SuperNova2007 (3/...)

Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy?
(Ge Jin, Max Levchin, Andrea Matwyshyn, Elliot Noss, Ellen Siminoff)

Much of the economic activity online isn't the visible shopping or advertising. Billions of dollars flow through hidden activities, ranging from the widely-accepted (search marketing and behavioral targeting), to the grey market ("gold farming" and manipulation of domain names), to the bad guys (the spam economy and extortion via denial of service). Could these under-appreciated practices someday (or perhaps today) be the real economic backbone of the Web?

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Notes:

10-15% of search result revenue is generated by users who misspell the URL in the address bar and get to a “search” page – populated by Yahoo!/Google generated links.

Domain name resale will merge (in the process) with creating new domains. The best advertising value on the Web is a domain name.

There was a long discussion about the risks, methods and activities around ID thefts, scams and other ways to rip your network ID (from eBay to eMail accounts and so). The severity of attacks is growing.
Too scary to write about…

Opportunities:
The Widgets are the next big thing in advertising.
Flash based Widgets are a great platform to consume (view and buy) media and transactions.
Domain navigation will continue to play important role due to search algorithms, credibility and so on.

The discussion ended with a positive note that individuals and companies who are successful (have real customers and real money flow) – are successful because they helped people to achieve what they (the people) wanted.

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My thoughts:

Action items

• Reset online passwords…
• Close old accounts…
• Think about the future role of the browser vs. widgets vs. OS.

E.T.



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