To: Oeconomicus who wrote (499 ) 8/2/1998 4:47:00 PM From: Alan Edgett Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Actually, the local access "portal" will simply be internet access with a homepage of some sorts with local advertising, so it won't be like looking through a circuit city circular as you mentioned. Would I rather access through AOL and see "national" ads or AIMS and see "local" ones? I don't know, probably the latter. You could run a framed environment or simply have the ads on the first page of access. As for costs, if I'm a new access provider facing the prospect of only being able to sign up 10,000 local users (due to major competition) at $20/month generating revenues of $2.5M or signing up 50,000 users for free and then tapping 200 local merchants for a $1000/month for "direct advertising" which generate s the same revenues, I think I might chose the latter. This assumes, of course, that you can easily get consumers to sign-up (which is a good assumption because the service is free), but I'm not sure the kiosk is the best distribution. Make no mistake, the local paper charges for its content, local radio does not. This could be a powerful shift in the approach to internet access. Taken from the perspective of building a "virtual community" where focus on the customer is the key, NOT vendors/content providers (as is the case with all current services), this could be a coup...signing up subscribers for free...building mass...and then pummeling companies for advertising access. It could be an interesting game, and one that would have devestaing affects on companies like Earthlink and AOL if they were not able to shift their focus quickly enough, IMHO. Any thoughts?
