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The Big Dogs of the Internet

Merger mania! Microsoft buys Hotmail. Yahoo buys Geocities. Google buys Blogger. Yahoo buys Overture. Personally, I think UPS and Fed-Ex should merge. They could call their new company Fed-Up.

If you've been online as long as I have, you may remember one of the longest running threads in John Audette's now defunct "I-Sales" newsletter. Then again, probably not. It was about "big dogs" vs "little dogs."

Anyway, as I read the messages, way back when, I always thought of the Steiner cartoon where a dog is sitting at a computer (with its paws on the keyboard) saying "On the Internet, no one even KNOWS you're a dog!"

Isn't that the truth. Or, maybe they do.

Have you ever wondered why some businesses become a wild success, while others never do?

Why two college kids sharing links became such big Yahoos?

Why some guy working on an auction web page to help his girlfriend find Pez collectors could turn into eBay, while others stumble and mumble along?

Have you ever endured a conversation with a self-centered bore? Blind date? Relative? Boss, even? You know, the ones that talk about themselves continually until you want to stuff a sock in it! Some websites are like that, if you know what I mean.

Most people are not filled with a burning desire to be bored out of their skulls! Other than your Momma, no one wants to listen to you yap about yourself.

Perhaps that's the key to how the "big dogs" got big. By giving people what people want. Despite the jokes people make about AOL, AOL makes it awfully easy for a newbie to get online.

When I go to the Netscape or Microsoft website, they don't have talking head (read; entire company profile) on page one. You have to LOOK for that. They tell me what they have to offer me. Period.

Yahoo doesn't say "We're number One", "We're the best" yet people are knocking themselves out trying to get listed. Why is that? If you know Yahoo's history, they didn't start with deep pockets!

Perhaps the "big dogs" realize that when you give people what they want, you don't need to TELL anyone how good you are. It just shows.

In the words of Henry J. Kaiser, "When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt".

Give your website the "bore test". Does your site focus on your customer or yourself? Will I know - on page one- what you can do for me? If your website uses the words "I" and "me" more than the word "you" and "your", you are barking up the wrong tree. All that self focus might make you feel good, but it's not doing much for your customers.

If you answered yes, (you pass the bore test) you just might be a "big dog" one day.
If anyone KNEW you were a dog, that is!

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