Full Sterne Aheadby Jim Sterne
November, 1999 Full Sterne Ahead contains the mostly monthly musings of Jim Sterne, author, speaker, and Web marketing consultant to business and industry. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- Welcome to the November, 1999 issue of Full Sterne Ahead. In this issue I decry the attachment of big files in When Will They Ever Learn?, accelerate getting personal in Resource of Note, feel better about global connectivity in While I Was Out, see a lot of Mark Gibbs in The Crystal Ball, get the usual astonishing dross (weren't they a rock band?) In My In-Box, get called all sorts of names in The Big Idea, consider buttons as Web site revelation in You Can Do It, and get mighty impatient in Classic Comment. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN? -------------------------- I seem to be an attachment magnet. People like to send me their business plans, PowerPoint presentations, cute little animations and other digital stuff. Some of it is important. Some of it is interesting. Some is actually stuff I want to see. But I object to the method of delivery. I live in a house that overlooks the city of Santa Barbara. That means I am just out of reach of the ADSL service area and just out of reach of the cable modem service area. We do have indoor plumbing, but I'm a 56.6 kbs kind o' guy perforce. I recently spent time in a new Hilton at Logan Airport in Boston where I must have been the only one with an Ethernet card connected to the Hilton's multi-megabit hook-up. Absolute Heaven. But most of the time, I'm paying per-minute charges for a 28.8 connection. Hotels have also gotten wise to the ways of the road warrior and are charging extra for calls longer than twenty or thirty minutes. Cute. So - when I am on the receiving end of a 5 MB Alley McBeal dancing baby, I'm not very happy about it. There's no option but to wait. And wait. And pay. Here's the cure: plop that file up on a Web page or an FTP site somewhere and send your friends a little 4k message with a clickable link. Tell them what's waiting for them and let them decide if and *when* to fetch it. Speaking of attachments, here's a message reproduced in it's entirety: Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:49:54 -0400 (EDT) From: giga/amy@mail.xpedite.com X-Authentication-Warning: louie.xpedite.com: mcp set sender to giga/amy@mail.xpedite.com using -f To: jsterne@targeting.com Subject: Giga Presents IT Solutions for Tomorrow Here's a preview - it only takes 30 seconds to view this attachment. giga.exe Besides being short to a fault, this message comes with an Authentication Warning from Louie and an attached *executable*. Sorry gang, I don't do executables. And I don't know anybody named Louie... ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- RESOURCE OF NOTE ---------------- This month offers up a tip of the expressly designed, perfectly sized hat in the color of my choice. "Your source for news, information and analysis on all aspects of web personalization." Personalization.com at (all together now) www.personalization.com was the brain child of Chris Locke of ancient MecklerWeb fame and more recent RageBoy/Cluetrain infamy. Chris convinced NetPerceptions, purveyors of fine collaborative filtering tools, to pony up a bundle for something he calls "open source marketing." The point is to bring all those interested in Web site profiling and such together on the same Web site for a pow-wow. Buyers and sellers can mingle with evangelists and nay-sayers to contemplate the valuable services or privacy invasions promulgated on behalf of e-commerce. Always the instigator, Chris opens the marketing bazaar to all and lets the music begin. He doesn't, however, allow product reviews. It just wouldn't ring true. Joe Bob says: check it out. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- WHILE I WAS OUT --------------- Let's see - Scottsdale, Louisville, Reykjavik - they all allowed me to fetch my e-mail with my global dial-up account through UUNet. But I was worried when I checked www.uu.net/network/pops/ and didn't see an entry for Seoul. I was not looking forward to paying hotel rates for calls from Korea to Japan. Then I saw a little folder entitled, "How to Set Up and Use the Internet." I had a choice of the wireless keyboard by the TV set, or use my own laptop for a 56.6 connection. Local calls at 20 cents per minute. It's a wired, wired world out there. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- THE CRYSTAL BALL ---------------- Two images in the old crystal ball this time around. The first shows Mark Gibbs buying dinner for me *and* my wife after abusing my good name in public in his Network World "Back Spin" column on branding www.nwfusion.com/archive/1999b/1025gibbs.html which began: Nothin' But 'Net and Image By Mark Gibbs Network World, 10/25/99 "I predict that by 2003 the major unit of international currency will be the Yahoo!" - Jim Sterne, author, speaker and pundit who owes me lunch. The second image is of a small boy in the not too distant future looking up at his teacher in an attempt to explain his lack of homework. Seeing as how he doesn't have a dog, the choices are: I e-mailed it to you but it bounced My laptop was stolen My paper was hacked My private crypto key has been compromised I created a Web site instead of a paper but my ISP's server crashed My little brother put my laptop next to a magnet NDA's prevent me from further comment We're in our quiet period right now You can't read HTML mail? Sorry, I'll re-send You got a corrupted message? How odd! Three letters: G, P, F I owe the big finish (the last three) to the afore mentioned Mr. Gibbs. Mark - we'll bring the wine and the cigars. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- MY IN-BOX --------- Here's a wonderful lesson in how not to sell yourself... From: "Steve Mich" To: Subject: Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 19:54:48 -0000 Dear Sir/Madam, I am a freelance designer in Maromedia Flash 4. If you have any need for this work please let me know as I am looking for a good company who would benefit from the use of flash 4. You can also use my services for your own clients. If I could be of interest to you please visit my site. *** www.eurostreem.co.uk If problems with this address please try the URL below (mrk 1) http://business.virgin.net/eurostreem.uk/ (mrk 1) http://freespace.virgin.net/eurosystems.uk Please be patient as the server can be a little slow ! Please note that this is only a sample site only. Hope to hear from you soon Best Regards Don't strain yourself keeping your hopes up, Steve. Not exactly Web-related, but in my in-box and worth repeating: Call 1 800 578 7453 at your earliest convenience. It's the customer service line for Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company. The initial recording is unbelievable. Enough said. