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============================================================================= Seidman's Online Insider ============================================================================= Weekly Summary of Major Online Services and Internet Events ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol. 2 No. 46 (Formerly known as In, Around and Online) December 1, 1995 ============================================================================= Copyright (C) 1995 Robert Seidman (robert@clark.net). All rights reserved. May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes. IN THIS ISSUE ============= -Notes from the Editor -My Day Job -Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft... -Blackbird and Still More MSN -The Internet Frenzy: What's in a Name? Just ask H&R Block -This & That -Stock Watch -Disclaimer and Subscription Info Notes from the Editor ===================== There was no newsletter last week. I took off for the Thanksgiving holiday and enjoyed it! My Day Job ========== "What do you do for IBM?" Since March I've received that question quite often. Finally I can say, but it will come in the way of a plug. Hopefully, it won't be too shameless. Back before I'd ever heard of the "News in the Future" research consortium at the MIT Media Lab <http://nif.www.media.mit.edu/>, I was spending a lot of time "tweaking" some query language software that ran against software that filtered news stories that came over the newswires. I wanted the software to only "filter" stories about America Online, CompuServe or Prodigy when the stories were actually *about* America Online, CompuServe or Prodigy. You'd be amazed at how many stories there are about tennis and piano prodigies. There are also the unrelated stories that reference America Online or CompuServe simply because of an e-mail address. We're still a ways off from the utopia dreamed of by Nicholas Negroponte and the hardworking crew at the Media Lab. Still, I think the technology is on the verge of being able to provide the information you need, when you need it. In what seems like a lifetime ago, after many months of query "tweaking", I was getting all the information I wanted on the Online services industry, and only the information I wanted, sent to me directly via e-mail. While my query building efforts proved to be successful, I came to the realization that most people wouldn't spend the time necessary to get the desired results and there wasn't any technology that really simplified things. If the goal is to empower the masses with information, the tools to do so must be easy to use. I admit I get a little sappy over this sort of technology. It's not only because I find the technology fascinating, but also because it was because of such technology that this newsletter was born 15 months ago. For the last 9 months, when I wasn't slaving away on the newsletter or answering e-mail, I was working with a dedicated team at IBM on a business to business information product we knew only under the code name "Sage". Initially, I didn't like that name a whole lot, but when I saw what we were coming up with for the actual product name, Sage started to sound real good! So, it was with much relief that we finally settled on the name of "infoSage". I'm one of the product managers and my major roles have been helping to define the product and establishing a team to build up a knowledge base of information, and a group of people that either work with the information providers on the technical side or work with the content we receive. While I enjoy the technology aspects, the highlight of the experience has been assembling an excellent cast of characters to work on my team. I'd name them here, but they'll probably be famous one day and leave. I don't want to speed that process up! *BETA TEST IT* infoSage, in its initial offering will be a current awareness service that filters newswires, publications and reports. At launch, infoSage will offer over 2,000 categories to select from that may be personally modified. For example, you could select the "World Wide Web" category and specify that you're especially interested in Netscape and Spyglass. At launch, the service will also offer links to relevant information. For example, if you received a story on IBM, links to reports, other news items and SEC documents pertaining to IBM would be offered. The service will be available via e-mail or World Wide Web depending on your preference. My preference is e-mail, but it sure looks a lot better on the Web. We're hopeful that we'll launch commercially sometime in the first quarter, but you can see it in its current beta state now at <http://www.sage.hosting.ibm.com/>. You'll need to download the software for our profile tool (sorry, currently there's only a Windows version of this, but we're brainstorming and are hopeful to someday have a Web version), and fill out a profile and currently, you have to have a true winsock connection in order to be able to send the profile back to us automatically (though that changes in the next version of the beta). Twice a day, you'll receive a delivery of relevant information based on your profile. At least it is our hope that it is relevant, but keep in mind, it's still "beta" and that's why we need testers! There's another beta with major revisions which will be released within a few weeks. Future versions of the Beta will offer the links I spoke of above, the full set of topics (currently there are only several hundred available via the profile tool) and the ability to track some stocks. We definitely want your input (though I'd prefer