go, I figure that cable companies will come in and assert
themselves when they get us all wired. So I don't think most of the
companies currently raising money will have much of an edge for the
long-term.

Suzanne





_____________________________________
Suzanne Lainson
SportsTrust
Marketing: Integrated/Sports and Event/Online
P.O. Box 2071     Boulder, CO 80306
303 473-9884
slainson@sportstrust.com
_____________________________________
For a free subscription to SPORTS NEWS YOU CAN USE, send me an email.
For a free subscription to THE CREATIVE ATHLETE, send me an email.
http://www.sportstrust.com/sportstrust



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Subject: Unisys shift -- print to online From: Suzanne Lainson  Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 20:19:38 EDT
How the Web Was Won
Subject: Unisys shift -- print to online
From: Suzanne Lainson 
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 20:19:38 EDT

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