ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090050
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: G4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: VICTORIA SHANNON THE WASHINGTON POST
Commercial on-line services are dead. That's the buzz among a lot of cyberjockeys these days.
The thinking goes that the Internet, that wild and crazy '60s-style co-op of the computer set, is the only place to be on-line. The white-hot rise of the ``closed networks'' like America Online over the past five years has peaked, and they'll be withering on the phone cord in a year or two, they say.
The evidence is in events like the fall of Genie and Delphi; the movement of Microsoft Network and AT&T Interchange to the Internet's World Wide Web; and the massive sprouting of baby independent Internet access providers.
Gee, a lot of us have barely discovered that the commercial services are alive, and now the pundits are writing their obituary? Is this really the citizens-band radio of the 1990s?
Not likely. The Internet is just too chaotic for most Americans who have never been on-line yet. The commercial services are simply easier to use. And - they get you to the Internet as well.
Even as the death chant is sounded, big companies still are looking to the commercial services for business. Look at just last week:
Item: Citibank, the nation's largest bank company, announces it will take its pioneering computer-banking service onto Prodigy.
Item: Omni magazine announces it can't afford the high cost of paper printing and will cease publishing - except for its on-line version, found on America Online.
Item: France Telecom, France's national phone company, announces it is setting up a subsidiary company to offer on-line services competing with CompuServe, America Online and others.
If most of American society is going to be on-line - like most of American society watches television or uses a telephone - it's not going to be through an Internet-only service.
The commercial services are organized, they have indexes, they have moderators and guides. They filter their information - and that, though many may feel uncomfortable with it, is a good thing.
As straightforward load-and-click software packages, they are going to be the way current nonusers - 90 percent of households today - check out the Internet. Remember, gang, the 10 percent or so of you already on-line are the early adopters, the computer-friendly. You all can think of friends, relatives and colleagues who need the womb of a Prodigy or a Microsoft Network to get them going.
So what Internet devotees say is the undoing of the ``managed'' networks - their supervised, fee-for-service model - I believe is instead ensuring their future.
Parents want a closed community. Computer-recalcitrants want someone to hold their hand. Knowledge hunters want to know where to go quickly and whether to trust the information they find. Why do Internet snobs argue with this thinking and insist the commercial services are past their prime?
Because the Internet, the Web especially, is a fabulous, mind-blowing experience. For me and you to link up with comic Louie Anderson's page or a Louvre display is indeed phenomenal. Yet the Internet's attraction - its anarchy, the ability for anyone to ``publish'' anything they want - is going to be the reason a lot of people don't want raw access without the shell of a CompuServe. It's a free-for-all out there.
You often don't know where to find something. You may not even know where you're going or how you'll eventually get there. And you rarely know how valid the information you turn up really is.
You have to be comfortable with your computer and modem before you can be comfortable with setting up your Internet access.
What that means is that strictly Internet users have to buy into the notion that getting there is half the fun. (Which is one of the reasons the independent access providers often give you unlimited time for your monthly fee - you'll need it.)
No question, if the Internet and the ability to create content for it is available to everyone - companies, individuals, nonprofit groups and schools - then eventually that's where we'll all be hanging out, digitally speaking.
But if you do want the Internet, you can tiptoe out there from the managed services. Prodigy and the other biggies saw the Internet phenomenon more than a year ago and made sure you could go from their pages to the Web and back again.
In fact, since the commercial services have as much access to the Internet as an Internet company, that means they are practically Internet access providers themselves - except for the cost.
And that's where the Internet snobs are completely on track: $10 a month is fine for a service that is easy to navigate, manages e-mail and files efficiently and lets you get on and off fast with your trusted data or files.
But $10 a month and $3 an hour after five hours for access to the uncharted, unchartable, quirky, quarrelsome, patience-trying and time-consuming Internet is not workable.
The shakeout, if one comes, should be of the commercial on-line providers that don't get real on Internet access prices. They're whetting our appetites; now don't let them blow it by driving us to the Internet-only companies just because of the price.
But in this business, who knows? It could work the other way. If the Web fails to smooth out some of its own wrinkles of organization, trust and security, we might find that it's not a commercial-service backlash that we run into, but an Internet backlash.
LENGTH: Medium: 99 linesby CNB