[11583] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Internet benefits-summary and questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Harry Tennant)
Sat Apr 9 19:24:18 1994
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 1994 15:06:46 -0600
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tennant@metronet.com (Harry Tennant)
I appreciate the posted and private responses to my question on how to
articulate the benefits of the Internet. This seems to be a common
problem. Here is a brief summary with some further questions raised.
Dick St.Peters gave an interesting analogy to air conditioning which, being
a heavy net user, I am sympathetic to. However, heating and air
conditioning benefit from the prospects having a felt need for the product
(they are cold or hot). Not so with Internet. The uninitiated often see
it only as an expense at first. Internet is much like PCs 15 years
ago--lots of potential but demonstrated value was rare. Spreadsheets came
along giving relief to a felt need. Today, many people talk of Mosaic as
the net's "killer application" (like spreadsheets), but what is the felt
need that Mosaic (or other net capabilities) satisfies?
How do com-priv readers use Mosaic, gopher or WAIS on a regular basis for
specific, goal-oriented work?
Peter J. Farmer pointed out the value of real success stories, and I
appreciate those (Brian Monkman, Bruce Gingery, S. Lee Henry, Bill Little)
who sent me personal testimonials of how they get value from the net.
These are quite useful yet unless a skeptical reader sees an example that
sounds just like him, examples tend not to work. The very breadth of
appeal of the net works against us in this case.
Joel Maloff sent an excellent article on the business benefits of the
Internet to be published in Internet World shortly...I recommend it! He
speaks of costs vs. 1) Rare, Remote Devices, 2) Information Sources and 3)
Inter/Intraorganizational Communication.
Does anyone know of studies documenting the business return of email or
newsgroups? Does anyone have before-and-after anecdotes of how email and
newsgroups has made a measurable difference in travel reduction, turnaround
time, frequency of customer contacts, etc? Any numbers on savings from the
use of ftp-able software?
Harry
_________________________________________________________
Harry Tennant (214) 340-0694
8423 Vista View Drive (214) 340-8132 fax
Dallas, TX 75243 tennant@metronet.com
