How is the Santa Clara Traffic conference going?

[A D]

I personally had breakfeast, lunch and dinner with DCG plus we talked for hours
on end during the conference. And, he can't remember me. :-D

Post edited so as not to hurt actnow

-=DCG=-

 

[JuniperPark]

LOL actually the Dos Vs Windows is a very poor example...

I can give you a lot of examples of Tier-1 Carriers (some with >180m subscribers) who tried the walled garden approach failed. The same thing happened with SMS in US and why you had low adoption rate compared to EMEA...

this will not happen I'm willing to place a huge bet for those interested

I don't recall ever being offered totally free SMS before or free WIFI before... did I miss something? The issue is will CONSUMERS use a totally free system that makes it harder to get to the bar to type in a domain name. I think they will, and if they do it doesn't matter what business owners/web owners want, they'll have to follow their customers or die. That may mean paid ads on whatever system deploys this. The software companies that didn't convert to Windows 10 years ago simply died.

 

[mole]

on peoples forehead

:cheesy:

Aside to DCG, besides talking to fellow DNFers, was there anything interesting in the conference from the investment community?

 

[maroulis]

I don't recall ever being offered totally free SMS before or free WIFI before... did I miss something?

Not sure what you're talking about here.. In my previous post I was talking about "walled garden approach".. Such approach was the SMS/MMS launch where no interoperability existed and if you were on Cingular you couldn't SMS a AWS subscriber or TMO

The issue is will CONSUMERS use a totally free system that makes it harder to get to the bar to type in a domain name.

There is no such thing as FREE somebody is paying for it (the proper word is subsidized) i.e. your Motorola Razr costs $800+ but get it free now with 2yr contract. So, Internet will never be free it will be as it exists right now i.e. subsidized. Not sure if you're following trends/reports but BellSouth wanted to charge Google and other Content provides for the $$ it costs to shift premium/heavy content. This will never happen...

Lastly Google has one of the largest dark fiber networks which they use to speed up search responses in their data centres. It's rumoured they will be launching their own ISP possibly around WiMax (WiFi is not adequate for national US deployment) but this is at least 2-3 hears away. Even so their effort is to increase their Ads real-estate which they will do given ads can be location based specific.

If Google/Mozilla/Microsoft or any other browser vendor where to ban address bar and try to limit browsing to within their network reach would fall down on their knees the very next day.

 

[JuniperPark]

:cheesy:

Aside to DCG, besides talking to fellow DNFers, was there anything interesting in the conference from the investment community?

They're skeptical as to whether this is a good business for them.

1) The KNOW many of us are working from home in our jammies. They don't like that - they want to see people in suits in nice offices.

2) Zero barrier to entry, as evidenced by #1 above

3) Zero ability to predict risk in this business. The address bar issue is just one of many 'out there'.

4) The high end PPC are already rolling in cash and don't really need more at this point. Little investment potential.

 

[JMJ]

There have been many failed ad driven free internet approaches. WiFi or not it won't work. Radio as we now know it is on the brink of collapse due to the introduction of satellite commercial free continuous music. Consumers are tired of be bombarded. Advertisers will go where the consumers want them to go not where some "analyst" fortuneteller says they will.

 

[mole]

1) The KNOW many of us are working from home in our jammies.

:cheesy:

Thanks for that concise summary, park! hmm..Duke needs to relocate DNJournal to Madison Ave and let go the cape for a tie..

 

[sasquatch]

The address bar is here to stay. I personally don't want to put "Please go to Google and type 'Medical Imaging' and see the sixteenth result, assuming Google hasn't reindexed and please don't click on my competitors links" on my business card...

You are missing the main scenario.

What if they force you to enter your intended destination domain name with ext in the search engine bar, as opposed to browser bar directly? So getting here for example will be only possible by entering dnforum.com in google bar.

There's not much difference anyway. Bar is a bar, and as you can see by Overture with extension numbers a lot of people are doing that anyway. So why not do them a favor and officially acknowledge their idiocy accross the board?

 

[maroulis]

You are missing the main scenario.

What if they force you to enter your intended destination domain name with ext in the search engine bar, as opposed to browser bar directly? So getting here for example will be only possible by entering dnforum.com in google bar.

google has already this kind of feature "feeling lucky" how many people use it?

 

[Beachie]

You are missing the main scenario.

What if they force you to enter your intended destination domain name with ext in the search engine bar, as opposed to browser bar directly? So getting here for example will be only possible by entering dnforum.com in google bar.

There's not much difference anyway. Bar is a bar, and as you can see by Overture with extension numbers a lot of people are doing that anyway. So why not do them a favor and officially acknowledge their idiocy accross the board?

I see that as no different to the address bar. People will type gadget.com into any bar, just to see what's there. The location and owner of the bar is irrelevant, and the domain will still perform it's function.

As for the "free internet" scenario - it's been done before. I certainly remember a dialup service in West Australia, so if it happened in the backwaters here, I'm sure it happened elsewhere. Suffice to say it isn't around any more. Newbies might want a free toe-in-the-water, but sooner or later they'll want fast, affordable and, most importantly, flexible access. Users here can choose between a $10/month dialup, or $80/month broadband (and anywhere in between) - I'd say that 95% of everyone I've ever met has opted for the latter - big, fast, powerful is the order of the day.

 

[mole]

Google search bar does allow you to type in the URL and for the most part, will give you a link to that URL in the search results.

 

[Beachie]

One last scenario - do you really think Microsoft will relinquish it's IE address bar so that people can go to Google? So, Microsoft might force us to MSN, but then how many people would jump out to Firefox? Would Firefox then do the same based on that lesson?

