Caffeinated Info

15 Years Ago, remembering AltaVista

15 years ago tomorrow, May 1, 1995, I walked into the doors of Digital Equipment Corporation. I was a marketing/business person working in the Advanced Technology Group – my mission was to help bring amazing technology to market that the brilliant minds in the ATG's Digital Labs were thinking up.

About the same time I walked into those doors, a researcher named Mike Burrows created indexing technology to index his vast email archives … so he could win office debates! It didn't take much for his colleagues at the Labs, specifically a great guy named Paul Flaherty, to figure out if they pointed that technology to the young Web, it would solve the problem on finding information on all the millions of pages that were popping up. Then, Louis Monier ran with the concept and developed the front end of what ultimately became … AltaVista.

It's an amazing story and it was an amazing journey for me. I was part of the founding AltaVista team that launched the business and grew it into (at the time) the #1 internet brand, top trafficked site and a $50M media and $70M software business before Digital was sold to Compaq.  Then AltaVista was sold, sold and sold again … gradually fading from its glory in the process.

I loved being part of the AltaVista journey and my  ... how have things changed in 15 years. That conversation is for a different day.  For now, here are a few things from my archives to share. I have a ton of stuff somewhere – this is good incentive to dig it out and post another update. For now … ENJOY!

The Original Logo – Circa 1995

Cleaned up logo (without the tree's) – Circa 1996

Remember the "Book"? We sold about 50K copies and in many languages.

Some of the artwork from the AltaVista Internet Software website (Circa 1996)

 

 

The other products that were part of AltaVista Internet Software … other than SEARCH (we ultimately had 3 version of search - enterprise ...desktop and of course the search engine at www.AltaVista.com):

  

  
 
 
For those who don't remember, we took enterprise software and began making consumer/SMB facing internet showcases of each of the technologies. 

This one is AltaVista Forum. Using AltaVista Forum (Collaboration software), this was a 1000 story office tower where each floor was a full version of the software available for free. This is an image from before launch. We got to 50% occupancy rate within a few months of launch. J There was another one AltaVista Business Card Directory (ABCD) – if I find those I'll post them here as well.

Some of the Enterprise Software Images … here is AltaVista Forum:

The software box;

Startup screen

Social Media ... Just Do It

Amazing.  In a recent poll by MarketingSherpa, many companies are still figuring out this whole social media thing.  The poll looks at the key barriers to adopting a social media marketing strategy.  According to the poll, lack of knowledge about social media (46%) and the inability to measure ROI (43%) are the key drivers.  Hmmmm … could they be related?

In my travels, I hear arguments on both sides of the social media aisle.  On the one hand, there are people like John Blossom, President and Chief Analyst of Shore Communications (and on the SIIA Content Board with me).  John is usually the first in my circle to play with the latest social media tools.  Way back when Twitter launched, then Google Wave and most recently, Google Buzz  – he dove right in. It’s been fascinating to watch and observe John.  He has been very open about his evolving learning’s and suggestions on how best to leverage each social media tool.  Its fun to see him, and others, try to understand these tools and the implications for them and their businesses. I bet if you asked John or any person or business proactively figuring how social media impacts their business, they could tell you exactly what ROI social media provides to their business. 

On the other side of the social media aisle? The loud cry from those who just don't understand. Who are they?  Well, the respondents from that MarketingSherpa poll for one. In my own personal polling, I have found people actually bragging they are laggards and use that excuse not to test social media. Others, and you see the blog posts and tweets all the time, just don't see the ROI and therefore refuse to try it out.  Oh ... then there are the comments that it’s a waste of time! Your teenagers on Facebook for 7 hours a day ... is a waste of time.  Your business?  You really can’t afford NOT to. 

Ignorance and lack of action is no excuse.  The challenge with social media is in order to understand it … you need to use it.  The more you blog, tweet, buzz and post on various social media sites … the more you ‘get it’.   While some of these examples are a bit dated, check out what happened to these companies when they didn’t understand and appropriately react to the social media activity.   

I am stating the obvious here, but you laggards, technically phobic and overly analytically inclined who have not jumped in yet, you need to jump in and start learning and testing social media now. Its way beyond a start up phase ... or even a fad. This week, Twitter announced that there are now over 50 million tweets a day. The search engines are now integrating Twitter, Facebook and other social media services into "real time search".   Social media is here to stay and will be a force impacting your company whether you want it to or not ... for better or worse. 

At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves, our customers and our investors - to experiment with all things social media and to figure it out.  Just do it!

Shameless Plug for SIIA Publisher Search Survey

One of the activities that I enjoy is participating on the Board of the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) Content Board. I also Chair the Search Engine Executive Council (S.E.E.C. – Don’t you love the cool acronym?)

The Search Engine Executive Council has created a brief survey for publishers, media and information companies.  The goal is to better understand your needs and interest regarding “Search”.  Please take ten minutes and provide us with your input.  
 
To begin the survey please click here: http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/288193/1d03/

This survey is completely confidential and all final results will be aggregated.  Once the survey has been completed we will compile the results and share a top line summary with all participants.