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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went!
INSP 72.66-1.1%10:37 AM EST
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To: BillCh who wrote (11661)8/30/1999 2:20:00 PM
From: RTev  Read Replies (2) of 28311
 
The same approach could apply to all Go2Net properties, but hey I'm not the marketing department am i?

No. And I hope that the marketing department at Go2Net is not making decisions like this one.

This brings up an interesting issue faced by anyone who owns in a media company. What is the purpose of the company's media properties? A web search engine may seem quite different from a newspaper or magazine (whether paper or cyber), but I think there are some real similarities.

Let's look at the traditional media:

A newspaper or magazine serves two distinct markets. Most of them (and all of the good ones) have distinct staffs to handle those markets. The editorial staff puts together the content that is meant to appeal to and attract readers (or viewers). The advertising staff then attempts to sell the attention of those readers to advertisers whose fees will pay for the whole operation. There has always been and probably always will be tension between those two different operations, but most outlets have discovered that the reader is best served if her interests are considered paramount by the editorial staff.

Another issue arises when one considers the interest of the company that owns the paper or magazine. What if they're also in a different business? Should the editorial staff give preference to the business interest of the owner? If a conflict of interest develops when considering a story idea, should the reader/viewer's interest be ignored? Unfortunately the record among media in this regard isn't nearly as good as the advertiser/reader issue. But any company that begins to interfere too greatly runs the risk of alienating the reader/viewer -- the very person on which all else depends.

So back to search engines:
They exist to provide information. The user has the right to expect that the presenter of this information strive to provide it in a way that's most useful to the user. In an ideal world, a user would gravitate to the presenter that managed to provide the information in a way that is perceived to be most useful by that user. Issues of trust develop here as they do with a magazine or newspaper. As a user, I trust that the information is presented in a consistent manner and that the developers are most interested in making something useful to me.

My take on it is that the standard user of Metacrawler doesn't give a damn about Go2Net. They are there to find information. What happens if Go2Net sites are given special-case rules so that they appear at the top of the list? Is that done for the sake of the user, or for the sake of the company? I think it's only the latter. The user is not served by it, and may rightly feel alienated. So you lose that user, which does not benefit the company.
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