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Baldwin Louie — Mon, 14 Jun 1999 18:00:00 -0400

CHEAT SHEET: The Word on the Week

1. Sell-abrate the Difference: Santiago Rodriguez, Microsoft (MSFT)'s new diversity director, is learning quickly, as the company's Web site shows: "All human cultures have common needs, but there are differences, too. How do you please a customer if you don't know what he or she values? That's what culture is all about."

2. One Olive or Two? Netcenter's new GM, Jim Martin, also has a heavy learning curve. Remember, Jim, Mr. Pittman likes his martinis stirred, and Mr. Schuler needs extra starch around the cuffs.

3. Is There a Roget in the House? After receiving its millionth invitation to "come help launch" a revolutionary startup, Cheat Sheet hereby will only accept invites to "cast," "fling," "heave," "hurl," "sling," or in a pinch "get cracking on" YourCompany.com.

4. Disco Inferno: Coming soon to a music store near you: Sony (dossier) kiosks that let customers burn a CD on site. Parents unclear on the concept are camping outside, Marilyn Manson discs in hand.

- Alex Lash

QUOTES

"There ought to be limits to freedom." - Gov. George W. Bush, complaining about the satirical site www.gwbush.com (New York Times on the Web)

"The whole process has brought chutzpah to a whole new level for me." - CEO Rob McGovern, who got calls just before CareerBuilder's IPO from "best friends" he hadn't heard from in 20 years (Washington Post)

"Think of what the CIA used to pay to keep a single informant in Belgrade. I've got 50 people there, and I don't pay them a thing." - George Friedman, founder of Web news service Stratfor

ONE WORD: No Wonder We Haven't Cured Cancer

Americans spend a total of 110 million hours a day on the Internet and 525 million hours watching TV.

Source: The Strategis Group

JUST ONE QUESTION: Jeff Mason

RocketCash, an e-commerce site aimed at teens, launched June 1. On RocketCash, parents can set up an account for their kid and monitor purchases. We asked president and CEO Jeff Mason ...

Q: "How did you get the idea to start RocketCash?"
A: "I have a 16-year-old babysitter who was annoyed that when she wanted to make a purchase she had to have her parents come over with a credit card. They'd look over the purchase and comment that something might be too expensive. I kept having to hear about it. Also, a parent mentioned that after typing in their credit-card number over and over, their son memorized it. Now he has the keys to the kingdom!"

- Kathi Black

NEWS: Online News for Savvy Chicks

The past two years have seen an explosion of new magazines for young women. The market may be oversaturated, but that isn't stopping new zines from cropping up online.

Case in point: SheWire, a news service ChickClick will launch June 14. "We had a lot of readers talking about serious subjects that our affiliates weren't covering," says Beatrice Springborn, a SheWire producer in San Francisco. ChickClick has 30 women's-oriented affiliate sites, and while the affiliates were "discussing more superficial topics like entertainment and hair care," the ChickClick groups were talking about "politics and world affairs."

The site plans to include an area where readers can submit their own news. Will it turn into a female version of PR Newswire? Hard to say. They plan to sell ads at some point, but for now, it appears that money is not a feminist issue.

- Jackie Cohen

ISLAND LIFE: E-commerce Hits the Vineyard

Summertime has come to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and the rosebushes are in full bloom. Tourists pour off Cape Cod ferries in search of beaches and a peek at the rich and famous.

On the island where Jaws was filmed and you might find Spike Lee or Carly Simon next to you at the checkout counter, the buzz at clambakes this season is about homegrown Bookpool, a privately owned e-commerce outfit that's making waves.

Profitable since its 1994 launch, Bookpool has grown into one of the world's biggest online bookstores, thanks to a loyal customer base, the kind of low prices Amazon.com (AMZN) touts only for best-sellers and an ultra-narrow focus on computer and Internet-related titles.

The company initially sold books through an e-mail server, moving to the Web in 1995 when site-hosting became cheaper.

Today, Bookpool ships to 110 countries, including Mauritius, Vietnam and Fiji, and 100hot.com says it's the second-most-popular tech bookstore online.

Bookpool has no marketing department, and has yet to spend a dollar on advertising. But good news spreads quickly on an island.

- Pierre Bourque, Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

DEALS OF THE WEEK

VIEW POP UP CHART - SORRY THIS CHART IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE

SCHEMES: Exploit Friends! Get Paid to Watch!

AllAdvantage's business model combines enough online memes to dazzle even seasoned Net execs. But in addition to permission marketing, viral marketing and targeted advertising, AllAdvantage hopes to cash in on a ploy with a troubled past: multilevel marketing.

The company's basic premise is to pay members for watching ads in the Viewbar, a downloadable window. Better still, members get a cut of the money earned by friends they refer to the service. Spam has been a problem as members attempt to recruit "friends" via newsgroups and message boards.

In the Net's best tradition, AllAdvantage has repackaged product features developed elsewhere. The idea of being paid to watch ads was pioneered by PowerAgent, one of the Net's best-funded flops ($20 million spent in 20 months), whose PowerFrame seems to have inspired the Viewbar.

Paying for referrals may overcome the lack of interest that plagued PowerAgent, but overcoming skepticism among ad buyers will be more difficult. "I doubt any of our clients would be interested in the kind of user only looking at an ad to make a cent or two," says Jim Meskauskas, media supervisor at Mediasmith, an online agency in San Francisco.

- Mark Dolley

HYPE: A PR Kiss Is Still a Kiss

Is there anything in the world better than chocolate? Mmmm ... chocolate. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. We sure do love chocolate.

So we were duly impressed when Hershey's sent us a press release made entirely of chocolate. This is about the cleverest technique we've seen to get a product noticed. Of course, it was hard to read the release once we'd broken it into pieces and devoured it. (Good thing we work in heat-starved San Francisco, and not, say, Miami, or we'd have had a soupy mess.)

A second box arrived the next day, followed quickly by a third. By this time we were eating slowly enough to read. The release was for a new Web site - www.hersheygifts.com. By the time the fourth release reached us, we still hadn't surfed it, but we'd gotten the point.

A week later, a good-size chunk of chocolate still sits at the copy desk. Broken and alone, it begs us to put it out of its misery. And though the power of chocolate has not diminished, we can't quite bring ourselves to eat it. B+

- Jason Krause

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