by Bill Morgan
bmorgan@ionet.net
Regarding the Internet, I think it's time to cut to the chase.
Note: This article was written in a kind of pseudo hypertext format for the offline edition but we'll make the links real here.
As with a web page, certain words are highlighted and underlined. If you want further explanation of these words, check the sidebar titled "Links." If you don't, then just skip it. This is easier to do online than on paper, but this will give you some idea about how it works. (Since you're here, you know how it works but this is a copy of the Newsletter that goes out to 2200 people or so - many of whom are still offline and have never had the opportunity to use hypertext links.)
The questions I have been asked in email and on the conference calls indicate a serious lack of knowledge about the net itself, and more than a little misinformation or misunderstanding. I have been asked where the Internet was located on America On-Line, or where the classified ad section of the Internet is located. These questions are similar to "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" They are difficult to answer without making things worse.
The Internet is a network of networks. It is an immense collection of interconnected computers, spread all over the world. It isn't on America On-Line, but you can access some parts of it through America On-Line. Not only is there no classified ad section, there really aren't any "sections" at all. There now, was that helpful?
Discussions of what the Internet is always seem to turn into discussions of what it isn't, and about the size of the thing. It is really big, and there has never been anything like it... we really have nothing to compare it to. The Internet is not an improvement on anything, it is a brand new thing. There are some very heavy books that don't tell you a lot more, and I recommend you read at least one of them. I have found that people don't really understand it from just reading about it, no matter how good the book. Among all of the material available at this writing, one of the best is a very easy to understand article on the World Wide Web in the April 1995 issue of Popular Mechanics. Helpful as all the books and articles may be, it is like reading about skydivingÉ good enough if all you want to do is talk about it, but to really understand it, you have to jump. That is what you need to do with the Internet: just jump. If you are unable to jump right now, go ahead and read all you can about it, but make getting online a major goal. That said, here is the chase I promised to cut to:
There are various ways to use the Internet, and new ways are popping up all the time. The two areas of most importance to marketers are electronic mail (email) and the World Wide Web, commonly shortened to "the Web." Put simply, the Web is relatively easy to use, nice to look at, and growing like nothing in the world ever has. Email is the most convenient form of communicating the written word, bar none. Let's start with the most interesting part of the Internet, and the part that is growing the fastest, the World Wide Web.
The Web was developed in 1989 to allow researchers to cross-reference written documents through what is called hypertext. Certain words in a document will be highlighted or underlined, and "clicking" on them with a mouse or pressing the enter key with the cursor on the highlighted word will link you with a reference document.
This development wasn't all that big a deal for anybody but the researchers until somebody developed software to allow users to operate the web like a Windows program. The software that does this is called a "browser," and the first one was called Mosaic. It's effect on the Web was almost immediate and almost created unbelievable growth. Rather than leveling off or slowing down, it is growing faster all the time!
What it does for users like you and me is make the whole thing easy to learn, and easy to operate. You navigate on the Web much the same as you do on your normal Windows screen, with some notable differences. When you are looking at a document, called a "page" on the Web, you move around with a mouse, exactly as you do in Windows or with a Macintosh. To activate a link, just move your mouse pointer to the highlighted text or the icon next to the text if there is one, click your mouse, and the linked page appears on your screen. The big difference here is that the page might well be stored on another computer, maybe in another country.
These pages can have pictures on them, in fact most of them do, and they can be interactive. Common interactive features are forms that you fill out and submit online, or email you can send from the Web. Other methods of interacting are less common now, but are growing in popularity. In an Australian university there is a robot arm and a video camera connected to the Web. When you access the page, you see a real time picture of the arm poised over a table, ready to pick up some objects. You send movement commands from the screen, then watch the arm move. The challenge is to pick up one of the objects. It is time consuming, very hard, slow to watch, and pointless for the user. It is also fun, and lots of people do it every day. If that is too elaborate for you, there is "The Great Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything." This is the ultimate truth in advertising ... it does nothing, and there is no explanation. You can leave comments about your personal experience pushing the button, and many people do. Reading them is... interesting. It is, as you can see, difficult to fit some of these sites into a particular category, or to predict what will be popular. Both of these sites attract a lot of attention, and are on many "Hot Lists."
All of this is fine, but it is a lousy description of the Web itself. Simply stating facts about the Web is very unsatisfying, and incapable of getting the real picture to you. You just have to jump, as you do with skydiving. It is unfamiliar, but you will become comfortable there quickly, so go for it. The Web closely mirrors many of the changes going on in society worldwide. This is a significant historical event, and you can easily be a part of it.
Then we have email. Email is still the most common use of the net, and for good reason Ñ it eliminates telephone tag, provides it's own continuity, is easy to learn, and more. A marketer's most immediate thought about email is normally the direct mail advertising possibilities... after all, you can send fifty, or fifty million messages as easily, and in most cases for the same price, as one. The reality is that direct email advertising doesn't work very well - at least not when it's done the same way as regular direct mail advertising. The limitations of the medium and the ease with which messages can be deleted certainly play a part in short circuiting direct mail advertising, but the major culprit is probably the demographics. To even be online requires access to a computer and a telephone line, and to communicate online requires a fairly high level of literacy. These factors will change as more and more people gain access, but for now these are the people who are using email, and they don't respond to unsolicited advertising very well at all. In fact, the normal reaction is to email you back and speak rather harshly about the matter. There are ways to market through Email, but as with many things on Internet, they are different.
For the most part, using email looks and feels the same as using word processing software on your computer. To learn it, get online and use it. Write to someone you know until you feel comfortable with it. My Email address is: bmorgan@ionet.net. Please feel free to practice on me ... I'll answer. All the major commercial online services have email service that will allow communications through Internet connections.
I can't stress enough how this is growing faster than any other man made thing every has, and it is a totally unique thing. I have heard several people talk about the World Wide Web with great authority and confidence, but my experience indicates that it's a brand new ball game, and there are no experts yet. Those of us pioneering the Web are all starting from zero, and we must pay attention and be ready to change and innovate constantly.