it went through the normal channels and wasn't e-mailed to me!). This is still the very early stages of the product. I'd compare it to Windows 1.0. We have a ways to go, but you have to start somewhere. Just ask Bill Gates. Again, that URL is http://www.sage.hosting.ibm.com/ . Hey, if nobody looks, my management will think they were idiots for allowing me to spend company time on the newsletter! That would not be good. Final note, when you visit the Web page, it will have a banner that says "Global Pulse". Thankfully, when this changes soon to infoSage, I won't be affiliated with any pulsating products. MSN, MSN, MSN... ================ Microsoft Network announced that they'd gone over the 500,000 mark before Thanksgiving and surprise of surprises, they decided to forget about their self-imposed freeze on the subscription base they had planned at the 500K mark. This has brought in a flurry of very heated comments from people labeling the freeze as the "big lie". I don't really share that view. Even though they have already amassed 500K subscribers, there's no telling how many of them actually sign on simultaneously. Comparatively speaking, it probably isn't very many. From my perspective, the service isn't any slower than it was when it first launched. Access, based on my own experience, has improved over the few months since launch. I can get on the service almost every time I try. If there were performance problems, at least more problems than they started with on August 24th, who knows, maybe they would've frozen subscriptions. Since there doesn't seem to be those sort of problems, I can't say I blame them for abandoning the freeze. "We are off to a great start and looking forward to a great holiday season," said Microsoft VP and chief of MSN, Russell Siegelman said via e-mail. "I don't think we will have any problem making our year 1 goal of 1M subs. Of course we need to continue to improve the service in many ways - performance, better Internet function, more Internet phone numbers, unbundle content from access so any Internet user can use MSN content - but we feel like we are off to a great start," said Siegelman. Of course, at the time they originally announced the "freeze", many of us thought it might just be a brilliant maneuver to keep the U.S. Department of Justice of Microsoft's back for bundling MSN with Win 95. So, we're not very surprised by this turn of events. Considering that there still aren't that many copies of Win 95 floating around yet, (I hear and see figures ranging from 3 million to 12 million) and considering that after only 3 month MSN is at 525,000, I'd say that's pretty impressive. I get a lot of mail saying, "The icon on the desktop doesn't matter! The reason not that many people are signing up is because the service is slow!" Bah. The reason not that many people are signing up compared to AOL and CompuServe is because AOL and CompuServe run on Windows 3.1 -- MSN doesn't, it only runs on Windows 95. A couple of week's ago I wrote about Microsoft getting slammed for lack of an Internet strategy. I didn't really buy into that, but in talking with several people in the industry afterwards, the one thing that kept coming up is that Microsoft's Internet strategy is very linked to Win 95 (yeah, I know there is the Win32s for Win 3.1). Most analysts agree that it will be at least a year or two before there are more people running Win 95 than Win 3.1. *Speed Problems Persistently Persisting?* The MSN portion of the service, well, that's still pretty darn slow. But, if you use the Internet Wizard (via the Plus pack or download from MSN) to turn MSN into a true Internet Connection, it's a different animal. The Internet connectivity is FAST. Now I'm not sure if that's because not that many people are on the Network yet, or whether UUNET has done a heck of a job building a network for Microsoft, or something else. I am sure of this though: the speed I get with a dial-up connection to MSN is faster than any other dial-up service I've used for Web browsing. Steve Case and Bob Massey are still encouraging the DOJ, but secretly they must be saying a prayer of thanks that the wizards of the West didn't wind up putting an Internet enabled version of MSN on the desktop. Blackbird and Still more MSN ============================ I get a lot of questions about Blackbird, the Microsoft tool for publishing content, as it relates to MSN and the Internet. I asked MSN chief Siegelman for clarification. Following are his comments: "We announced that BB will be available for general use on the Internet sometime in the first half of 1996. The first release, probably to be released in December or very early Jan, is specific to MSN, meaning that if you publish the information can only be hosted on MSN. "For the next release we will be making BB more of a general Web authoring tool. It will run over HTTP (we already have a version of this running in the lab) and we are thinking about how we will making it more of an extension of HTML. In any case you will use a viewer that is integrated into Windows and uses the same controls (like favorite places, back and forward, etc.) as Internet Explorer. "In this time frame any content provider can go out and buy BB (pricing and packaging - and name! have not been decided yet) and host any BB content on a Gibraltar server (this is our code name for our NT based HTTP server). Any Win 95 user can view the "advanced version" of the content authored with BB and get all the features. And as I mentioned above we are thinking through right now how the format will be an HTML extension so that downlevel HTML browsers can view the same