Just in case, SmarterKids offers wooden blocks on its Web site, too. Sans scratches.
Stephen D. Solomon is an associate professor of journalism at New York University, where he is director of the program in Business and Economic Reporting.
Pucci's Epiphany
FROM: Jeff Pucci
SENT: Wednesday, September 24, 1997 6:46 PM
TO: Al Noyes; David Blohm; Steven Thomas
CC: Richard Viard
SUBJECT: Internet URL "smarterkids.com"
Yesterday I was contemplating our place in the Internet/online universe while driving home, and was trying to envision how things might evolve over the next several years.
It's become painfully apparent to me (as it has to y'all, I'm sure) that this "Internet deal" is not only here to stay, but is poised to completely supplant many a business model in a staggeringly diverse number of companies. The business that we're in -- delivering software content -- seems particularly vulnerable to drastic change.
I honestly feel that we have not "missed out" on any significant Internet-based business opportunities yet, at least up to the present. This opinion is based in large part to remaining cognizant of the fact that content-based software publishers like us have yet (to my knowledge) to generate sales over the Internet that represent even a meager 1% of overall revenues.
But it's feeling very much to me like it's just a matter of time before a true critical mass of Internet/online users emerges, and with it, in time, will emerge a viable business model or two, even for selling our sort of goods and services. The fact that the online universe is, for the first time, tangibly beginning to "steal" eyeballs away from various traditional media -- magazines, newspapers and television -- seems like hard evidence to me.
Although I earnestly expect that it'll take at least another 23 years minimum before we hit critical mass that is really meaningful for our kind of business -- in terms of revenue generating opportunities where you actually make substantial net commerce based sales projections that you realistically intend to meet -- the fact is that once you project beyond 9 months or so in Internet land, you simply just don't know.
What does it all mean? I guess I'm just suggesting that we maybe gradually endeavor to try a few things; ideas that may result from our meeting about it now and again over the next few months.
For example, today I had Rich contact T3 (our Internet architect partners) and secure the URL "smarterkids.com". Turns out that that URL is available, and the fee for securing it is very nominal, so we're getting it.
My thinking re that idea is as follows: Yes, the company name is Virtual Knowledge, and that's fine. But imagine doing a massive ad campaign down the road that has the term "smarterkids.com" plastered everywhere. You know, maybe even have full page ads that run for successive months in all sorts of publications that are simply an entirely black page with "smarterkids.com" in a 16-point white font. Pretty soon, you'd have some people with kids that are just dying of curiosity to just type that into their browser some evening. Because as we have learned, the toughest challenge is to somehow get people to your site. Then you've got to make the compelling pitch, of course, but that's a separate issue.
Just as Sylvan uses "educate.com" for their URL, "smarterkids.com" is more targeted, arguably more memorable, actually means something, and presumably, it's something that every parent wants. And it's something that we can deliver for a fee.
Toy Traffic
In December 1999, when toy buyers did most of their shopping for the year, SmarterKids.com fared decently against some hefty competition, attracting almost 2 million unique visitors. Media Metrix Inc., which measures Web-site traffic, defines unique visitors as "the estimated number of total users who visited the Web site once in the given month."
*Insufficient sample size.
Source: Media Metrix Inc.
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