Copyright 1995 Richard Seltzer
This is chapter one of a book entitled The Way of the Web. Permission is granted to make and distribute complete verbatim electronic copies of this item for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright information and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. All other rights reserved. To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com Comments welcome. You can buy this book on diskette from Amazon.com.
My Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities (B&R Samizdat Express, 2002), on CD ROM, includes the full text of this book plus Take Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, The Social Web, and hundreds of related articles. It is available from Amazon and from our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat.
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In 1993 a small change in technology -- the ability to navigate through the Internet by pointing and clicking -- began to make an enormous difference in the worlds of publishing, education, and government. The Internet, which had been a complex, "techie" environment for researchers, became a friendly, easy-to-use multimedia environment -- a new publishing medium, with enormous commercial potential.
Since then the impact has spread to other industries due to innovative use of what was already there, and also due to further expansion and refinement of Internet capabilities to make them more "friendly" to businesses of all kinds. The importance of the Internet continues to grow not only for business, but also as an integral part of the daily lives of millions of people.
What is this phenomenon? What does it mean to us? How can we use it? Where is it going?
While it's based on computer networking technology, businesses and individuals who are capitalizing on the Internet today often have little or no knowledge of or interest in that technology. In the words of Robert Burton, "a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself."
For instance, when I needed to check that quote, all I had to do was click my mouse a few times to connect to the Internet and go to a site at Columbia University (the Bartleby Project), which has a searchable on-line version of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (from an old, public domain edition). It took me less than two minutes to make the connection and find the quotation. To do so cost me nothing, and I didn't need to know anything about how computers and networks work.
Yes, we stand on the shoulders of giants. And yes, that has been the nature of the advancement of human knowledge for centuries. The difference is that today the giants seem to be wearing velcro, because it's far easier to stand on those shoulders without falling off.
This means that almost anyone can play in an arena that used to be reserved for scientists and leaders in other fields of human endeavor -- helping to advance the realization of the potential not just of themselves as individuals, but also of humanity as a whole.
To understand what is happening now, where the Internet is headed, and what it could and should mean to us, we need to start with a few non-technical definitions. Such a beginning is important not just to novices, but also to those who feel they are already experts. Because this phenomenon is so immense, you can view it from many different perspectives, and how you see it strongly influences how you will use it. So rather than arguing like blind men when first confronted with an elephant, we'll define our perspective at the same time as defining the Internet.
What is the Internet?
Networks tie together computers so they can share information and serve as communication devices. If my computer is connected to a network, then the words and images displayed on the screen on my desk may actually reside on another computer miles or even continents away.
Physically, the Internet is a network of networks. While on-line services targeted at individual users, such as CompuServe and America-on-Line, grow one user at a time, the Internet grows an entire network at a time as companies connect their existing networks to the Internet. It now has an estimated 40 million users worldwide, but by the time you read this that number will be much larger, because it is growing at a rate of over six percent -- well over a million users -- a month, with no slowdown in sight.
By the way, the on-line services, which originally had limited connections to the Internet itself (like ponds and lakes with small canals leading to the ocean), are now adding full Internet access to the range of services they offer their customers.
The Internet has no central point of control or governing body. Its anarchic structure derives from the U.S. Department of Defense, which funded its beginnings and wanted a network which could not be knocked out in a nuclear war.
Since 1993, commercial use of the Internet has grown considerably. The U.S. government at first tried to reserve for just education and research those pieces of the Internet which it funded. But it has turned away from that position, reducing its subsidy, limiting its role, and encouraging commercialization. Commercial Internet providers -- independent companies which cooperate through an organization known as the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) -- have been making it increasingly easy for companies to connect to the Internet and conduct business there. And large telecommunications companies are playing an ever increasing role in making it easier and less expensive to access the Internet. As the business potential becomes ever more obvious, you can expect many more companies, of all sizes, to get into the act through acquisitions and new ventures. And except in cases where government regulation interferes, you can expect this lively competition to drive down costs and improve service, while the capabilities offered and the technical demands they make on the providers continue to expand.
Internet Culture
Keep in mind that the Internet is not just a network of computers, it is also a network of people, with its own unique culture. While the underlying technology will change and the companies providing the infrastructure and the access will change, the culture -- the Internet style of work and way of people interacting with other people -- is likely to endure even when the physical Internet becomes enmeshed with and indistinguishable from other communications/publishing/entertainment networks.
This is a statement of faith rather than an empirical fact -- while technologies converge, the unique Internet culture is likely to evolve and propagate and influence how we do business and how we relate to one another for a long time to come.