title, but with less functionality." My thanks to Russ Siegelman for taking the time to comment. Of course, he sort of made me earn it with the following comments: "MSN connects users to the Internet and as such you can access to tens of thousands of web sites, ftp sites filled with content, etc. Yet I continue to see comments in the press like "MSN is behind on content, AOL or CompuServe has more content". I find this a baffling comment. In the world of the Internet what is the value of having just another bulletin board, or a forum about personal finances or x, when there are hundreds of web sites and newsgroups on any topic you care about? I think this kind of commentary is so confused and shows a real lack of (understanding of) the Internet. "These same people will say the Internet is the thing and it will kill services like MSN and AOL - but then they say MSN is behind because it has "less content". Can you give me some insight into this? When is the press going to get it?" Well, it isn't like IBM makes me say "I hate Microsoft" ten times before they'll electronically deposit my paycheck...so, I think Siegelman is right on the money regarding the irony of some of the reporting in the mainstream press. It is baffling. I think part of it is that some of the "press" truly doesn't get it. Also people tend to love the underdogs. Today, Microsoft is not the underdog. The PR machines that have been deployed by the likes of AOL have their impact as well. I would say particularly with regard to the newsgroups that there is a benefit, in many instances, with the "managed services" found on the online services. Also, there's something nice about going to an area like AOL's finance channel (and certainly MSN is doing similar things, even if it isn't as elegant yet) that has a diverse number of options to select from. True, some of those options already are available on the Web and sooner or later, they all will be. Once that happens, it's true that someone can make a link-list to all of the sites, no matter where they are. But, I'm big on personalizing, that is, seeing the information I want to see... *A New Look For MSN's Web Page" Ironically, by doing something relatively simple, Microsoft Network has come up with the best home page concept I've seen yet with the "beta" version of their new home page at: <http://www.beta.home.msn.com/>. If you have a browser that will support tables and "cookies", you'll definitely want to check out the "Customize this Page" option. You don't need to be an MSN subscriber to use the page. Essentially, they've taken the CRAYON (Create Your Own Newspaper) <http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~boulter/crayon> model of combining Net information and given it more of a "create your own Web main menu". They've fancied it up a little using HTML tables. Favorite links, computer news from Ziff-Davis, weather, comics, Internet "search" tools, top news headlines, stock quotes, sports scores, Web "picks", and TV listings are some of the options available almost all of which comes from other Web sites. You could write the HTML yourself instead of using their template to customize your MSN home page, but Microsoft is counting on the fact that most people won't. It's a lot more useful (and certainly more glamorous) than a simple list of hotlinks. Try it and decide for yourself. The folks at Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, etc., must be slapping their foreheads and saying, "That was so simple, why didn't WE do it?" The wonderful thing is, you can bet someone else will do it and probably a little better. Then someone else will do it better still, and so on...Ah, it's a wonderful Internet. In the mean time, Microsoft wants MORE subscribers for MSN. Maybe they need to buy another song. Perhaps, they can snag the Bacharach-David hit "What the World Needs Now Is Love (Sweet Love)" Then they could have, "What the World Needs Now, Is M-S-N, Oh Not Just for Some, but for Everyone... We don't need another browser, there are browsers..." (Okay, I admit that it is scary that I think thoughts like that, let alone share them.) The Internet Frenzy: What's in a Name? Just ask H&R Block ========================================================== H&R BLOCK'S NUMBERS for the quarter ending 10/31/95 were hurt by increased spending on CompuServe's recent initiatives, according to reports. Block, which lost $1.2 million during the same quarter one year ago, saw its quarterly loss widen to $8.3 million. Still, the CompuServe division's revenues were up almost 38% versus the same quarter last year, to a record $188.4 million. Though the rate reduction to $2.95/hour that went into effect on 9/10/95 only impacted 1/2 of the quarter, the reduction and increased spending on new marketing initiatives led to the quarterly loss. Reportedly, the CompuServe division's operating income fell 36% to $22 million and operating margins were cut in half to 12% versus 25% last quarter due to these initiatives. "We are consciously foregoing short-term gains at CompuServe in exchange for growth and profitability over the long term," said H&R Block President and CEO Richard Brown in a statement reported by Reuters. I doubt CompuServe will see the return of the 25% operating margin anytime soon. In fact, results next quarter (which will be the 3rd quarter for H&R Block's fiscal '96) could be even worse than this quarter, with more of their margin evaporating. While the wonderful margins are gone, it doesn't appear to be as gloomy as some (including myself) thought several months back. There are many that disagree with my current outlook, too and not