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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gks_n_ca who wrote (24905)	8/24/2000 12:49:50 AM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

Excite has provided value. It's been a very low cost acquisition method of new @Home subscribers. Let's see here, $7 billion divided by 1 million = $7,000 per sub. I want to be generous about how many subs Excite has brought. Don't you think 1 million is fair according to your unbiased view? In any event $7,000 is outrageously expensive. Excite had a huge database of "profiles" that have been marketed when the @Home service became available in their areas. Grace tries occasionally to make this argument, but the value add comes at a snail's pace. In one year Excide has done little for all the income they eat. Having viewed the @Home content for over 3 years, I also believe that Excite has provided a dramatic improvement to what was available previously. You claim to have followed this thread over the last 3 years, yet to assert this is proof that that couldn't be the case. Who creates your "content"? @Home? That is patently false. You are confusing delivery functionality, what I have termed facility, with "content". This is a ubiquitous error. It has become a standard error widely accepted. The error is part of the milieu of Wall Street talking heads. They all use this term, "content", and they all think they know about which they are talking, but on challenge, it all evaporates. When you see this you realize that @Home can't be in the "content" business. They can only facilitate its delivery whatever "it" may be. Maybe Disney knows or Sega. Why is this so difficult to understand? For the reason I gave you. You are habituated to think according to stereotypes, but that kind of thinking won't work in the real world with which ATHM must deal. Applications and content are what make the pipe useful. Trying to obfuscate a little, I see. This is talking heads exit #3. When challenged they start modifying their generalities, but the problem is that ATHM can't market these generalities modified or not. One only need count how many applications the software firm, Excide, has provided over the last year to see the added value of $7 billion. If there are 10 providers offering the pipe, why would you pick one over another. Obviously, price and speed will need to be comparable. We get it. Excide is preparation for the inevitable future where everyone does @Home. This is Jermo's thesis, yet no one wants into what ATHM does. You are launching into business scenarios of a possible future, but why the arbitrariness? There are many better and cheaper plans that would accomplish much more than Excide. I've given many examples in detail in this thread that address how ATHM can proceed on a path that will generate money now rather than in a fictitious future. After that, it will come down to which provider is the most useful. As I stated previously, that will be the provider that offers personalized content and applications to all devices. By "personalized content" you must mean the advanced interface Excide has composed. It's pure junk. Ask anyone at Speedguide. No, ask anyone here. Personalized content is just an empty adjunction of two words that you got from some media clown because it sounded "big time", but think about it. What does it mean? Nothing. You can't define it. It's hand waving word games. That goes double for "applications to all devices". I know you think that sounds impressive, but what are you talking about? You don't know and you didn't think about it. @Home was first with the network. But others are coming. Who's that? Their competitor, AOL? Eventually, the network will be a commoditiy. This is a major mistake and it represents a trivialization by someone who is not understanding where the value add lies. The vast majority could care less about the so called "content" Excide presents. They use @Home to access the Internet where the content they want resides. It can't reside at Excide nor at @Home. Can't you see that? Please tell me what it would cost for @Home to compete with Paramount or with Silicon Investor. Why bother? Then the Excite purchase will look much better. How quaint. In a galaxy far, far away... It's hard to see it now. What? Don't believe in "personalized content" and "applications to all devices"? Plus, looking at the stock price, it's easy to be disillusioned. But if you look far enough into the future, it might not be that far fetched. Are you saying that the stock price is reasonable for the future? That's the only accurate thing you've said, if the company persists with this failed strategy. The strategy is built on an undefined word that everyone claims to understand. The word is no different than "emperor's new clothes".