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To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (12688)	6/7/1998 4:33:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116815

Plugged In: Fools' rush pays off 04:11 p.m Jun 07, 1998 Eastern By Russell Blinch TORONTO (Reuters) - They rushed in with their crude instruments, staked their claims and hoped to strike it rich. A few did perhaps, but in many of the gold rushes of years past many also came up empty-hand and, worse, lost vast savings trying to find the elusive precious metal. Canadian historian Pierre Berton has estimated that gold seekers spent $50 million getting to the Klondike in northern Canada, or about the same value of all the gold extracted from the area in the five-year duration of the 19th-century rush. The race to extract gold from the Internet has often been compared to a gold rush and in the early going (say, way back in 94) many openly scoffed at the fools rushing in building Web sites that no one was expected to care about for too long. ''Content providers who joined the Web gold rush find themselves tumbling down a long, dark mine shaft,'' said analyst Bill Bass in a report for Forrester Research in 1996. And here is quote from a 1996 Plugged In column: ''Well, they built the Internet, but for the advertisers and content providers who have been lured to the new medium, the results have been less than magical. Call it a Field of Nightmares as the paybacks for the big Web publishers -- from newspapers to electronic magazines -- have been more virtual than real.'' In the mid-1990s there were many articles in The Wall Street Journal and by well-known Internet columnists talking about the dire outlook for the Net. Each time a major Net business or big Web site folded, people would talk about how the commercial Internet may well prove to be a fad. They would often trot out the example of the rapid rise and fall of CB radio or the eight-track tape. But at the close of the millenium, it's clear we've come a long way, Internet babies. A recent study called ''The Real Numbers behind 'Net Profits'' by Activmedia (www.activmedia.com) found online revenues rose tenfold in the past year and could surpass $1.2 trillion by 2002. Activmedia takes a broad view of revenues generated from the Web because they include money earned by companies just having a Web presence. But the figures are interesting. They believe Web revenues worldwide jumped from $1 million in 1995, to $2.7 billion in 1996 (when people were doubting the Internet's staying power) to $21.9 billion in 1997 and to a projected $74 billion this year. ''Supported by an expanding array of routine business and personal functions which will migrate online by 2002, total online commerce -- and commerce generated by an online presence -- will expand to $1.2 trillion, or 3.8 percent of total global trade,'' the report said. Of course the success of this modern-day gold rush is due to the incredible number of people migrating to the Web. Forrester Research believed back in 1996 that we would not reach the 100 million-online population mark until 1999. Activmedia, however, believes the online population now totals 113 million, including 70 million from the United States and Canada. Based on those kinds of revenue projections and online population estimates, one can only believe the Web pioneers and the new adventurers joining the online crowd will be finding much more than fool's gold in the months and years ahead. --Comments or ideas on the weekly Plugged In column: russell.blinch@reuters.com. Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.