The book collector
Top*Four by DMLR - The marketing magazine
TOP WEBSITES - LINKS
Another Language
The Cobweb Of Nations
MapQuest
Maps Delivery
National Geographic
Exploring A Real World
Yellow Pages
The Italian eDirectory
CONTACT
Roberto Dondi
Word processing, html programming and the ropes
Subscribe DMLR
free registration to get the newsletter via email
TOP-FOUR
Previous mags by nickname
Big-P
Blue
Cat
Cow
Dance
Girl
Green
Jazz
Kid
M.F.
(INTRO) I like to think of the Internet as modern geography imploding space and distance the way maps compress the world onto a 2-dimensional sheet of paper. A hard core of information, plainly and simply! It's not important to us how many explorations made the geography as precise as charts look today. We have not time to watch everywhere or to theorize on the meaning of all things around. No one of us could point out exactly, map at hand, where the Nile or the St. Lawrence rivers are springing out. In fact too many tributaries and lakes are flowing into and from the main stream. So it makes sense that the uncanny source should remain a dream of desert bedouins or coureurs de bois, who carried information alongside those holy rivers... You see this time I didn't draw on films characters! C@ www.nationalgeographic.com.
The 'world wide web' don't exist being a representation of organizations, goods, trade, people reduced into an array of 'O' and '1'. When we are wandering the Web we are alone, just files and us. Are you often lost or misplaced? It is the 'fata morgana' mirage. The Web is our desert, every sand grain (
) a datum. This sand sea -like Sahara- is tracked of millions of paths and roads and the gamble is whether we'll find our water, namely the information. The 21st century is an age of information seekers. They gather at web sites as if it were bars or cafés, looking for the lost oasis and crisscrossing new and old settlements in a hurry... All they want is information, presto. And the Web is offering nothing else but the propinquity of information. In the knapsack which always will be a part of our knowledge is a technical equipment of Explorer (tm), Navigator (tm) and other tools able to map and bookmark web sites as landmarks. My task is to describe briefly --your time is precious-- how to map the Web from a marketing perspective because you are supposed to be interested in such an approach to the electronic desert, an ideal location of training and searching. Aware of that that interesting information can be found everywhere over the Internet, like water hole on Sahara.
C@ yellow.tecnet.it.Part one - PLAYERS. Over the Internet we find three groups of players, each of them is forming a market apart or a market segment to refer to.
Providers and Developers of Technology and Know-How.They offer computers and programs for the on-line connection; infrastructures for managing and building the web sites; security and payment systems; languages and other applicative tools.
- software houses
- hardware manufacturers
- internet service providers
- telephone companies
- information technology developers
- consultants
Users selling Information.Organizations, businesses and people that harness the resources and opportunities provided by the first group to create added value by innovative services to the present or potential customers.
- industry, trade, finance, estate companies
- services and communication companies
- governments, corporations and associations
- web service providers (search engines, directories, advertisement, malls, on-line shops)
- web intermediaries
End users and Buyers.Organizations and individuals are getting connected to the Net to communicate, search, buy or deal with counterparts with a commercial purpose or as ulterior, personal or familiar, motive.
- home users
- employees
- students of schools and universities
- trade corporations
- non-profit organizations
Click here to read Global Zoo Web!
Part two - LIFE CYCLE. Every player of the Internet is adopting this new medium to gain its own advantages related to different goals and experienced through the learning curve. The map is listing five approaching stages available to any of the previous groups.
ACCESS.To have a new communication vehicle (i.e. to search for information or data). The web site is not yet built up.
PRESENCE.To improve the traditional marketing action (i.e. by adding on-line visibility). The target selection is a matter of quantity related to actual range of distribution channels: local, national, international wide opening.
PUBBLICITY.To introduce new informative services or promote to clients (i.e. products facing, technical FAQ). Target group's location and reach are critical factors to the good success of the marketing investment.
SALES.To complete the sales procedures (i.e. by placing an order on-line). This stage uses the Internet to better know the target group as well as its buying habits and preferences.
DISTRIBUTION.To transform trade processes (i.e. by developing and delivering services via the Internet). It is the maximum of the Internet as buying channel the customers are ready to accept and use for.
How to use the marketing map. The #2 and #3 stages are usually interacting to allow the web site to provide basic data and informative news or become a complete promotional tool --the electronic brochure. The #4 and #5 stages are instead the "nouvelle frontière" allowing to set up an actual Web Marketing system, that meets the new products and organizational methods the player has changed or set up ex-novo for the Internet --for example as start-up. C@ www.mapquest.com.
(OUTRO) When a young nurse and a maimed thief from Canada, a bomb sapper from India and a half dead man from the Libyan desert --probably a Hungarian-- gathered in a villa in Tuscany, Italy, it was not due to a joke of geography. It was mostly the cruelty of a war of nations, whose heads of state wanted to change the border lines among nations. That was the beginning of the memories by a man who mapped the desert and learnt to hate nations. Although desert-wise he had put the heart into the wrong place. Eventually he lost his identity and was told us as "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje's namesake novel (1992). If not the geography let's respect at least the men who made and loved it!