At 4:36 PM -0800 10/27/96, Greg Broiles wrote:

I'm considering putting together a periodic publication about the technical and legal aspects of privacy and the Internet. My "business model" would feature free WWW/email access with a charge for fax or postal delivery. I'm curious to know if this strikes people as interesting or just Yet Another Email Newsletter Of No Real Consequence. (no offense taken if it's the latter.)

Any feedback is appreciated.

EXECTUTIVE SUMMARY (as they say): Don't do it. The world doesn't need yet another cyberspace events newsletter, even one focussed on "legal aspects of privacy and the Internet" (as if we don't have these already). Inasmuch as I respect Greg's views, and inasmuch as he drove down from Oregon for one of my parties, I'll make some comments. I think we're _drowning_ in Net- and Web-based "zines," newsletters, hot and hip sites, and crud. More than just Sturgeon's law, it's an explosion of self-published crap. All well and good, as some may find something of interest, or so the theory goes. However, consider the meltdown in the "Wired Ventures" plans for an IPO: cancelled on Friday for the second time in the past several months. The chief underwriter reported a "lack of interest," even at the reduced offering price. (A lot of Wired, HotWired, Suck, and other paperholders are undoubtedly not too pleased.) No doubt "Wired" the magazine is doing well (though not amongst many of _us_, it would seem--or at least that we _admit_ here), but apparently "HotWired" and "Suck" and all the rest are having trouble finding their niche. Ditto for Michael Kinsley's massively-touted "Slate." And a bunch of other such Web rags (no pun intended, but it's not a bad one, eh?). The latest "Wired," in fact, has an article by Josh Quittner--known to we Cypherpunks as the reporter who showed up at an early CP meeting, and wrote about it for "Newsday"--on the adventures of the "Sucksters." (www.suck.com, as I recall). Josh writes (and maybe runs, I only skimmed the article in the bookstore, as I do with "Wired") for the "Netly News." The article somewhat longwindedly gets into the problems these "hot sites" are having. The lack of loyalty, the lack of _payment_, etc. (And a comment I made many months ago, about how I routinely "don't even see" the Web ads placed on Web pages, has since been vindicated by a study showing that the payback for Web advertising is just not there; it appears that a whole lot of other people besides me are oblivious to these ads. This leaves almost no payment system for online journals and hot sites....advertising doesn't work, people won't buy subscriptions...doesn't leave much, does it?) Declan writes for some of these Web rags, so he can provide even more comments. He has his own list or zine, "Fight Censorship," so his views may differ from mine. But Greg probably already knows about all these things. If he thinks there's a market, maybe there is. But how would this differ from the mailings sent out by some of the folks on the Cyberia-l list, and similar forums? The Cyberia-l list itself, the site at the George Marshall Law School (Trubow, as I recall), various mailings by David Post, and the flood of press releases, Web pages, newswire stories, etc.? Isn't yet another newsletter a bit of an anachronism in the age of search engines, news services out the wazoo (and out the Yahoo), etc. In short, it seems unnecessary. And it's unlikely to make enough money to even pay the modem bill. Just my opinion. --Tim May "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

At 10:31 pm -0500 10/27/96, Timothy C. May wrote:

No doubt "Wired" the magazine is doing well (though not amongst many of _us_, it would seem--or at least that we _admit_ here), but apparently "HotWired" and "Suck" and all the rest are having trouble finding their niche. Ditto for Michael Kinsley's massively-touted "Slate." And a bunch of other such Web rags (no pun intended, but it's not a bad one, eh?).

Actually, the report I heard on "Marketplace", NPR's business report, said that the market looked at the fact that Wired was more magazine than internet, and killed the deal, twice now. Magazine publishing is a known quantity, and a pretty much marginal one, too, with all the competition for shelfspace and mindshare in the modern magazine business. Wired lost, if I remember the story right, $10mil last year. It seems to me that a magazine successful enough to do an IPO should have actually made money before the stock floats. (On the other hand, magazines can live forever without ever without making money. The greater fool theory of magazine publishing, I guess. The Nation, never more than a century old, has never made money. The National Review has been around since the 50's and might have made money only few years in all that time. I don't think either one of them are public, though...) I guess that, like backhoes, Wall Street now also understands that Moore's Law doesn't apply to printing presses, either. ;-). The first Wired Ventures IPO went out as a magazine and bombed. The next Wired Ventures deal went out as half magazine, half HotWired (though mostly magazine in fact), and bombed. By the time Wired goes out with a new deal -- if ever, and probably just HotWired spun off, if so -- internet hysteria on Wall Street, currently waning, will be all but over. Deals take a long time to ramp up. No Moore's law in industrial corporate finance, either. (Microintermediating underwriter-bots notwithstanding, I suppose. ;-)) As for Greg's plans, I'd say do it because you love it, Greg. There's certainly no real money in e$pam for me at the moment, but I have a small but loyal bunch of subscribers who tell me all the time how useful it is for them. Every once in a while, some speaking, contracting, or writing thing comes out of it. In the meantime, Vinnie, Rachel Wilmer, and I, and now Anthony Templar and Fearghas McKay, keep trying out new and better ways to wring a little money out of the content (or services, I suppose) that we provide, if only to pay for the time and resources we've invested in it. And, of course, for the tweakier stuff we want to do next. :-). At some point, for instance, we're going to try an ecash-based "begging bowl" URL, pointing to an ecash payment page, on all the messages for e$pam and also on the archive site we're putting up. Variable pricing, indeed. Anyway, I think those of us doing web/mail publishing stuff like this are doing it to say we did it, to be there first if we do something that actually pays off. Not quite placer mining, but probably the same idea. Like Levi Strauss and Sutter's Mill, however, it might be better business mining the miners. If, of course, you can figure out what *that* is. Building routers, maybe? :-). At least Moore's law applies there. The people who keep doing it, however, are the ones who do it simply because they like it. And, for the moment, that's why I'm doing it. Actually, at this point, I probably can't stop. ;-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/