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On Sun, 23 Apr 1995, Richard Layman wrote:

> In some ways though, that's not the point.  Yes, Liebling was right, the
> power of the press belongs to the one that owns the press.  And yes,
> microcomputing technology allows many people to _produce_ publications for
> low cost.  And yes, electronic distribution allows many people to
> _distribute_ digital nonpaper publications for low cost.  (Note: I haven't
> said anything about producing quality editorial.)

The value of quality editorial still exists.  A rumor passed around in an 
internet group is hard to verify.  In fact, sometimes the information is
intentionally misleading, not much value there.  A real-time stock quote 
(or anything remotely close to real-time) will probably ONLY make it to 
the internet through an RSA encrypted feed via exclusive fire-walls, and 
over exclusive subnets (ANS Core, CIX, and Sprintnet for example).  Even 
hourlies are likely to be DES encrypted and intensely authenticated and 
limited.  There will also be substantial monthly fees, especially if you 
are known to be a stock-broker.

> To use economic terms, the Internet encourages the disaggregation of the
> current market.  (I know I repeat/write about this every so often.) If you
> can't "advertise" or "market" directly via the current Internet, how do
> you expect people to come to you in the same numbers that they do now to a
> print product? 

The only person I ever knew who regularly read entire newspapers cover to 
cover was my mother.  It took her 3 hours/day, 5 hours on Sunday.  An 
this was not the New York Times.  On the other hand, I've seen people 
come up to the train station, buy a paper for $1.00, quickly locate the 
business or sports section, throw the rest of the paper in the trash, and 
by the time they got to the train, were looking at less than 3 pages,
mostly the stock quotes or sports scores, and "Hot News" that would help 
them choose a stock or place a bet.  Bottom line, the user spends $1/day
to read 3 pages of a daily publication for 20 minutes.

On the other hand, you can bet they checked out the ads for the discount 
brokers or where to get tickets for tonight's game.

> Internet-capable market is always going to be smaller than that of the
> market able to read, with or without purchasing, a magazine or newspaper.
This may be changing.  A web browser in a doctor's waiting room (with 
nothing but a track-ball), or at the DMV would be an incredibly hot 
market.  People hate just WAIT.  If I can go to a news-stand, browse for 
headlines that look hot to me, have 5 pages printed on a laser printer, 
for $1.00, I might be VERY interested.  Even better, I could just register
my profile, swipe the "news card" (new york is really big on cards these 
days) and get my 5 pages "blind".

Kismet

> In short, today's leading print products have great franchises.  It will be
> interesting to see how they migrate into the digital frontier.  

The funny thing is that publishers provide "entertainment" in order to 
get people to "tune in".  On the internet, news-groups are the 
"entertainment", and a few well placed URLs on the net can quickly bring 
the user to highly qualified publications and advertizing, without being 
offensive.  If the hit is truly relevant, the page will make the "hot 
list" of 20 or 30 repeat customers/post.

> Yes, I think that new publications will be developed that aren't part of
> the traditional print culture-industry of today.  But, I think that
> many people underappreciate the significant "barrier to entry" created by
> the fact that on the Internet now, people come to you, rather than you
> going to them.

There are ways to bring them to you, such as relevant responses to 
requests for information, expecially faqs.  Steve announces his list 
routinely.  Many post URLs in their signatures.  Mosaic, NetScape, and
Cello were first announced here, to an audience that was frantic to get 
that type of information.

> Would HotWired or Time or the SJMN get near as many hits
> if they had no connection to a print product?
Ironically, there his been an interesting cycle developing.  As print 
pubs generate WEB business, quotes are cited (with url attribution) to 
newsgroups, which generates more WEB traffic.

There is a tendency for print publications to do much more "digest plus 
url" content.  Wait until your next copy of business week includes 1000 
original stories, for 5 paragraphs, and a "see URL:..." and nothing else.
Instead of pushing them to the back of the paper, you just push them to 
the URL.

>  (Playboy or Penthouse,
> admittedly, might be exceptions, even if they didn't have a print product,
> but I imagine that they still do better because of their existing
> franchise, than say alt.sex.????)
Alt.sex.* are some VERY big groups.  Even the "kink" groups can get up to 
2000 POSTINGS/day.  NNTP news readers don't keep track of "hits", but it 
would be real interesting to see how many people "hit" a picture of 
"wicked wanda" a very exotic poster.

> The SJMN and the Wasington Post, etc., have a big advantage, compared say, to
> the Virtual Street Journal.
Yes and no.  People go to "http://dowvision.wais.net" because they know 
the "Wall Street Journal", but when they get hooked on BusWire and PR 
NewsWire, they come back for that.

> Unless, the VSJ gives you your account for free, and when you logon, you
> come right into the VSJ homepage/newspaper/display advertising/classified
> sections.
or you could give ust the URL and 6000 of us could "go visit".  My 
browser is loaded and ready.  I just "cut and past", and I'm there.

> But, just like AOL, they'll have to send out a lot of disks, and spend a
> lot of money, to do it.  Now, if Bill Gates would just let people use the
> Microsoft Network for free, bundle it into Windows, and include the
> Virtual Street Journal....
MSN will very likely have a browser complete with "No Goto" (so the 
kiddies don't get porno), "permissioning of the client" (so the kiddies 
don't get porno) and a "Closed loop" of URLs (Won't be going to some 
index that might let the kiddies get porno), and finally, Displays WEB 
pages written exclusively in Word.  And of course uses Lan Manager
to restrict the User (force them to use ONLY LM compatible servers)
So the Kiddies won't get PORNO.

Don't worry, MSN will only want $7,000/week (for page 79 on the index).
And you will ONLY be able to spend "billy bucks", will wired to you with
the same rapidity as the delivery of Windows95.

> Richard Layman, Mgr., Business Development, and Research Producer
> http://www.phoenix.net/~ctn  (... I know, it needs work)

Yeah, but it's pretty cool (take a look guys).
> 
Rex Ballard

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed May  3 23:04:56 1995