Last week in the first session of my CMA Emarketing Course we talked at length about our “Wow” moments on the Internet. People had some really interesting stories of how the Internet blew them away, or made it possible to do something that would have been utterly impossible without the Net.
So I now ask you…
What was your Internet “wow” moment?
Add you wows below…
Hey Ken….
One of my First WOW’s is when I went to this site:
http://www.ceoexpress.com
I was blown away by all the links to leading content.
It made me think…this Internet thing is sure going to save a tree or two :o)
Great question. My first internet ‘wow’ came when I was a student at York University years ago and logged on to the ‘World Wide Web’ for the first time. That moment changed my life b/c my career path has been online-related ever since.
Other wow moments are all to do with searching and finding online (Google really got it right!)… is online the world’s biggest lost and found? I’ve personally found online: my car, my house, my husband’s birth mother, several old friends and a diagnosis that saved my daughter’s life. Still looking for the remote control though…./L
Internet Wow Moments:
Introduction of Mosaic. I still have the “Learning Basic Unix Commands” book I bought when the Internet was Gopher, Archie, etc. Mgrep anyone? I was willing to learn Unix commands, and then came Mosaic.
Going to an Internex Online (1st Toronto ISP) party, walking into the pub, and there’s everyone watching TV. A little white Ford Explorer is driving down the Cali freeway. Where were you the day O.J. Simpson took his ride to infamy?
Introduction of Wired magazine. I still have the first few issues.
Netscape goes public. No concept for profit, but goes up like a rocket. Who knew?
Meeting “internet friends” F2F for the first time in early 1995.
Next year, travelling to California, to meet and camp with over 100 “internet friends” in the redwood forest, go to a weekend of concerts at the Shoreline (around the corner from the GooglePlex) and having paid for and arranged everything with people I’d never met. Sent out money orders, trusting that strangers would take care of it. And they did.And they came from Europe, Japan, all over the U.S. So, that’s what you look like…. WOW!
There are many more….
Andy
Vancouver, September 1994. My first day as publicist and licensing manager for ReBoot, the world’s first CGI animation series. I had just arrived from the airport, still had my coat on when a journalist appeared in my office doorway.
He said was from Wired magazine, wanted to do a feature on ReBoot for Hot Wired, a digital edition they were preparing to launch on the World Wide Web.
I asked: What’s the World Wide Web?
He smiled: Lady, have I got a story for you.
WOW would have been an understatement.
The big challenge was explaining the WWW to the Toronto financiers who contracted me. They simply didn’t get its potential as a marketing tool.
But I was on the left coast in a studio populated with pioneering minds who got up every morning (if they went to bed at all) and made history, producing the world’s first 100% digital TV content.
So it wasn’t long before stories and QuickTime clips were posted online. Global media content with value I couldn’t measure, that my clients were totally unaware of.
Sometimes it’s easier to apologize then ask permission. But eventually, it was the necessity to dodge approval and defend decisions on all things digital that cost me this great job.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Napster – Wow. Instant Messaging – Wow. Anything Google – Wow. There are way too many to name.
Actually, my latest internet related “wow” moment was hearing that a friend of mine (and because of this moment, I use the term lightly) doesn’t have internet access and doesn’t “see the need for it”. WOW.
We readily recall with awe and wonder our earliest Internet and killer app experiences. I’d like to add that I continue to be have Internet WOW moments.
But these days I’m more likely to be blown away by how people use the Internet, apply technologies, construct and leverage new marketing models.
My most recent WOW: TSTN.com, The Success Training Network, a subscription-based streaming Internet TV station enabled by SplashStream – and the new promotional hub for an affiliate marketing network of personal development gurus.
The infomercial crowd their own media outlet, a new credibility and a whack of downloadable products. And they make buckets of money promoting themselves and each other online, both on and off the air.
Wow. Brilliant.
Going to Silicon Valley late 99 and early 2000 and realising everything out there is so DOT COM and everything back home was not :o(
If you have ever seen the billboards driving up the 101 into SF you’ll know what I mean.
Glad to see we have made some progress.
Although, I have been “wow”-ing quite a lot recently.
My wow moment – when I found some excellent background information for a project on wikipedia.org.
Links after links, people had covered the topic in finer details. It gave me a framework to start.
I was really impressed.