Yo Wally, a friend gave this to me, not knowing I'm making a major wager on this concept:
Wall Street Journal, 7/20/98
Under heading Mundane Matters, headline "It Isn't Entertainment That Makes the Web Shine; It's Dull Data"
(excerpt from end of article)
"Likewise, Cisco Systems Inc. uses its corporate "Intranet" to buy everything from landscaping services to hand tools and paper clips. The system has "no sex appeal," concedes Carolyn DePalmo, procurement automation manager at Cisco. But it cost only about $5 million to set up, and Cisco can save that sum within a year by cutting the cost of each procurement from $150 to just $10 on-line.
Even some executives at entertainment companies are taking note. At Time Warner's Pathfinder site, the "bread and butter" is information that changes fast, like stock quotes and sports scores, says Daniel Okrent, new-media editor at Time Inc. "News for us has been growing much faster than what you'd call entertainment," he says. "The telephone book is a lot more popular than any John Grisham bestseller."
Indeed, phone books become easy-to-read search engines when they are put on-line, serving up a hard-to-find number in seconds. Four11 Corp., a unit of Yahoo! Inc., routinely draws more viewers than Web outposts from major media companies such as the CNN news channel and ESPN's Sportzone. Four11 offers phone numbers, e-mail addresses and free e-mail accounts to almost five million visitors a month. What's so cool about that?
"It's not cool, it's just frigging useful," says Jeff Mallett, Yahoo's chief operation officer. "Period. End of story. God bless it."
Cool is not in. Useful IS in. Who needs cool when you own part of a company that is on the cutting edge of the most "frigging useful," up-and-coming tool for small and mid-cap businesses.
Now THAT'S cool...
M. |
