The Internet is big business. Traditionally, where we find big business, we find corporate lobbying and law-rigging, huge marketing and advertising dollars, ruthless competition for consumer dollars and large-scale , unregulated profit-seeking. The Internet appears as if it will have a difficult time providing an exception to any of this.

     The following figures are from Terry Savage’s Jan. 17, 1999 Denver Post article:

     Stock prices in percentage changes:

 

•      Dell Computer up 249%

•      Amazon.com up 966% 

•      Yahoo! up 584%

•      eBay up 1,240% from its initial offering price.

     We often think of websites as being free, but, as the numbers suggest, Wall Street does not.

     Savage consults Monument Internet Fund portfolio manager Alexander Chueng who explains how brokers and analysts see real financial value in websites:

"Chueng points to three ingredients: traffic, eyeballs and stickiness! That is, he measures how many visits to the Web site, how many different eyeballs are on one site (vs. The same person logging on several times a day), and how long the visitor stays at the site. All of those statistics, he explains, add to the valuation of the Web site. Not only do AOL’s 17 million subscribers pay from $19.95 to $24.95 a month, every month, but they are a target audience for advertisers."

     So, finally, enough about the generation of knowledge, enough about the development of healthy communities.  Forget about grassroots democracy. These things are peripheral--if they are considered at all--by the industrial and technological corporate elite and the major media conglomerates.

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