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- THE BIG IDEA ------------ The Internet is a place for the exchange of ideas. In my five years of exchanging ideas, I've only once exchanged a few that caused an attempted character assassination. I wrote a review of several Web sites in Inc Tech magazine, one of which I slammed as follows and then some: When it comes to home-page navigation, cleanliness truly is next to godliness. That lesson has not been learned by Krystal Kleen Karpet Kare, whose home page is nowhere near as pristine as its customers' wall-to-walls. The owner of said Web site took umbrage. He also took a dictionary to my back side by changing his home page to include my photo and a description of me as "the epitome of a narcissistic, ostentatious, self centered person, yet he beats his drum so loudly he can not hear anything else around him." Like driving past a traffic accident, I had to slow down a to see how much blood had been spilled - even if it *was* my own. The site, the retort, the ensuring battle and the final outcome are displayed for all and sundry at: www.inc.com/incmagazine/contest So what's the big idea? Remember that the Internet is a great place to communicate. What you say is up to you. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- YOU CAN DO IT ------------- I frequently come across people who want to describe their company history on their home page. But people don't care. Sorry - it's true. All they want to know is what you do for a living, how they can contact you, and what they can do on your site. Do - as in activity. Do - as in learn, see, configure, price, order, resolve, and whatever brilliant things you can come up with. The best way to communicate your brand and the benefits you offer visitors on your Web site is to embed that information in your links. People are not reading your site, they're busy scanning the links to see what they can click on. So don't go on for sentence after sentence. Just give us buttons that say: Products for the Relaxing Bath Products for the Refreshing Spa Products for Healthier Skin Products for Beautiful Hair Branding and navigation are one. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME ---------------------- Where are your best ideas going to come from next? Directed dreaming? The Psychic Friends Network? The Mystic 8 Ball? (Ask again later.) How about your customers? It doesn't cost that much to create an opt-in e-mail list. Heck, even *I* did it. But what happens when you take it to its illogical extreme? You end up out on a limb like E-Compare. Yes, the very same company that made a name for itself waking up the SEC with their offer of free stock to people who entered their names in the Web database. Are they looking for help improving their products? Are they asking for ideas on creating a better service experience? Are they reaching out in hopes of besting their competitors? It's a little more fundamental than that. They're asking their customers, excuse me, their shareholders, for help figuring out how to make money. Dear Shareholders, We are actively seeking your input to improve our business model. We have great confidence that we have smart stockholders who can think creatively. Send us your thoughts and ideas for how E-Compare can become more profitable. We will present $1,000 to the E-Compare stockholder who comes up with the best contributions to our business planning process. Hey friends! We're plumb out of ideas out here. We can't seem to find two brain cells to rub together and it's up to you to make your stock worth more than the electrons it was printed with. We have one of the best technologies in the world for live searching and processing information over Internet. Our infrastructure and engineering team are among the best in the business. It's just our senior managers who are a few angle brackets short of a home page. Like the majority of Internet companies, we face the problem of how to earn profits -- profits which mean higher returns to our shareholders. We would like to explore other applications of our technologies, develop other technologies or branch into other fields. Who was the genius who unleashed this puppy onto the Internet? It came From: ecompare@ecompare.com and was signed, Best wishes, President, E-Compare Corporation. In other words, it was from a nameless, faceless entity. The topper was the P.S. If your email address has changed, please change the address by yourself at our website. If this is a wrong number, how come you answered the phone!?! ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- SILLY SIGHTING OF THE MOMENT ----------------------------- www.idchip.com ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- CLASSIC COMMENT --------------- According to Jakob Nielsen, "Increased user impatience will make new websites fail unless they are twice as usable as existing sites. Revolutionary Internet services must explain why users should care in no more than two lines." www.useit.com That's why I actually *did* LOL when I heard Joanna Brandi www.customerretention.com remark on how much we hate slow Web sites: Come on, come on! I don't have all minute! ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- I'm interested in what is on *your* mind. What issues are you facing these days? Drop me a line. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- This newsletter is going to be better if it reaches more people. You can help. The Net is a powerful word-of-mouth mechanism, so if you know somebody who might like to be on the receiving end, please point them to www.targeting.com or have them send a message to subscribe@targeting.com. And I'll bet you know what will happen if you send a message to unsubscribe@targeting.com. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- Full Sterne Ahead contains the mostly monthly musings of Jim Sterne, author, speaker, and Web marketing consultant to business and industry. |