Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Ampex/iNEXTV.com (AXC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hal Campbell who wrote (52)	6/13/2001 7:00:05 PM
From: Michael Olds	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 69

I have gone negative on Ampex. And I am out. I have gone negative not because I don't think it will make money or will not survive, at this point in time I cannot really say. I have gone negative because here/now I can finally see that if Ampex does survive, it will do so by becoming something I hope it cannot become. To my mind, this is the issue: is America, in it's one-note wisdom, going to succeed in it's effort at making of the Internet what it made of radio and television (and everything else, if you think of it right down to the cities and towns in which we live) . . . that is to say a combination ad/shopping mall . . .? I can think of a lot of really useful purposes for streaming media. Lots of them were discussed right here on this board in the days when we were young and full of hope. How tos; Interactive education; remote medicine; and the like. But here, now, those left here are hoping aginst hope that AXC can become a Madison Avenue tool, another lie factory, and I think Ed has the satisfaction of these individuals' desires in mind. In my gut, in my heart, I am hoping Madison Avenue gets it's butt kicked. I certainly don't want any part of it if it succeeds; that's not what got me interested in streaming media or Ampex. In this world, the Devil rules, so my hope is also a hope against hope. But I think there is at least reason to think that the dynamics of computer use are just different enough to give Mad Ave a good thrashing if it goes that way...but I don't think it will go that way. My bet is that Ed has again made a tactical error. I think it is the constructive uses that will, in the end, be where the money is in this medium. I think what makes it different for the computer is that the computer user is an active participant in the interaction between himself and the sites he visits. If the model is going to be he goes to site X and sits back and gets fed, then I am asking how this is different than TV and how will it be more compelling than TV? How will it compete with 400 channels of HDTV on Demand with digital capture, instant replay, slow motion, and Internet access including e-mail and interactive programming? If your answer is "narrowcasting specialized content", I think my rebuttal has been sufficiently made by the example of TVontheWeb. Porno will make it because it is the only specialized content with sufficiently large audiences to make it pay. I don't see a middle ground. If the model is the catalog shopper/mall impulse buyer I think this is an error in perception. Here on the Internet you know what you want and go to Google or search e-bay to find the places where it is available. People on the Internet have a reason for being here, usually one that does not involve wasting time (even those who are here to waste time waste no time getting to where they like to waste their time...such as the Yahoo! AXC board, or a game site, or forum). The use of a site like Yahoo! is different in nature than the use of The Television or A Magazine for purposes of advertising. A scattergun approach to product types and ads works in these media because the first layer (the content) is the primary reason for visiting the medium. At Yahoo! the first layer (Yahoo! itself) is not the destination (placing ads there is destined to fail, as we have seen, and, unlike TV, Ad blockers on computers work). Even the second layer (Yahoo! Travel, or Finance) is not the final destination but is only the portal through which one moves to the final usually familiar destination (and you do not go to a game site or to the Yahoo! AXC forum to watch the ads). To think that there will be great success in distracting users on such a journey by truly miscellaneous (lame) programming is misguided. There will be the Hal syndrome (no offence Hal, I did, I think we all will do the same thing), where every new broadband customer will spend a month looking at every streaming thing, but after the first thrill has warn off, there will need to be a reason to watch. I don't think Madison Avenue is going to be fooled twice: there is no reason for it.