The answers are out there. And they look good for the future of the Web.
Consider the recent Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess tournament. IBM, which sponsored the silicon combatant, created a Web site that allowed modem jockeys to follow the matches move by move and read on-the-scene expert commentary. The Big Bluesters figured perhaps 200,000 people would drop by. But many thousands more attempted to muscle in to the virtual space. Over the next few days, IBM added equipment and eventually was able to handle all comers. How many? Though the method of counting visitors to Web sites is still a dark science, the company believes there were times when more than a million people were following the action online. These are Nielsen-size numbers. Now ponder this: what if there were already a widely accepted form of digital cash (expected within a year or two), and visitors were required to pay two dollars to follow each match? My guess is that at the very least, the half-million-dollar tournament purse would have been raised. Maybe much more.
The chess battle was unique, but there’s a lesson to be learned by studying how IBM’s Web site successfully exploited that event. First, it provided real value to the visitor. We wanted to see the chess game. We got it. Just as important, the site’s design was appropriate for the medium. In a sense, following the matches on the site was better than it would have been on television. Not only did a constant view of the chessboard encourage a more intense involvement, but you could interact. For instance, a single click would deliver a picture of the board layout at any earlier point in the match.
That mix of value and sensible interactivity–as opposed to frivolous pixel pyrotechnics, where slow-to-load computer graphics always dim in comparison to television–will be the key to drawing customers. Even paying ones. As a baseball fan, I regularly visit the ESPNET SportsZone: it does a good job of providing raw, up-to-the-minute data and analysis, in much more detail than on television and long before the morning paper arrives. Lately, though, I’ve been noticing that more of the columns, articles and statistics are available only to paying customers. This leads to the $4.95-per-month question: will blocking all those goodies lead users like me to give ESPN my credit-card number so I can achieve subscriber status and thereby access everything on the site? Or will the practice simply lead me to go elsewhere, say USA Today’s Web joint, which also offers statistics and information, but not as copiously? Answer: for now I’ll spring for the subscription. But I believe competition will eventually drive the price down. It had better, because the day will come when heavy Web consumers will find dozens of sites with information and diversions worth paying for.
Not all commercial Web sites offer value and fit the medium. An incredible number of site producers believe they can win hearts and mouseclicks by elaborate multimedia stunts and smug attempts at hipness. (There even exists a cottage industry of Web sites– with names like Suck and Blow–whose mission is to identify and digitally mock these lame locations. Too bad they spend half their time criticizing each other.) How else to explain the bizarre phenomenon of alcoholic-beverage makers constructing baroquely elaborate Web sites? After all, you can’t download a beer, or sip champagne by modem. The information content of those sites is minimal–no medical papers on the effects of alcoholism. Instead, they offer party tips, recipes and, on the much heralded Budweiser site, biographies of fictional frogs. (“Budbrew J. [Bud] Bullfrog . . . originally from the Florida Everglades, moved to Louisiana to be near Miss Froggy.”) These sites are nothing more than elaborations of TV commercials. If this is what comes with Web popularity, no wonder the digital elite dread the prospect.
I prefer to think that in the open market of the emerging Web, the good stuff will prevail. Better yet, the increasing number of commercial sites won’t overwhelm the sorts of virtual locations that now rule: the highly personal, aggressively nonprofit or just plain goofy. The best thing about the Web is that seat-of-the-pants digital publishing enterprises can coexist with big efforts funded by venture capitalists or launched by current corporate juggernauts. It’s just as easy to get to All Men Must Die, created by a pissed-off 20-year-old woman in London, as it is to access the Disney company’s spiffy new Web operation. If properly nourished, this volatile mix–allowing pamphleteers, digital performance artists and outright cranks to rub virtual shoulders with media conglomerates–will be the crucial ingredient in making the Web the first mass medium that allows serious talk-back, even counterprogramming, from the masses. That’s way cool.
