e-commerce? iFactor!

Where the source of the Web Influence is and what direction IBM is going

By Gregory R. Gromov

 

IBM has grabbed the high ground with television ads touting its expertise in e-business, … By David Einstein, San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1999

 

	$200 mln.		As can be seen from the left chart, IBM and Microsoft spend almost the same amount of advertising dollars  across all media. However, it appears that they do this job by in ultimately different ways. Both companies assure potential customers and investors that they are Internet companies. Meanwhile the ranks of Web Influence of these two companies are very different (Web Influence Rank of Microsoft - 1, IBM - 6)
	$150
	$100
	$50
	©Internet Valley,Inc.
Advertising dollars spent across all media. Third Quarter, 1998. Data sources: Newswire, February 1, 1999.

And as one of the final results of all these chain of "differences" IBM's market capitalization is now about $160 bill and Microsoft  -- $374 bill

Ultimately, this means that when investors decide where they will put their money, they will feel about two times more confident toward Microsoft's business future than IBM's.

IBM e-commerce director Scott Gannon clarifies for us in much detail that his company has developed huge e-commerce related tech-potential during the last two years. When he contacted Internet Valley, he also told us that IBM now makes more than $1 billion per month in online transactions. In comparison, Dell -- the pioneer of online PC sales -- makes about $15 million daily. This means that IBM's Scott currently doubles Mike Dell's online sales with the gap widening.

So judging from IBM's e-commerce report and Scott Gannon's comments, it looks like IBM will continue to solve successfully any kind of tech-related tasks that the company decides to work on (the company's internal Web tasks included).

What about the Web Influence gap?

It looks like IBM is still trying to solve the problem with heavy TV advertising ...

How Users Find out About WWW Pages

Data source: GVU Center,  College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

According to the past 3 years of Internet Valley's research, the main measure of Web Influence is the total number of external hyperlinks to a company's Web site.  During this time Internet Valley has also created hyperlink mechanics-based technology in order to increase and monitor a company's Web Influence zone. Survey results recently published by Georgia Tech's Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center support the value of this approach. As can be seen from the chart below, external links are the most important way of increasing the visibility of a company's Web site. In other words, the chart below is an additional illustration of the fact that hyperlink mechanics can be now considered as the best foundation for the methods and technology that will be most effective for heightening a company's Web brand.

See also: Questions | Suggestions | The Report | IBM's Say