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By Daniel Tynan (1/6/03) Six predictions for 2003 It's a new year and thus time for all good columnists to issue their annual predictions. Being eminently predictable myself, I broke out the old Ouija board, spat into some tea leaves, dusted off my Magic 8 ball, and contacted my favorite seers and trend sniffers. Here's what Netizens can expect in 2003. You'll pay less for dial-up Dial-up subscribers will shell out less money in 2003, predicts In-Stat/MDR analyst Daryl Schoolar. But that doesn't mean that AOL, MSN, and EarthLink will be lowering their prices. "The high-end dial-up providers are going to get squeezed on both ends," says Schoolar. "Less price-sensitive subscribers will make the $10 to $20 leap to broadband. More price-sensitive subscribers will migrate to a United Online-type ISP or just churn every couple of months for free minutes, keeping their overall yearly ISP service fees low." But content will cost you Pundits have been predicting the death of the free Web for years, and now the forecasts may finally be coming true. Consumers spent more than $1 billion for online content in 2002, nearly double what they paid in 2001, according to the Online Publishers Association. And that doesn't include revenues from porn or gambling (or pornographic gambling; nude blackjack, anyone?). The OPA estimates that some 1,700 legitimate sites now charge for premium content. While nobody really expects free content to go away, you may have to pay for the good stuff. Broadband will get cheaper--sort of To lure more users from their poky dial-up ISPs, cable and DSL operators will drop their base prices. Research house ARS says that the average monthly price of entry-level cable and DSL connections is already $36 and $38, respectively--or $10 to $15 less than what most consumers pay for high-speed services. The catch? You'll get slower speeds (less than 300Kbps downstream), fewer e-mail accounts, less Web storage, and minimal support. "The No. 1 reason dial-up users don't migrate to broadband is price," notes In-Stat/MDR's Schoolar. "If broadband providers want to grow their subscriber bases, they'll have to keep overall prices down." It's not TV, it's...AOL? Rather than remain the dominant provider in a shrinking dial-up market, AOL will attempt to transmogrify itself into a premium broadband content provider, similar to cable TV's HBO (also owned by AOL Time Warner). The new honchos at AOLTW are betting that broadband users will pony up $15 per month for AOL's Bring Your Own Access program in order to get a gander at said compelling content. ARS analyst Mark Kersey notes that AOL's new strategy comes with "substantial risk--namely that the bulk of its lucrative dial-up customers will leave the AOL walled garden for a competing provider's broadband service and will decline to shell out an additional $15 per month for the AOL content--but it is apparently the only card AOL's executives felt they had left to play." Will the online giant succeed? Let's put it this way. HBO gives you The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and a host of other great content you can't get anywhere else. AOL has buddy lists and videos of Avril Lavigne. Where would you rather spend your $15? Ads will get busier Expect more and noisier online ads this year as banners give way to TV-style Webmercials serving up sound and animation. Today, DoubleClick distributes half a billion of these so-called rich media ads each day--about one out of every four Web ads it serves. Why? Apparently, surfers prefer moving targets; the agency says rich ads produce more than six times as many clicks as static banners. Spam will get thicker Yes, I know I'm really going out on a limb here (har, har), but I really believe it: the scourge of everyone's in-box is only going to get worse. British e-mail security vendor MessageLabs predicts that by the middle of 2003, spam will outnumber legitimate e-mail messages on the Net. "We will certainly see more spam next year and every year until Congress makes spamming illegal and gives the spammed the right to sue their spammers," says Junkbusters founder Jason Catlett. And given Washington's long history of caving in to the marketing lobby, that's as likely to happen as Trent Lott becoming president of the NAACP.
I recently signed up for MSN 8.0 for Windows. Now, every time I turn on my computer, the MSN sign-up screen pops up on my display and keeps popping up until I log on to the Net. Is there any way to make MSN a little less eager? --Amy in Anchorage Dear Amy: Yes, MSN 8.0 is a bit like a cocker spaniel puppy: starved for attention and always in your face. But calming it down is pretty easy. Click the Start button and launch the Internet Options control panel. Click the Connections tab and select MSN Explorer. In the check boxes beneath the list of Internet connections, select "Never dial a connection" followed by Apply and OK. The next time you start your PC, MSN will wait until you launch its dial-up software before getting in your face. |
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| Once a year, CNET contributor Daniel Tynan moonlights as Swami Tynadani. Got any predictions for 2003? Send 'em our way. | |