If you choose to enter this environment, it is important to keep its origins in mind and respect the basic culture. Entering this space is like entering any other culturally foreign environment -- like a Western firm going to Japan. Yes, you can do business there; but to succeed, you must understand and respect the culture -- the etiquette (called "netiquette" here) and the expectations of potential customers.
Here people often freely share their creative efforts, with no expectation of financial return. One finds here a frontier spirit -- the people tend to be independent, self-reliant, but ready to lend a hand to a neighbor in need. Surprisingly, new users, even commercial users, often adopt many of the basic tenets of this electronic society, with all the passion of the newly converted.
For example, here one does not send unsolicited advertising material. People welcome information that they have asked for, but raise a storm of protest when someone intrudes upon their space uninvited. (This effect is partly cultural and partly economic. Commercial services, such as CompuServe, which cater to the individual rather than to companies, sometimes charge recipients for the mail they receive, beyond some minimal level. And no one likes to pay for advertising they don't want to see.)
What has changed?
The Internet has existed for a couple of decades. People exchanged mail and made files -- vast libraries of information -- available so others could share them. But since 1993, two factors have fueled enormous growth, and attracted new commercial uses. The U.S. Federal government -- spurred on by both the Clinton-Gore administration and Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, as well -- has made vast amounts of public information -- which had been difficult or expensive to find and use -- freely available in electronic form on the Internet. And at the same time, a piece of software known as "Web browsers" have helped transform this information environment and make it readily usable by people with no knowledge of or interest in computers.
Researchers at CERN, the high energy physics center in Geneva, had developed the World Wide Web (WWW) -- software which made it possible to link information from computers anywhere on the Internet in a hypertext environment. For example, a word in a document on a computer in France could be connected to a document in Australia.
Mosaic, the first of the Web browsers, was developed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) in Illinois. It and its successors (such as the Netscape Navigator) let you use a computer mouse to point-and-click your way freely through that World Wide Web.
The Web is server software which resides on the computer system which is providing the information. The browsers are client software which reside in your desktop computer system and let you navigate through the Web.
Funded by the U.S. government, NCSA made Mosaic available for free over the Internet. By the fall of 1993, they had produced versions of Mosaic that ran on IBM-compatible personal computers, Macintoshes, UNIX workstations, VMS workstations, and other desktop systems. Anyone with the technical ability to download it or who can obtain a copy from a friend is welcome to it. (If you wish to include it in products you charge for, however, you need to negotiate with NCSA for a license). The fact that this client software is free can greatly reduce the cost and speed the development of information systems.
With the World Wide Web and Web browsers, the global book/library of the future is quickly becoming a reality.
The power and meaning of hypertext links first became clear to me when browsing through the pages of one of the first elementary schools on the Web -- Hillside Elementary in Minnesota. A sixth grade teacher had put the whole class on-line. Every kid in the class had his or her own "home page" -- a place where they could post pictures and words about themselves that anybody in the world could see. She also gave the class an assignment to use the Internet as a research tool and then "published" the papers they wrote by posting them on the Web. For instance, from a hypertext list of the papers, I could click on the one about dinosaurs and see the paper itself. And within that paper, instead of traditional footnotes, certain words were highlighted as hypertext links that would take me directly to the source of the information. If I clicked on the word "dinosaurs," I immediately connected to the dinosaur information and pictures posted at the University of California at Berkeley, and from there I could connect to other related information all over the world.
In other words, instead of having to go to a library to track down a work referenced in a footnote or bibliography, I could connect immediately to the source information, wherever in the world it might be; and from there can use other hypertext links to follow the train of my thought. In this environment, the electronic book no longer needs to mimic the paper book, but rather can become a new medium of expression. And rather than being limited to the material on a particular CD-ROM, you can access entire libraries quickly and easily.
In addition to text, the World Wide Web and its browsers can handle high resolution, full-color graphics, sound and even some video (though that is still in a relatively rudimentary form).
Keep in mind that your ability to receive the audio and motion video depends on the hardware and software available on your desktop system. The speed of response depends on the machine you are using and the speed of your network connection, as well as the size of the files you are downloading -- which in the case of graphics, audio, and video can be quite large. Don't expect perfection at this early stage; but, in most cases, the speed of response is already remarkable.
In addition to the high-tech possibilities, Web browsers can also provide easy access to older information systems, such as videotex and conference files. In other words, in most cases, companies and institutions don't have to reformat their existing files to make them accessible. Rather they can use "gateways" -- custom software that provides a bridge from the old world to the new and that is transparent to the user. This means that the content available to the Internet user can grow very quickly.
