Re: considering internet/privacy periodical

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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/