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Are There Any Original Internet Bubble Ideas That Aren't Being Tried Again?
from the free-PCs-are-back-again... dept
While lots of folks are struggling with the definition of "Web 2.0," maybe it's as simple as all of those original bubble-era ideas coming back to life with a new gloss of hype. One of the big crazes, for a while, during the bubble era was the idea of getting some tangible good for free, in exchange for advertising. There were free cars if you were willing to cover the car with ads (you could only get it if you commuted on certain high traffic routes). You could get free DSL if you agreed to look at advertisements. And, one of the more famous ones, out of Bill Gross' Idealab, was the ability to get a free computer (from the appropriately named FreePC) -- whose screen would be surrounded by ads. Like many bubble-era ideas, this one never got very far before collapsing under its own inability to make money. However, it's baaaaaaaaack. A company in Hong Kong is apparently offering free stripped down computers to small businesses and lower income individuals. The exchange? There are a bunch of buttons on the keyboard that will take you straight to a sponsor's website. How often do you think those will be pushed? Maybe we'll find out in time for Web 3.0.
Reader Comments
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No Subject Given
I'm shipping 50 lb bags of dog food at cost, with free shipping. I plan to make money on the banner ads :)
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Re: No Subject Given
But what you really need is... a sock puppet.
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Can I get one with one of those cat things?
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Yeaa,just what I want an even slower computer at work!!!!
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Remember AllAdvantage.com?
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Ya.. i was a sucker for that one. If it was a key stuck in the middle of the keyboard, or, for every 500 keys pressed, the site would show up, that would get annoying. Not to mention, you have to think if someone would remove the function entirely leaving them an ad-free pc.
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All Advantage
Yes, the dumbest dot-com of all time!
They paid money for people to surf select sites.
So the more successful they were, the more money they lost. Incredible!
For a time they shared an internet office with mycompany in NY. But were gone fairly quickly
PavelNY
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No Subject Given
Anyone wanna buy some Flooz?
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I've got a similar idea
Free TV channels, with programs surrounded by adverts. Of course, it'll never work - if people need to watch free TV, how likely are they to buy stuff from the ads?
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Re: I've got a similar idea
If i pay $50 US for cable, why do these channels have commericals to begin with? Then you want toa dd banners around the screen? I know i could jsut get a Tivo. but thats really not the point.
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Re: I've got a similar idea
>Remember AllAdvantage.com?< br>
They were awesome I made about $10K off of them in college. Just went to computer lab or had the 4 pcs in my dorm and set up a big pyramid on myself. I would get about 30 checks a month, using the hack that just moved your mouse cursor around and went to websites, set them all up before I went to bed. They finally caught onto my scheme and told me I could only have 1 account and they would cancel my others..I decided one account wasnt worth it so I stopped my scheme....I still got random checks for about 6 months after that even without doing anything.
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programmer were art thou?
ROFL id reprogram the buttons to go to my favorite sites, not like they could do much to stop it if i was dedicated
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No Keyboard
Okay, I will just go get a new keyboard without those annoying keys...I can see someone really thought this through.
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Re: No Keyboard
Never mind, I just looked at the stupid thing. 7 inch LCD? They couldn't pay me to take that from them.
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Advertisers are figuring it out
While the original online promotions were being done by people with no solid business model and really no fiscal responsibility, online marketers today are figuring out what can be promoted online and what can't. People talked about eyeballs in the late 90's - now the concern is profit. I imagine FreePC would be a lot more viable today knowing that strong marketers have figured out how to successfully promote online. Lower PC costs would help them too. I worked on a deal with the CEO from FreePC right around the time they first began shipping. Today I would have a lot more solid concept to talk about after learning better ways to maximize traffic.
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