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Marketing Savvy Hello Everybody, Happy Memorial Day! If you're like me, you'll be sneaking out as early as you can on Friday and enjoying at least a 2 day weekend. I plan to fit some rest and relaxation in there and I hope that you are able to do this as well. The business world on the Internet is also taking a break - or at least slowing down some. Several large start-up companies are on the downhill slope and it's not a positive slope. It behooves us to pay attention to what is happening to these companies. All of the highlighted articles this week illustrate an alarming new trend of investors who "quit" funding their Internet companies, of Internet companies who are still not making a profit and of those Internet companies that have thrown in the towel and filed bankruptcy. These companies are in the minority, but the fact that they are in these situations, and admitting it, is something we should know about. Some people are running scared, but I hope that they aren't so scared that we stop the forward progress made by the creation of the Internet and the efficiencies that are found in using this new technology. New technology has always cost an immense amount. We're paying the price for future generations and it is an investment that should be made. Now...on to the news. ********************************************************************************
Why? Too much competition in the industry and an investor, Disney, that decided to quit funding the company. Read the full story of "why" in the article. In early May, another online toy store, http://www.redrocket.com, owned by Viacom/Nickelodeon, also shut it's "online" doors. http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/000523E25A ******************************************************
At 135 million dollars, the investors quit funding Europe's largest retail web site, Boo.com. Selling clothes seems to be a difficult business, especially when the site doesn't work, can't handle the traffic of a 25 million dollar marketing campaign and has a huge overhead. It's for sale, so maybe it will come back. But for now, the site is just hanging out and it will die unless a miracle comes along. http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial/archives/issue1no127.html ********************************************************
With companies going under, new companies postponing IPO's and stocks down, should the budget cuts include advertising dollars? AdRelevance says no. This report shows statistical data that indicates that you still need the marketing push to keep those visitors at your site - even as large web sites begin to crumble. http://www.adrelevance.com/intelligence/intel.jsp ********************************************************
CNN.com interviewed Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond, Chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee. What does he think are the largest stumbling blocks to small businesses being successful online? He had some interesting answers, but the last answer explains why so many online businesses do not succeed - the large or the small ones. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/new.economy/stories/bond.qa/ ********************************************************
Craftshop.com filed bankruptcy. It's difficult for them and even more difficult for the courts. Determining the debts is the easy part, but what are the assets of a Dot Com? When it comes down to it, the domain name, the names of consumers and the traffic are the only things of value. So, how much are they worth? Determining the value of these intangibles is proving difficult. http://news.lycos.com/headlines/Technology/Internet/ ********************************************************
What's Fox news doing to "fix" the ailing web site? They are definitely making changes and employees are running scared. Not because of layoffs, they simply see the "writing on the wall". Instead of hiring writers to create new content for the web site, they are making a move to "repurpose" the television news scripts and put them on the web site. Do you really want to read news scripts that are slightly re-written? Hmmm... it will definitely save money, but I'm not sure this will rocket the site to the top of the charts in the web world of news. Some of the costs savings, to bring web sites in line, threaten to make the web sites less useful. http://www.salon.com/business/col/elder/2000/05/25/foxnews/index.html ************************************************************************ “The mass of men lead lives
of quiet desperation.” --Henry David Thoreau ************************************************************************ ©1997-2000 CreativeWriting.com, LLC |
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