The firm's underwear
As with any society, Geocities' communities are well
organised, and each sub-community (of several thousand)
is run by a Community Leader, whose job is to help and
direct the community members. On the commercial side,
subscribers have the opportunity to receive regular, carefully
selected special offers. Through Netopia Virtual Office,
a Geocities member who doesn't understand HTML (the language
of Web pages) may still create a personal presentation
page in a few minutes, from which he can organise teleconferences,
send files and generally participate in a collective means
of communication. Geocities thus provides far more than
simple server space ; it is practically an online living
space.
What is Softbank ?
This Japanese company is a perfect example of an industrial
business which is determined to make the most of the Web's
opportunities. Directed by a businessman, Masayoshi Son,
it is Japan's largest hardware distributor and the biggest
publisher of computer magazines (with Ziff Davis). Having
bought a 20% share of Yahoo!, Softbank increased its share
to 37% when Yahoo entered the NASDAQ, though this has
since fallen to 21%. It also owns Yahoo! Japan, 27% of
Etrade, the market leader of online brokerage, which has
become a portal site in the financial world and, as we
have just seen, Geocities.
As a result of the recent external growth policy of the
last few years, part of the Ziff Davis group has made
it to the Stock Exchange, and three SBU (strategic business
units) have been created : the publications unit, responsible
for managing everything to do with editorial content,
the finance unit, in charge of financial services, handling
the accounts of the group's other companies, and overseas
investment, and finally the head office, which concentrates
on software and Internet activities, notably as a critic.
The company is thus well on the way towards the digital
economy, not only by taking its place on the Web by controlling
the nerve centres (Yahoo! the public portal site, Etrade,
the professional portal, and Geocities, the biggest community
in the world). This position was confirmed fairly early
on, as already in 1996 the company had invested in 34
Internet start-ups (such as I/Pro, Pointcast, Inquiry.com)
and in other branches of the information highway such
as numeric television in Japan.
next: Netscapa Adorabilis
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