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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Zulu-tek, Inc. (ZULU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Luminous who wrote (9876)	7/4/1998 6:45:00 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 18444

Luminous, you were never any fun anyway! Why you gotta have all that darkness coming out of your eyes? How appropriate I should find your post when I'm posting this, however, ignorance is your perogative here. For information: How Dumb Are the Digerati? by Phil Lemmons Our currency says "In God We Trust." Apart from that, we Americans trust little. We distrust our politicians for many reasons: faithless promises inspired by polls; campaign contribution quids for which we know there must be quos; political action committees whose only action is laundering money; and tax-free think tanks that think impeccable party-line thoughts. We distrust businesses for many reasons, too. They beg for deregulation to promote competition, then use deregulation as a green light for mergers that eliminate competition. They say nothing is more important than their "human capital" while turning this capital into temps. But there is one thing we Americans seem to trust even less than politicians or business executives: that bogeyman called the media. Although we value advertisements as a source of information, their puffery makes us wary of their claims. When we subscribe to a new publication and suddenly find our mailboxes stuffed with new junk mail, 98 percent of us gripe about being exploited (even as 2 percent place orders for new products). When favorable product coverage appears next to an ad for the product, we grow suspicious, whether reading a magazine or watching TV. These practices earn the media more blame than trust. The Internet's Credibility Challenge Born into an innocent noncommercial world, the Internet has now become a public medium and entered the prevalent atmosphere of mistrust. Given the circumstances, you'd think Internet proponents would attach some importance to establishing its credibility. Yet pressure works mostly in the opposite direction. Practices that were considered deceptive in print, such as obscuring or eliminating the distinction between advertising and editorial content, are touted as "added value" online. Some companies that wouldn't dare sell editorial coverage in their print publications want to do exactly that in the online world by selling placement in product listings that look like editorial content. You may think a Web site is giving you comprehensive product listings or a selection based on merit. If no one tells you otherwise, you'll never be the wiser. Your ignorance is someone's added value. While most magazines seek to preserve credibility by eliminating placement of ads next to related articles, the Internet maximizes such adjacency. Matching information to your interests really does add value. Synchronizing ads too closely to customized information, however, is likely to inspire distrust online as in print. As it happens, Web technology could manage advertising and editorial adjacencies better than print--by letting you decide what you want. But Web publishing and marketing currently seem more inclined to eliminate choice and compel you to march to Web sites' commands. New Internet advertising formats from Netscape and Microsoft show the power of the movement to dictate your Internet experience. You will soon find ads exploding from the text you're trying to read, or popping up in one part of the screen and dancing across the content. You'll even find ads crawling across the text you're reading and refusing to get out of the way until you click on them. You may pride yourself on being one of the digerati--the digital elite. But some Internet businesses see the digerati as bozos with browsers, upscale patsies who will tolerate anything as long as it's digital--and in many cases, that assessment may be accurate. Vexing Issues, Encouraging Signs In "Web of Deceit," Fern Schumer Chapman examines some of the thorny issues that digital media present. There are reassuring signs that some of these issues may be addressed with your protection in mind. For one thing, the Federal Trade Commission -- responsible for preventing deceptive advertising--regards deception as deception, regardless of the medium. In one private initiative announced in June, the American Society of Magazine Editors promulgated a new set of guidelines for Web sites. The opening sentence declares: "The same ASME principles that mandate distinct treatment of editorial content, advertisements, and special advertising sections ('advertorials') in print publications also apply to electronic editorial products bearing the names of print magazines or offering themselves as electronic magazines." We have posted the full text here. We'll pass your observations on to ASME. Like other media, Web sites are selling advertisers their access to you. If they won't play straight, take your business elsewhere. There is no more effective enforcement mechanism. Phil Lemmons is editorial director of PC World.