Preferred Listings on Open Text

[Elisabeth Roche]

Certainly the funding of the Internet has to move away from government, as
it has been, a laudable goal IMO.

The WWW as the ostensible "commercial" aspect of the 'net is entirely new,
and if people weren't creating new marketing strategies, tests, and
compiling response data it wouldn't have a chance of becoming a viable
marketplace.

Certainly directories have been compiled, published and available in print,
microfilm, microfiche, cd-rom, all the formats as new technologies have made
possible. For sale, or available at your public or academic library in your
city, or arriving in July on your doorstep. And many a fee-based commercial
database offers access to information already, have for years.

Compiled lists can be junk, as any direct mailer can attest. I can buy a
listing for myself in "Who's Who" too, if I want. I can even publish my own
book at a "Vanity Press." The weighted value of these are well-known.

I think some of the reaction to the OpenText Preferred Listing offer comes
from a lack of agreement on whether a list of hypertext links or addresses
culled from the WWW and/or the Internet, interactively, by a keyword indexed
search mechanism, is a directory or what in print would be the content of a
document.(maybe a table of contents or bibliography, or appendix.)

People pay for special searches already, it seems OpenText turned the
concept upside down. A payment per keyword will put your WWWsite page in the
top 8 returns, for the general market.[more Walmarting of society,
IMO-giving Kline et al their due].

If people want to do advanced searching thats okay, not affected, they say.

This offends people's sensibility, you pay/spend for more, not less. IMHO

I think by combining a "compiled" list based on advertising dollars (got to
be the big players IMO)and a reference tool in one, OpenText is arguably
being at *a* cutting edge, but possibly trying to be too many things to too
many people at once and losing/not defining their target market.

A different presentation might just solve the public relations problem.
Remember New Coke! 

People don't like being bought, the more blatant and obvious, the more
people bristle.

Something else that struck me about their offer, the time period for this
listing is 6 months. Considering the entire lifespan of the WWW this is
indeed a long time. My first thought, cash flow! 

I think OpenText should be wary of the reactions this Preferred Plan has
generated, whether they are the only ones doing this or not.

(They did say they were the first to do this, which may be literally true,
since the other companies have been doing reviewer's site, hot tags, and
other concepts. That "first" brag might be a mistake, they might want to
rewrite their sales copy and see how another version flies.)

Elisabeth Roche ace at opus1.com
serendipity RULES!