 

[JMJ]

Here's my countryboy analysis. Free=Cheap people, Cheap people=No Product sales, No product sales = End of story.

 

[maroulis]

Here's my countryboy analysis. Free=Cheap people, Cheap people=No Product sales, No product sales = End of story.

also known as What you pay = What you get

 

[mole]

I think what is clear from Juniper's outtake is that the domain industry needs to take on a more professional sheen. Right now, it appears domainers are like swashbuckling pirates from the Carribean drinking rum over their "loot". The Business 2.0 article on Masters of their domains portraited domainers as "people who hate work" and "like to drink and womanise, especially when its free", not a good thing, imho.

 

[JMJ]

Mole while I do agree with some of your ways of thinking the idea's of advertisers demanding free traffic are also gone. If by some stroke of luck on the advertisers part they are able to steer the market in the PPS direction for awhile I think they will soon figure out all of their tears were wasted. I will be the first to redirect all of my traffic towards whatever site I decide to and/or selling that traffic to the highest per unique bidder and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Besides as a honest traffic owner I pay my part "in the shaving" for fraudulent clicks myself.

 

[sasquatch]

I see that as no different to the address bar. People will type gadget.com into any bar, just to see what's there. The location and owner of the bar is irrelevant

Yes but your Google bar by far and large even today is surrounded with tons of other search results, adlinks etc. That's an awful lot of temptation to get "lost". Especially when numbers of potentialy lost souls is measured in gazzilions, where even the fraction of that gazzilion is huge for "them".

Google search bar does allow you to type in the URL

Of course, but you are still left with the browser bar. My point is that it is absoultely not in any's Search Engine interest for you to have a browser bar.

and for the most part, will give you a link to that URL in the search results.

"For the most part" being the key words. A lot of times they will also give you nothing.

 

[mole]

Mogul, I admire your ethics and you are the kind of domainer that advertisers would love to work with. But the water runs very deep in domain land, and ethics are not the way that people can use to make good money.

Today, sitting in front of the computer religiously clicking links on 10,000 sites a day brings more to a family in a day than a road-sweeper can hope to earn in a year.

In offline media, advertisers pay per placement. As both offline and online models dovetail, PPP will get increasingly more acceptable (albeit at a much higher cost) as online brand and message recall gets increasingly recognized.

"Traffic" is a digitally manufactured joke for online media, like it or not - scripts, bots, hidden links, immigrant worker farms ...anything that earns a dime will incentivise people to do these things. And on digital media, it is so easy to hide behind ignorance of the technology shenanigans. Gary Kremen recently said "It's not about volume, its about conversion" on the DomainMasters radio show. He should know about traffic.

Worse, with domainers now relying more and more on typos in their pursuit of traffic, that's nothing more than parasiting off other people's trademark eg disenychannel.com. Sure you get curious kids generating tons of traffic off them as kids tend to click on everything and anything. But quality of that click? Kids don't have credit cards to buy stuff. However, the advertiser is forced to shell out for these useless clicks, 5c, 50c, $5...

If click fraud is only 20% of all there is for the priviledge and cost of doing business, then sure it is acceptable. But because of the real gushing money that Mexican immigrant workers can now earn besides the poor pay of plucking peppers on a farm in San Jose, click fraud will over time consistently hit 50%-90% as click sweat shops get more organized and more sophisticated in the use of proxies.

PPC has become far more lucrative than spam. SpamKings?? pah. Today its the ClickKing barons that rule the Internet.

I am not saying that PPC is not a good way to earn good money, All I'm saying is that the industry will evolve, is evolving, new models to counter all this fraud. PPC revenue has been a primary "justification" for driving up the costs of names at auctions to crazy levels never seen before. The symptoms are starting to puss.

 

[JuniperPark]

Some of you are totally missing the 'address bar' issue, so I'll restate it:

Microsoft would offer free high speed wireless internet (not dial-up!), and it would fire up a browser initially without an address bar, just links to what they want to send you. Remember, nearly all computers today are sold with wireless installed, so you would connect OUT OF THE BOX, the VERY FIRST TIME, on FIRST bootup, nothing to do at all. That's far different from having to dial up an ISP or SMS where you have to buy a phone.

Benefit to MS: All of the PPC revenue for these users would go into MS's pockets, there are no typo's or easy way to navigate out. MS already has 1) the cash to do this and 2) already embarrassed that MSN search is terrible and needs a home run to beat Google.

--------

Now - the other possibility is Google could do this, but they would have to launch their own browser, which launches only to Google.com of course. They have a lot of cash and are known to have separate teams ALREADY WORKING ON THIS for the nay-sayers. They really want to push Google Local, and this would do it because the wifi broadcast can certainly give absolute location data, so this makes sense.

-----

Benefit to users: Savings of $300 - $1,000 year in ISP costs, no ISP subscription hassles, possibly faster than existing setup. People will go for this IN DROVES.

 

[JMJ]

Juniper it's no different than the dialup free deal only faster and it didn't work. The people who would "limit" themselves to save a few bucks won't be buying any products. My mom who has been a computer programmer analyst since the early 80's tried one of those free computer for a two year signup gimmicks to save a few bucks and got a cheap computer with a bunch of useless software. I couldn't say I told ya so enough to her. Either way it's just a gimmick. The only people it will work on are kids and the poor. Grant it there are alot of those people in the world but they don't have any money to spend.

Mole the PPC providers are already tackling the the proxy issue. I can look at my stats now and see $.00 -$.01 payouts from people using proxy browsers.