What's the opportunity?
Three related and enormous opportunities are opening. The World Wide Web represent the beginnings of a new mass communication medium. It also creates a new global environment for conducting business and for shopping. And at the same time it opens new ways for people to relate to people.
While there are over 50 million people on the Internet today, the vast majority of those users have limited access. They can all do simple things like exchange mail (though even their ability to do that may be constrained by how much storage space is available to them). Fewer of them -- somewhere on the order of about 20 million today, but growing much faster than the Internet itself is growing -- have the kind of account which enables them to browse the Web.
It is probable that eventually, maybe in just a few years, the vast majority of people on the Internet will be able to browse as some can today. But in all likelihood, by that time new capabilities will be available, which catch the imagination with their multimedia glitter, and which once again will only be available to a minority.
So it is important to remember that people who connect to the Internet are likely to be diverse in their ability to access resources and the ways the information is finally presented to them by their computers or other output devices (such as televisions or "speaking machines" for the blind). This is in addition to their diversity in language and culture (because this is a global phenomenon).
A business that uses the lowest common denominator -- old, tried and true technology like electronic mail -- can reach the widest possible audience. A business that focuses on the latest glitter will reach a smaller audience, but may make up for that attracting greater attention or by reaching a more focused audience, with just the right demographics.
The mass communication potential of the World Wide Web first became apparent during the Winter Olympics in February of 1994, when free new reports of the events attracted hundreds of thousands of "hits" per day. Then in November 1994, Digital Equipment posted the results of the California state elections in real-time as they unfolded -- with maps and other graphics to enhance the meaning -- and got over a million "hits" in a single day -- a new record.
A "hit" is a rudimentary measure of usage of a Web site. The underlying software counts every time a file is accessed, without providing any hard facts about how many people that represents. Today, (in the summer of 1995) such Web sites as Netscape Communications, Yahoo, ESPNet SportsZone, InfoSeek, Time Warner's Pathfinder, Playboy, Wired Magazine's HotWired, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, and Lycos all report hit rates from 2 million to 30 million per week; and translate that into estimated numbers of users ranging from 100,000 to 3 million (source: Interactive Age, June 19, 1995). And at the current rate of growth, the numbers for the top sites could easily increase by ten fold within the next year.
By the spring of 1994, a wide array of companies -- many of them startups -- were already publishing, advertising and selling directly on the Internet. And now many of the larger, well-established companies are also competing there, trying to find new ways to capitalize on their existing assets in content, talent, products, brand recognition, and access to celebrities.
While the Internet clearly offers new and intriguing ways for people to relate to other people, systematic efforts to realize that potential and build non-profit and commercial enterprises around it are still in their infancy. That opportunity is one of the topics we'll deal with at some length in this book.
What's unique about this marketplace?
Here the culture encourages developers to share with one another, to borrow from one another and to build on one another's work -- rather than wasting precious time reinventing what's been done before. This means development happens fast and standards become widely accepted without the need for intervention by industry or government committees.
On the Internet, the smallest of companies -- one- and two- person basement operations -- can compete on a par with well-established enterprises. A now-classic New Yorker cartoon captured this aspect of the Internet. Two dogs are looking at a computer screen and the one says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog."
And in some cases, the smaller companies have a distinct advantage because they are more nimble, can make decisions and act on them quickly, and are more willing and able to experiment and learn.
Many of the experiments we see on the Web today are labeled "under construction." That's the accepted mode of work here. (Even large companies like Apple Computer have done that.) You don't wait until everything is polished -- rather you get on-line quickly, sample customer response, and keep changing and improving based on demand.
How can a company make money in this new medium? There is no simple answer to that question. In some ways, the competitive environment on the Internet resembles the early days of the television industry when manufacturers of TV sets provided programming to stimulate sales of sets, and it was unclear what business model -- advertising, pay-to-view, or some other approach -- would predominate.
But even at this early stage it is clear that audience is the cornerstone of business. You are likely to succeed if you identify and serve a clear audience and build the loyalty of that audience. If you don't start with the audience, then your investments and efforts -- no matter how great -- are likely to be futile. And if you do start with audience, then new, unexpected business models are likely to open for you as this medium matures.
Keep in mind, too, that here you should expect the unexpected. Over the last couple years on the Internet, we have seen not just rapid change, but a rapidly changing frame of reference. Innovations not just in technology, but also in how people use what's available have repeatedly changed the rules of the game. We'll take a look at that phenomenon in the next chapter.
The rest of the Way of the Web
Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
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