Return to launch of GLOBE International.
I have always believed that goals are, to the innovator, no more than dreams with deadlines.
Today's launch is proof of that fact. But first a bit of background.
One of the Internet's' greatest strengths is currently its greatest weakness.
The publishing of thousands of webs every week on the Internet has led to confusion, information overload and despair.
Despair for the Internet surfer trying to find or access relevant information and despair for the information provider wishing their information to be viewed by the right market of people.
Initially the well known search engines like Yahoo and Lycos served a very valuable purpose in delivering select number of webs to Internet surfers who accessed a small number of relevant webs through a text string search.
That was in early 1995 when there were an estimated 40,000 webs on the Internet.
Today there are an estimated 4,000,000 webs on the Internet with an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 webs being added each week.
Search engines do not discriminate between relevant and excellent webs or pitiful and faulty webs. There are hundreds of thousands that fall into each category.
Search engines are also difficult for the growing number of computer novices delving into the world wide web.
There is no standard presentation format, there is no lifestyle categorisation (the basis of our daily lives), there is no rating to weed out time wasting and irrelevant links. To be quite frank it's a mess out there on the global highways.
When I first established the Definitive Lifestyle Guide to Australian Webs in July this year there were only about 1,000 Australian webs. Today, 4 months later, there are over 5,000 Australian webs. A large number of these webs are rarely if ever accessed by anyone but the publisher. This predicament includes a large number of Australian business sites which are finding the traditional search vehicles next to useless as a point of reference.
A simple comparison can be made with an exotic, expensive billboard placed in the middle of the Nullabor desert. Looks good but serves no effective marketing purpose.
I built the Definitive Lifestyle Guide to Australian webs with 3 major objectives in mind:
The Definitive Lifestyle Guide had to achieve several things for these objectives to be met:
The Definitive Lifestyle Guide to Australian Webs evolved over the last four months into a product which not only met these aims but it actually exceeded my wildest expectations with about 200,000 visitors browsing the site every week. We understand that the site is now The Major Gateway into Australia.
It was by chance that I met Phil Uys, an ex-compatriot South African and hardened Internet surfer at IT 95 in October this year. Phil who lives in Wellington, New Zealand has some wonderful qualities which are lacking in a creative, laterally thinking mind like mine. Phil is very much a people person and during the IT 95 conference got to know just about every attendee on a personal level.
We started talking about the Definitive Lifestyle Guide to Australian Webs and its success in creating traffic.
Phil expressed an interest in establishing a New Zealand copy of the guide, following the structure and using the presentation and graphics of the Australian model.
Within an hour GLOBE International was born. (Global On-line Business Enterprises).
By creating a New Zealand model of the guide with New Zealand web content and web building opportunities we had created a business franchising opportunity. Phil through the Definitive Lifestyle Guide to New Zealand webs which would, based on experience, become the New Zealand gateway on the Internet.
Within the hierarchy of the web structure we simply had to cap off the various country's Definitive Lifestyle Guides with a higher level home page mirrored around the world. This home page would be a simple image map of the world providing direct links to the countries represented by all participating countries.
By participation and creating an easy access point (no up-front joining cost but 20% of all revenue earned from web building and related enterprise activities being paid back to GLOBE every three months) for enterprise holders we had an immediate response to the initial enquiries that Phil made to contacts all over the world.
We now have 13 countries participating in GLOBE. Today at the launch we will be linking Australia and New Zealand to the Definitive Global Lifestyle Series. By continuous geographically based fragmentation of the Definitive Lifestyle Guides through the appointed enterprise holders the growth and management of the webs on the Internet will become an easily managed formality.