Grandpa, tell me again about when the Net was special
I really hope someone’s writing all this down. Way back in the day, the old Modem Driver, David Plotnikoff, and I used to talk about the privilege of seeing history unfold at pace rapid enough that you could actually watch the progress of a fundamental transformation. While the big steps would be well chronicled, we wondered if anyone would keep track of little, incremental signs of the Net’s integration into ordinary, daily life — stuff like the first time an AOL disc dropped out of a magazine at a supermarket checkout or the first TV commercial that included a URL in addition to a toll-free number.
I’m thinking about this today because of a pair of stories that serve as mini-mileposts on the Net’s road to being unremarkable. First, Wal-Mart is opening a Skype section: pallet of dog food, dozen tube socks, couple gallons of fruit punch and some VoIP hardware — yep, that’ll do it today. From beta to big box in four short years. The new displays will show up in about 1,800 Wal-Mart stores, and the product mix, which will vary according to the local savvy, will include handsets, headsets and webcams from companies like Motorola, Plantronics, Logitech and Royal Philips, as well as prepaid calling cards.
Skype, bought by eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion plus hefty performance incentives, knows it will have to do as much educating as selling. “We think there will be a lot of Wal-Mart shoppers who will not be familiar with Skype,” said Don Albert, general manager for Skype North America. “We have worked with Wal-Mart to describe Skype simply in the display.” And as Om Malik notes, an influx of VoIP newbies means Skype will have to meet unforgiving expectations and do a good job of explaining things like 911 connectivity issues. Still, it’s got to be a little unsettling for the big telcos, not to mention poor old Vonage (see “Vonage not dead — again“).
The second subtle signal of incremental integration is word that for the first time, online shoppers spent more on clothes and accessories than on computer gear, the perennial top non-travel sales category. A Forrester study for Shop.org found online sales of apparel, accessories and footwear reached $18.3 billion last year and should hit $22.1 billion this year. Computer hardware and software sales were $17.2 billion last year. Apparently, shoppers’ reticence over the inability to touch or try on clothing online has been eased a bit by improved viewing technology and liberal shipping and return policies, and the selection is hard to beat. Of course even those growing online figures represent less than 10 percent of all clothing sales, but seeing hardware and software surpassed by sportswear and footwear is worth a moment to note.
So what about you? Do you recall being struck by any seemingly insignificant indicators that the Web is simply woven into the fabric of life?
What’s going to happen with the Wal-Mart/Skype connection may be a repeat of AOL’s purchase of ICQ (Mirabilis). You couldn’t have brought in two more diametrically opposed users. AOL users were the ‘nets newbies and ICQ users were the early adopters and trend setters. I think that’s why there was never true integration and AIM and ICQ always stayed as separate entities.
Another trend setting moment I’d point to was the pre orders of I believe the fourth Harry Potter book (”Goblet of Fire”) on Amazon. The site got an amazing exclusive deal to be the first to sell the book. But the only way you could purchase it was online through Amazon. My guess is that many people’s first experience with ecommerce was through purchasing that very book on Amazon. Up until then most average Internet users had been timid about ecommerce and entering their credit card information online. But since this was the only option, they put down their fears for a moment. How bad could it be? It’s only a book and it doesn’t cost that much. So they tried it and guess what? The book appeared on their door a few days later. Getting over that hurdle allowed them to make their next ecommerce purchase with considerably reduced fear.
Talking about “incremental signs of the Net’s integration into ordinary, daily life”? How about this …
About two years ago, my daughter called me in a panic from school. She’d worked really hard preparing a slideshow presentation for class, but she saved it in an OpenOffice format that the teacher’s PowerPoint couldn’t handle. So, I had her ask the teacher to email me her presentation, I converted it to PPT, and emailed it back. The whole thing took just a few minutes. After that rocky start, her presentation went well.
Back in the day, that whole scenario would have been - literally - unimaginable.
I bought a USB Skype phone from Walmart well over a year ago. Why is it new, now?
When my mom first joined an email list a few years back. (As part of her side work as a children’s book writer.)
It was recently that the net again crept more into my everyday life…completed a project on the west coast completely via the web, with a couple of cell phone calls…interesting…then last month I canned my landline…cause I went totally wireless in my townehome…TV to laptop to phone all wireless…landline gone forever a relic of a far distant past…also unloaded and upgraded my cell phone service…had an old cell with an old established overpriced underperforming cell company…upgraded to a sleek modern cell that of course has the net…and its varient text messaging…so that is my net story…goodbye Ma Bell and your overpriced limited use landline…ten years from now landlines will be like “PHONE BOOTHS” few and far between…
Another sign of integration into daily life… Daily use, getting the news from a variety of sources online on the web and in email. Imho, the television news and the newspaper are falling behind in relevance.