just the employees at HRB and CompuServe! Unterberg Harris analyst Lisa Thompson reiterated H&R Block as a "buy" according to Reuters. According to the report, Thompson thinks H& R Block "should experience the full effect" of the increased marketing expense during the 3rd (which we interpret to mean "next") quarter. "We continue to believe that H&R Block remains one of the most undervalued stocks among the online and Internet providers," said Thompson. While the CompuServe stock has performed very well for a "normal" market, it hasn't taken off like so many of the Internet stocks. Netscape had $20 million in revenue last quarter (that's $168 million LESS than CompuServe, with the tax revenues thrown in, it would be more than $203 million less than H&R Block). Oh sure, the browser is the thing, and Netscape owns the browser market today. But if you use that logic, a bet on Netscape would be a bet against Spyglass, right? But Spyglass has soared into the stratosphere too! It's as if people are trying to diversify their portfolios with Internet stocks. Once one stock goes into the stratosphere, they seem to move to one that hasn't. The Internet frenzy. But not H&R Block. Could it be the name H&R Block? People think about H&R Block and they probably think about taxes, and not CompuServe. Who knows where the stock would be right now if they'd changed the company name to Block Online, BlockSoft or BlockScape? Perhaps they will just change the official name of the company to CompuServe and start trading under that name. Either way, it should be fun to watch what happens. This and That ============= AOL DEEMED BREAST A VULGAR term and then reversed their position after complaints from women who wished to discuss "breast cancer". -- ONLINE SERVICES BACK DOWN? A coalition of online services bowed "to a seemingly unstoppable push in Congress to keep sexual material off the Internet" by backing legislation drafted by Rep. Rick White, R-Wash, according to the New York Times. White's draft isn't as harsh as the current Senate bill's provisions against making "indecent" material available to children. Under White's House Bill this would be changed to material that is "harmful" to children. -- IBM ANNOUNCES INTERNET UNIT: IBM formed an Internet software and announced plans to adjust research budgets in a major move into the exploding networking market. Heading the new division will be Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 50, formerly the general manager of IBM's workstation and parallel computing business. He will report to John Thompson, senior VP and head of IBM's $12 billion software division. -- SCIENTOLOGY CASE AGAINST NETCOM is set to go to trial. A November 21st ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte, found enough evidence existed for the copyright case against Netcom and former Scientology Minister Dennis Erlich. While Judge Whyte ruled that Netcom isn't liable for direct copyright infringement or for vicarious liability, (a major ruling), since there is evidence that the Church of Scientology asked Netcom to "do something", the judge denied Netcom's motion to dismiss the case and ruled the case could go to trial on the issue of contributory infringement. -- See you next week! Stock Watch =========== New this week: CMG Information Svcs. AOL: 2 for 1 stock split in effect Spyglass: Announces 2-1 Stock Split for shareholders of record as of 12/6 This Last 52 52 Week's Week's Week Week Company Ticker Close Close High Low ------- ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- @Net Index IIX $245.96 $235.81 $259.85 $185.76 America Online AMER $ 40.00 $ 35.38 $ 44.25 $ 10.25 Apple AAPL $ 37.63 $ 40.19 $ 50.94 $ 33.63 AT&T T $ 66.75 $ 65.00 $ 67.13 $ 47.25 Bolt,Beranek & Newman BBN $ 40.63 $ 34.50 $ 40.63 $ 12.63 CMG Information Svcs. CMGI $ 76.75 $ $ 76.75 $ 10.81 FTP Software FTPS $ 32.63 $ 29.50 $ 35.50 $ 20.25 General Elec. GE $ 68.63 $ 66.00 $ 68.63 $ 45.75 H&R Block HRB $ 44.50 $ 45.75 $ 48.88 $ 33.38 IBM IBM $ 94.75 $ 95.88 $114.63 $ 69.38 MCI MCIC $ 26.50 $ 26.75 $ 27.38 $ 17.25 Mecklermedia Corp. MECK $ 17.75 $ 13.50 $ 24.38 $ 2.13 Microsoft MSFT $ 86.25 $ 88.00 $109.25 $ 58.25 Netcom NETC $ 70.00 $ 62.50 $ 91.50 $ 16.75 Netscape Comm. Corp NSCP $137.25 $109.75 $142.25 $ 45.75 NetManage NETM $ 22.50 $ 21.25 $ 27.25 $ 12.38 News Corp. NWS $ 21.13 $ 21.13 $ 25.13 $ 14.38 Oracle Corp. ORCL $ 44.63 $ 45.13 $ 48.75 $ 24.66 Performance Syst. Intl PSIX $ 20.88 $ 18.50 $ 25.50 $ 12.00 Sears S $ 38.38 $ 39.50 $ 40.63 $ 21.50 Spyglass Inc. SPYG $106.75 $ 83.50 $113.50 $ 26.50 Sun Microsystems SUNW $ 84.38 $ 79.50 $ 94.75 $ 29.88 UUNET Technologies UUNT $ 76.25 $ 74.75 $ 98.75 $ 21.75 Disclaimer ========== I began writing this newsletter in September 1994, at the time I was working for a technology company that is now owned by MCI. In March, I began working for International Business Machines Corporation. As of July, my management has agreed to allow me to do some work on the newsletter during business hours (probably about 6-8 hours a week). I speak for myself and not for IBM. Subscription Information ======================== To subscribe to this newsletter by e-mail: Send an e-mail message to: LISTSERV@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM In the BODY of the message type: SUBSCRIBE ONLINE-L FIRSTNAME LASTNAME Example: Subscribe Online-L Robert Seidman If you wish to remove yourself from this mailing list, send a message to: LISTSERV@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM and in the body of the message type: SIGNOFF ONLINE-L . A Web version of the newsletter is available at: <http://www.clark.net/pub/robert>.