is a very funny man. in a
very geeky kind of way
:
” So here you are, a multi-billion dollar corporation
with a sagging stock price that has spent hundreds of man-years and
millions of dollars on a layout engine and a Web browser. You’ve
thrown all this money into the support of this cool
“standards-compliant” layout engine, and you don’t even know what
that means! You’re out all this money, and you have to find some
way to make it back.”“The first monetizing technique I’ll show you is called “Stealth
Infection.” Under the principle of stealth infection, you must
insert ties to your Web properties in seemingly innocuous
locations. The idea is to rely on the user’s poor hand-eye
coordination. They’ll be shooting for Open File.. and they’ll end
up buying furniture instead! It’s brilliant! It cannot
fail!”
somehow, it seems appropriate to juxtapose this
with
scott rosenberg’s
piece on why the
the media titans still don’t get it
:
“In one embarrassing anecdote culled from an Industry
Standard article about the aftermath of the winter 2000 Time
Warner/AOL merger, Time Warner CFO Richard Bressler hears about
plans to promote Time magazines on AOL and asks, “What are these
pop-ups? How big are they? Can you send me some information on
them?” AOL’s legendary deal-maker, David Colburn, responds, “Rich,
why don’t you invest $21.95 in an AOL subscription and consider it
due diligence?” Ouch.What might have been due diligence for a corporate exec was already
a way of life for tens of millions of people. Motavalli contrasts
the New York media honchos’ cluelessness with the insight of AOL’s
Ted Leonsis that, online, it’s “user experience” that
counts.”