Bob and JoAnn Lilienfeld wanted their business to stand out. Soon their electronic forms might let you type in the age of your child, information about his or her interests, your budget, and other constraints. You would instantly receive tips on what gifts to buy. Even now, you could order online without talking to a human—not as heartless as it might sound, if you simply valued your time and telephone money. The electronic forms could even calculate the postage.
White Rabbit intrigued me, and others felt the same way. Within a few weeks of my first visit, they got calls from the Wall Street Journal and the Detroit Free Press. Some reporters had caught on to the obvious: While Hollywood and Washington were off prattling clichés about the overpriced medium called interactive TV—while Al Gore was cracking jokes on stage with Lily Tomlin during an entertainment summit disguised as an “information” one—entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies were trying ads on the Net. The Internet often narrows differences between large and small businesses. Even little ones can reach global audiences and, through well-planned Web areas, look like giants to customers in Rio or Tokyo. New cybermalls sprout up to get technophobic companies online by providing both technical and creative services. Corporations fight over addresses for the Net. Stanley Kaplan, a service that tutors students for academic examinations such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, sued a competitor that stole the name kaplan.com. A writer for Wired magazine mischievously claimed McDonald’s name, which the hamburger chain hadn’t yet registered. Such oversights, however, were rapidly becoming the exception in an era when prime Web sites made the pages of Newsweek.
Even electronic hookers (“We go all the way”) were on the Internet—in fact, operating under the name “Brandy’s Babes.” They plied their trade from Arizona, the same wild and quirky state from which Canter and Siegel enraged the Net. And yet, if you cast the usual moral questions aside, the Babes seemed to be exemplary citizens of cyberspace. Not just hypesters, they posted specifics like prices, bust, hip, and waist measurements, and preferences in men. “No beards,” a Babe warned customers. “Employed men only.”
Unlike the hardsellers, the Babes did not inflict unwanted ads on thousands of newsgroups. And in line with the two-way traditions of the Net, they solicited messages from customers—dirty ones that the Babes might charge good money to answer. You could even dial up Brandy’s and see a live Babe at her computer with her impressive bosom exposed. The gig lasted several zany months. Fear of police raids grew, however, even before the ayatollahs in the U.S. Senate ranted against net.sex. I finally saw just a blank screen except for a laconic message alluding to “bad links.”
Separately a condom store was online as well. It offered medical information, supplied tantalizing odds and ends on such topics as “The Size of a Man’s Pony,” and wittily answered questions from appreciative readers. Like Brandy’s, it operated in a nonintrusive way.
The World Wide Web was also a virtual home for thousands of more conventional businesses such as the manufacturer of a toy gun that shot Ping-Pong balls, a city’s worth of bookstores, Godiva chocolate, and Ragu spaghetti. None other than the Home Shopping Network bought out a Net retailer specializing in computer equipment. Pizza Hut went online. And the United States was hardly alone in this trend. The Singaporeans were competing in the cyberpizza race—Shakey’s Pizza was girding to take orders, via a fax-Net link, from hungry scientists and students at the National University of Singapore. A large Irish bank advertised on the Net. So did the Royal Bank of Canada. It mounted a bilingual Web area for both English- and French-speaking customers who, once past the first menu, didn’t have to clutter their screens with material in the wrong language.
Some of the old technical barriers, of course, remained even in rich countries: most hardware was still rotten for doing home shopping. What the customers needed, and what Silicon Valley could not yet provide, happened to be small, affordable, sharp-screened computers that could colorfully show off the merchandise. The main way to look at the Net was through Mosaic-style programs. And even at 28.8 kilobits per second—the highest speed possible through widely available modems—it took too long to go from page to page of electronic catalogues. The biggest problem was the software installation, which could be tricky. Although software such as Internet in a Box simplified the matters, the Net was not yet TV-easy to use.
Even so, some companies were designing inexpensive gadgets, which could sell for mere hundreds of dollars, that would allow people to surf the Internet on their televisions. I hated the idea of anyone reading text off a blurry television screen. But at least the powers of the computer world were finally thinking of the Internet as a real, live marketplace. Just as important, Prodigy, America Online, CompuServe, and rivals were preparing to let customers reach Web sites from their proprietary networks.
Microsoft was planning point-and-click Internet capabilities for its Windows 95 operating system. And it had bought stock in a key Internet provider and would be linking its own network tightly with the Net. Advertising Age estimated the number of people able to access the Web itself—the best place for Net advertising—at several million at the start of 1995.[[2.2]] And that number might push past 11 million by 1998, according to a report from a Massachusetts research firm.[[2.3]] So, even if Internet merchants aren’t advertising in the most consumer-oriented of places right now, they might well be awash in new business later on.
The existing denizens of the Internet were more technical than the people on, say, Prodigy or America Online. Some software companies used this to their great advantage. A good example was Cyberspace Development Company, which had created an extraordinarily useful program called The Internet Adapter, or TIA. Most Net people couldn’t enjoy Mosaic-style viewers because their network connections did not allow this. But TIA let even Netfolks with $18-a-month accounts use Mosaic and other marvels. And to buy TIA, they did not have to go to a retail store.