[8812] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: VERY serious $ Business now done on Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Sun Dec 5 19:33:53 1993
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 1993 18:31:46 -0600 (CST)
From: Sean Donelan <SEAN@sdg.dra.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
>I don't find anything that I disagree with in Doug Barnes' posting. The
>Internet.....even the american portion of the Internet is a *BIG* place.
>Dave Farber's characterization of things is certainly *VERY ACCURATE* for
>a VERY LARGE proportion of the net.
The Internet is a big place. While Dave Farber's characterization is true
for parts of the net, it doesn't necessarily mean that commercial folks
aren't using the net. You need to remember that most savvy folks who are
using the Internet for commercial purposes have long since learned to keep
a low profile on the net.
There is a lot of commercial transactions happening between trading partners
that already had existing relationships. Most of this occurs through e-mail,
telnet and ftp; not on public mailing lists or newsgroups. People seem
to concentrate on the "retail" type transactions for evidence that people
are conducting business on the Internet. But there is also "wholesale"
transactions, purchase orders, contract negotiations, quote requests, and
so on. Just because they aren't very visible in the "public" forums, doesn't
mean they aren't happening.
Perhaps DataResearch is unusual in that 90-95% of our customers are
libraries at universities, local, and state governments so the AUP isn't
as much of a problem for our business. But I don't think it is just
DRA. We've worked with several book wholesalers set up electronic
ordering with several libraries.
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
Domain: sean@dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100
