Recovered from Archive.org – Apr 13, 1997
OK Let’s map all this out:
DATE | Search Engine IPO | OPEN | HIGH | CLOSE | NOW |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
April 2 | Lycos | $16 | $29.25 | $21.94 | $17 |
April 4 | Excite | $17 | $21.25 | $20 | $14.50 |
April 13 | Yahoo! | $24.50 | $43 | $33 | $33 |
So whats the story morning glory? Whats the tale nightengale?
Image. Man, I love Andre Agassi. Image is Everything! Sprite doesn’t know whats its talking about.
Image is whats driving these IPO’s. Oh and Money of course,sillyme.
- These search engines make their money through advertising.
- They get advertising because they have an audience.
- They have an audience because they provide a service.
- They service they provide is directions.
Millions of hits everyday looking for something and each one sees the 1×4 banner proclaiming the latest and greatest from Internet marketers. These banners can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month for the exposure. A few months back C/Net spent a million bucks making sure that every netizen around saw their little yellow banner. And by golly it worked!
Now the big push is for money. (Moolah, Dinero, Cash, Bread, Gee’s, Greenbacks)Wall Street has offered itself up for this purpose. The IMAGE is that the internet is a gold mine. All a sprouting company has to do is get the word out and start selling shovels. The reason that so many search engines are going public all at once is image and money.
To let a competitor gain several million dollars in capital will spell disaster in the ever annoying trilogy of expeditures. More importantly, to let a company gain public favor in the stock market and possibly steal some name recogniztion would also be a terrible move.
We see the battles of these companies on the net vying for attention and a positive spin. A free browser here, a customizable page there, a great daily news/editorial written by a charmingly naive manhattanite. Its all the same. Trying to get and keep the attention. Because where there is attention, there is money.
get an audience, offer IPO, retire.
Whatya think?