The Dream Machine 8/15/02

Back in late 2000, the Raven attended a Webdesign Workshop run by one of those seminar companies - you know, the kind of presentation featuring a little hyper British guy running around like a Ronco pitchman. "It's easy to get your site up on the Net, and then you can put up banner ads" he gushed, making it sound so bright and promising. The Raven wasn't impressed. We wanted graphic design tips, not Marketing 101. As it turned out, there were lots of these little gushing guys spinning the same yarn in boardrooms around the country, and they suckered execs into sinking billions on "leveraging technological synergies across multiple platforms," because nobody wanted to pipe up and say, "That sounds like a lot of bullshit to me."

Well, these clowns are wising up somewhat, as evidenced by findings presented at the Jupiter Media Forum yesterday, a conference for people willing to pony up $1,495 to listen to execs from Sony, WSJ, RealNetworks, and Playboy, among a few others who represent the only Internet success stories in terms of making the

Web generate cash the way the little hyper dudes said that you could. On the other hand, a Jupiter media analyst presented the results of a survey of online users indicating that people are as tight with their money online as they are anywhere else, and will usually select the free alternative when there is one. Selling software that requires regular infusions of cash, like the RealOne player, does net a profit if your product is popular (RealNetworks claims to have 500,000 people paying $10.00 a month for its streaming content player). ABCNews.com executive Bernard Gershon is quoted as saying that this concept had "better work," because "otherwise, we're all screwed."

Let's hope the concept doesn't work. Personally, I subscribe to Salon.com and I'm glad I do, but no way on Earth am I going to run RealOne player. The Raven gets by with the free G2 version just fine, thankyouverymuch.