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To: Ingenious who wrote (14858)	9/10/1998 11:57:00 PM
From: duncan moyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Leap Wireless spin off info at biz.yahoo.com Symbol expected to be LWIN

To: Ingenious who wrote (14858)	9/11/1998 2:51:00 AM
From: dougjn	Respond to of 152472

I think that was a very smart post. I guess you can tell I largely agree with you. <gg> It has long seemed to me that most of the content providers on the internet are never going to make any money. At least based on current models. The net is good for pull advertising but bad for push. E.g., its like a giant yellow pages, only much better. Potentially all over the place, and actually in many palces today. But selling you stuff you really aren't inclined to care that much about -- except for the entertainment/propaganda value of the ad? E.g. cereal, soap, shampoo, toothpaste. Much of what is sold on TV. Don't think so. You will only check it out if more or less forced. The real money being made on the net these days is made by the hardware suppliers. And to a lesser extent, the hardware service providers. I.e., in the former case Csco, Asnd; in the latter case, the ISP's and the backbone service providers (e.g. Wcom). AOL is a hybrid case, part service provider and part content provider. But they are also a sort of captive content provider. Which tends to make them less attractive to sophisticated net surfers, but gives them a better earnings model than other content providers. And the net as it reaches wider audiences is also reaching shallower ones. I agree there is a real future in E-commerce for the net. But so far retail suscess stories in the real economy (leaving aside the equity market funding successes) is unclear. Amzn looks to probably become successful, but not perhaps on any mega scale. Its a pretty low margin business. But maybe that's the answer. Real revolutions in distribution are possible, even if it turns out that the stock market El Dorodo valuations at present are way out of whack. Business to business looks very powerful. A la Csco, Dell. But here we are talking competitive edges for businesses focused elsewhere. If it turns out that the advertising model for supporting Web content is less lucrative than currently supposed and hyped, as I expect, what then? The first thought is that more Web content will need to charge. But charging, unless it is at trival per person rates, will make Web browsing much less attractive. Is it possible this is a sort of golden early age of Web use. When there are virtually no restrictions, and scads of free content as all sorts of traditional media, and new media jump in at no user cost to develop a beachhead? Right now even the advertising load isn't very heavy. Banner ads may slow down our downloads a little bit, but they don't block the screen for 120 secs., as per TV. I suspect things will in some ways get worse in the intermediate future. Or anyway more expensive. Before getting better again in ways I for one cannot predict. Doug