<nettime> the return of the "push"

[Tilman Baumgaertel <Tilman_Baumgaertel@compuserve.com>]

Hi!

        Do some of the old nettimers still remember the push concept? That
was this method to get your harddisk stuffed with loads of data in no time
at all, which was a hot topic in the internet community a long time ago.
Gee, it must have been two months already!!! 

        Anyway, here is what the "professionals" think about it. ("Web
Broadcasting" is a conference in the US.)

Yours,
Tilman 

----------
Von:    Web_Broadcasting@groupserver.revnet.com
Gesendet:       Mittwoch, 11. Juni 1997 06:25
An:     Web_Broadcasting@groupserver.revnet.com
Betreff:        WEB BROADCASTING '97>> Issue 1: Columnist Puts Push on
Double Secret 
Probat

Web Broadcasting '97 coverage
June 10, 1997 / Issue 1

Columnist puts Push on Double Secret Probation

Session Title:
"When Push Comes to Shovel"

speaker:
Steve Manes, personal computer columnist
for The New York Times

With the conviction of Dean Wormer warning
the boys at Delta house, New York Times columnist
Steve Manes delivered a hard dose of realism to
the Monday morning conference crowd - unless
push starts pushing more interesting
content, it is in big trouble.

He was making reference to the fact that the
popular push clients (such as Pointcast) just
push  us the same news we get in the paper.
Manes stressed that there are simply many more
ways to do that particular content delivery better.

To make his point Manes held up a typical-sized
Sunday newspaper and declared that the hard-copy
form was still a very efficient delivery
mechanism for news. The average Sunday newspaper
contains anywhere from 50 Megabytes to 1 Gigabyte
of information, yet this mass of data can be cost
effectively delivered every Sunday morning by the
"traditional" technology of newspaper distribution.

Manes hit his point home by shattering several of
the assumptions often put forth by the pro push
camp. Among the most memorable are:

--Push media BUILDS COMMUNITY

This claim could be made by most any media
(magazine publishers, for example).

--Internet transmissions are FREE to all.

Bandwidth costs money, and push uses a lot
of it.

--People will get PRECISELY the information they
want when they want it.

Agents and filters just aren't intelligent
enough to do the job yet; and sometimes you don't
know what you want until you see it.

--The computer desktop is the BEST source of news
and information.

How much 'up-to-the' minute news do we really
need? And furthermore, most of the time these
programs are covered up with other applications
you are using to get your work done.

--Advertisers can TAILOR ads to a consumer

"One man's push is another man's spam."

--Push will SAVE you time

If anything, its current incarnation has given
us more data than we can manage in a reasonable
time.

--Push will ELIMINATE pull

Pull works when you are trying to find an answer
to a specific question. Frankly, media rarely dies.

Manes points set a rather pragmatic tone that was
echoed over and over the rest of the day - much
push technology is not ubiquitous enough in to
be truly useful to the general public.

"People care about getting data effortlessly,"
Manes said. "When was the last time you got an
error message from your TV, radio or newspaper?"

Reporting provided by Richard Hoy, moderator of
the Online Advertising Discussion List
http://www.o-a.com
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