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The Well Built Web Page
FRESNO - In 1995, the Palo Alto Internet entrepreneuer from Fresno State, Tom Hobbs of WebPortal.com wrote an Internet script that would change the world. It came to full flower in the Tower2000.com Internet Web Site, a Fresno Calif. community node on the World Wide Web designed for the Tower District Marketing Committee and launched less than a year later.
The first of its kind, that model has now been emulated all around the world. Tower2000.com was an immediate sensation Hobbs' fame spread from Silicon Valley around the world as Internet designers studied Hobbs' style and the structured experience surfers were enjoying as they toured Tower2000.com
Launching Tower2000.com in 1996 forced traditional stores to look into the face of the tiger, a high technology that every business now realizes is a powerful
fast-moving technology. It has shaped local business decisions, drives politics and is opening a new portal to world intellectual culture across geographic borders, time-zones and language differences.
This internet economy is now a burgeoning $9 trillion national economy composed of borderless free markets in a global fast moving technology network of low-cost communications that has significantly lowered transactions costs between sellers and buyers.
"The Internet has given us the greatest rate of return on a public infrastructure investment ever," said Robert Litan, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. "And it has flourished because we have not yet taxed or regulated it to death -- though those are live issues."
In the face of this Internet event economists are predicting that the economy
will expand 3.9 percent this year, with inflation at 1.4 percent. For 2000, the
consensus is growth of 3.2 percent and inflation of 1.7 percent. In February,
the economy should set the record for the longest expansion, surpassing the 106-month
record set in the 1960's.
Hobbs, says "For established companies with an Internet presence, the challenge will be to adapt to a new business strategy in the accelerated technological shift now taking place. Those who are not taking steps now to convert their traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to World Wide Web virtual e-stores are shutting out and turning away that bricks-to-clicks business activity and a valuable profit center."
"The Internet's electronic network has already transformed many business practices and is a new medium of informal communication with customers" he says.
The speed at which the Internet is morphing across the globe and pushing both the tools and values of high technology onto socieety is daunting. Hobbs predicts that the pace of technological change will not slow, and the willingness of customers to accept new technology suggests the "...last great frontier of economic opportunity for those who have access to a computer terminal and the skills to prosper in the new digital economy at the Millennium."
With the introduction of easy Internet access through WebPortal.com technology, there is excitement and a high-tech glamour in e-business. In fact, other Silicon Valley companies like Phone.com, the telephone Web browser company based in Redwood City, Calif., have just announced that next month, almost half the cellular phones sold will come equipped with the ability to surf the Internet. They predict the number of Web browsers in cell phones will exceed the number of personal computers in the world.
Wireless technology is well on the way in taking the Internet outside the home and office through all sorts of miniature communication devices based on cellular phone types of air signals.
Laurie Kobliska, a Fresno State alum, and founder of the world famous Fremont, Calif. InteriorDeco.com, predicted that e-commerce on-demand "...is providing mothers and working women with the ability to shop in their limited down-time in between working, child-care, and home-making activity.
"This marked change in behavior is wide-spread and is requiring that e-commerce sites, be designed to provide tons of informational content web customers demand. Retailers now are required not only to provide secure financial transactions, intractive product catalogs and fun, but they now must be able to quickly adapt to the limited time consumers say they have and the news and information they want on-site," she said. Kobliska is the editor & publisher of the widely acclaimed family oriented e-journal Mother Wire Magazine.
Letter to the Editor
Copyright 1999 The Fresno Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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