TMCnet News
Dotcom Do-OverBy RICH TEHRANI
President & Group Editor-in-Chief
It seems that many of the predictions of the dotcom days are coming true. Online ads are a multibillion dollar industry and the industry is not slowing down. Virtually all companies sell online and all industries sell using the web in large quantities. Perhaps one of the few industries that failed at selling online was the pet trade, where 60 pound bags of food just didn’t make sense to ship. Of course, there are other examples of failures, but the promise did hold true in general. After the bubble burst we all seemed happy to ridicule lots of things that took place during the dotcom boom. Like remember when the search engine that actually paid you to use it? That was so stupid. Well, just as eBay, Yahoo and Google actually prove that Internet companies have legs (or should I say wings), something old has become very new again. First, please sit down and pour some water. Make sure you are relaxed. OK … Breathe deeply. Now you are fully ready to hear this. Yahoo and MSN plan on rewarding people who search using their sites. No, April 1 is a long was away, so don’t bother to look at your calendar … It is still snowing here in New England. Others have predicted this may happen in the world of VoIP. Can you imagine consumers now getting paid to talk? The US government has got to realize that VoIP is the best thing that has every hit (or actually avoided) consumer pocketbooks. Virtually everything we buy has gone up in price over the years. Think postage rates, gas, hotel costs, etc. then look at telephone rates that in some cases have gone from costing a few dollars a minute to a few cents! And, using Skype, the cost is zero, and better yet, you might actually make money from talking! Is this crazy or what? Getting back to search, for those of you who shop on Amazon you know the company has been extending considerable discounts to people who use their A9 search engine. You know what though? Even when I knew I had to purchase thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from Amazon in advance, I couldn’t tear myself away from Google to use A9. In my opinion, paying your customers will likely work better in the world of VoIP than it does search. After all, time is money and people want to find what they need and find it quickly. Ultimately, if you build a better search engine, the world will tunnel a path to your server. ----- Rich Tehrani is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC. In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended VoIP event, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. |