In the early days of HTML (“WWW“) I looked for every opportunity to embed an in-line link on the websites I was responsible for. The more links, the better. It was all about the “user experience” back then and links added value.
Seems like I don’t see that many links these days and I only had to wonder for about three seconds. Why would they send me off to another page/site? Maybe we were always just “eyeballs.” I miss those links and the places they took me.
In the late 90’s I played a small part in our company’s early efforts to get on “the information highway.” We went all-in on an idea called AdActive. Proving, once again, that nothing ever dies on the Internet, I found the following on ClickZ. (1998)
Straylight in Seattle launched AdActive, a software product that allows existing banner ads to provide advertisers information on end-user brand perceptions, letting marketers target future messages based on individual responses.
Designed to support one-to-one relationships between customers and companies, AdActive works with a Web site’s existing ad delivery system or network to extend the traditional banner ad, the privately held company said.
Users are offered a number of options to tell advertisers what they think of the product or brand being presented without being taken away from the content they are viewing. AdActive then records the response so that it can be aggregated to provide detailed brand/product perception reports and used to more effectively target future ads.
“AdActive allows Web sites to realize new revenue by giving advertisers the ability to interact directly with consumers,” said Allen Hammock, technical director for Straylight’s AdActive Product Group. “Advertisers will also be able to look at what people think about their brand and products while giving Web surfers the ability to actively shape their online ad experience without registering or giving up their online anonymity.”
AdActive features a response bar, a small footprint Java applet, allows an individual to pass along positive or negative responses to an ad, contact an advertiser directly or even cancel an ad from being shown again.
The app gives advertisers the ability to respond to individual consumer brand perceptions with new advertisements or to refocus their efforts on consumers who chose not to respond at all.
AdActive is designed to work with NetGravity’s industry-standard ad delivery system, AdServer. The software is priced in a tiered structure based on a site’s traffic and computing resources.
International Business Times: “Sears and Kmart filed for bankruptcy in October 2018 and were able to stave off another bankruptcy filing during the pandemic as sales lagged and foot traffic waned. But now the retailer is facing a new series of financial troubles.”
My mom and her family (farmers) called the Sears “mail order catalog” the “wish book.” Children on the farm or in small towns would begin paging through the toy section in the months leading up to Christmas, circling toys they wanted Santa to bring them. Today, I assume, they have and app — many apps — for that.
Growing up in the ’50s in a small town, the selection of toys was slim. Don’t recall it seeming so at the time but there were a couple of “ten cent stores” or “five-and-dime stores” but they could only stock so much. No, the Sears catalog was the motherlode.
While reminiscing on this today I found myself wondering, how did we order something? Toll-free numbers didn’t come along until 1967! Long distance calls were expensive and the idea of placing an order by phone was laughable.
I think the catalog had a bunch of blank order forms and you filled these out, included a personal check (money order?) and put it in the mail.
Weeks later (months?) the items would be delivered by the “mail man” or UPS, although I don’t recall getting many “parcel post” deliveries in those days.
And we thought nothing about going through this process. It was this or take whatever you cold find on the shelves of local stores (remember them?)
What we have today? Literally unimaginable (for me). The Sears catalog was replaced the internet and websites and the entire chain was doomed long ago. And you something? My toys don’t mean quite as much as they did back then.
I used to think about what it means to “be online.” I still recall when everything was off-line. Or pre-line.
Before social media and the primacy of the latest post — and the irrelevance of all previous posts — I thought of my websites, especially my blog, like a small town library. You kept everything you thought you (or someone) might want to retrieve and read again. I didn’t care much how infrequently a “book” was checked out, just that it was there on a shelf and in the card catalog.
But now the ever-flowing river of Tweets, Toots, FB posts, etc. makes anything below the scroll worthless. The notion of “rebooting” one’s online presence made me think of moving that small town library to a new building on the other side of town.
Everywhere you look people are streaming live video. TV news programs, late night talk shows, online classes, grandmothers Zooming with their grandkids. It has never been easier to “video chat” with someone. But it wasn’t always this way. Here are a few of my memories from the early days. (6 min)
I’ve gone back and forth on comments since I started blogging in February 2002. When I remember I disable them but rarely get any comments on posts where I forget. We don’t get a lot of visitors here but that’s always been fine by me. One of my favorite bloggers, Dave Winer, has what I consider the best approach to comments.
Start a blog, I advise, and say what you have to say and link to my post. Of course what they really wanted was to use my flow to (very often) zing me personally in some way. I consider that spam. Or hijacking. It gets so insidious so quickly that I haven’t had comments here for any duration for many years. It starts off collegial, but quickly devolves into abuse as the trolls take over.
I’ve attempted to disable all comments from previous posts but haven’t checked to see if that worked.
Hugs and kisses (virtual) for the CenturyLink tech that found and fixed the problem with our DSL. Be a while before I take even so-so internet access for granted.
“Blogging is akin to stand-up comedy — it’s not coherent drama, it’s a stream of wisecracks. It’s also like street art — just sort of there, stuck in the by-way, begging attention, then crumbling rapidly.”
I’ve been thinking of this Time of Quarantine as a sort of silent retreat. A time for quiet reflection. Only I haven’t been that silent. I’ve been sharing stuff I find online, usually via iMessage. I’m going to try to do less of that. One, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen it and, two, who need one more interruption. What’s the old saying? “If I want any shit out of you I’ll squeeze your head.” I could post random thoughts, observations and links here but it would feel like clutter.
Which brings me to Mastodon. It’s a little like Twitter… without all the assholes. I have complete control of whose posts (they call them “toots”) I see and who sees what I post. If a bad actor shows up, they’re warned to behave and booted if they don’t.
This is an experiment. I might not be able to resist IM’ing some of my contacts. But I’m going to try. And, no, you don’t have to create a Mastodon account to see my toots (cute, no?). You can bookmark this link.