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                           THE STANDARD'S
                         M E D I A  G R O K
           A Commentary on What the Press Is Reporting and Why
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                                        | http://www.thestandard.com |


Friday, June 1, 2001

TOP GROKS:
* Clippy's Comeback
* Why Not Run Another Online Auction Story?
* Lessons From an Imaginary Life and Death

MORE NEWS:
* Ready, Set ... Office XP
* KPN Shares Dive 20 Percent on Issue Talk
* StarMedia's Stock Supernova
* U.S. Jobless Claims Hit Their Highest Point in a Month


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TOP GROKS
~~~~~~~~~
Clippy's Comeback

Remember that splashy, multi-million-dollar ad campaign Microsoft
rolled out for Office XP, in which it claimed that Clippy, the
annoyingly chirpy office assistant, had been booted to the curb? Well,
so much for advertising. In what some reporters seemed to find the
most significant news coming out of yesterday's XP launch, Bill Gates
& Co. announced that Clippy lives in the Office update - but only if
you want him to. (Figuring out exactly what kind of person would
install Clippy intentionally is a task beyond our capabilities.)

Beyond poking fun at an animated paper clip, the voluminous coverage
of the product's launch was fairly uniform. As Joe Wilcox of News.com
pointed out, the new features receiving the most attention, including
what Redmond calls "smart tags" that access external information from
within a document, use XML. That's because, as Gates told Good Morning
America, "A big theme here is about sharing."

Another big theme is helping MS's big customers - many of whom seem
reluctant to shell out the dough for XP when Office 97 seems to do the
job just fine - make more money by enabling their employees to do more
work, faster. According to Reuters, Gates said at the main launch
event in New York, "By making Office just 10 percent better, we can
save hundreds of millions of hours in the workplace."

The press wasn't all hearts and flowers. Barbara Rose of the Chicago
Tribune led with Steve Ballmer's comments at the Chicago launch about
Microsoft's renewed efforts to play nicely with industry partners in
the wake of its antitrust suit. "The industry didn't really rally
around to our defense. I noticed that. We all noticed that," Ballmer
said.

Computer Reseller News charged that MS has "avoided dealing with any
of the licensing questions surrounding the new product." It's curious
it put it that way, since the Los Angeles Times' Joseph Menn managed
to file an entire story on the new - and much grumbled-about -
licensing plan, which charges corporate customers for buying the
software, plus 29 percent of the full price during each of the next
three years.

Analysts commented almost exclusively on Microsoft's uphill struggle
to get corporate customers to sign on the dotted line. "There is no
easy, compelling core value in upgrading to Office XP. Microsoft is
fiddling with the deck chairs, but the ship runs nicely, thank you,"
Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett told News.com. "We'd all
rather go home and play with our kids than learn a new version of
Office." Something tells us that's not the kind of sharing Gates was
hoping for. - Michaela Cavallaro

Ready, Set ... Office XP
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26787,00.html?nl=mg

Microsoft Launches Update to Office (Reuters)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-microsoft-d.html
(Registration required.)

Born Again: Clippy Pops Up in Office XP
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5091942,00.html

Retailers, PC Makers Join Office Party
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6130762.html

Microsoft, Corporate Friends Push New Office
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6119819.html

Microsoft Adds Annual Fee for New Office XP Software
http://www.latimes.com/business/columns/techcol/todays.topstory.htm

Microsoft Launches Office XP, Ignores Licensing Issues
http://www.crn.com/Sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=27004

Office XPectations
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/officexp010531.html

Microsoft Noticed Cold Shoulder
http://www.chicagotribune.com/tech/news/article/0,2669,ART-52149,FF.html

Gates in Big Apple to Unveil Microsoft's Office XP
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article/0,1471,8471_776491,00.html


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Why Not Run Another Online Auction Story?

How do you get your editor to let you spend hours on the Internet,
exchanging e-mails with strangers and futzing around on eBay? Convince
her that there's a story - a big story - in the wacky world of online
auctions.

Somehow, three Wall Street Journal reporters managed to do just that,
filing two separate pieces on varying aspects of e-auctioning. Their
findings? "Cookie jars could sell to dead people," according to the
Journal's Robert J. Hughes and Daniel Costello, who wrote an
entertaining piece about their attempts to sell off items including
tickets to the Broadway hit "The Producers" - gone in nine minutes -
and an Elvis clock that, sadly, went unclaimed. In the second piece,
reporter Nick Wingfield went to the West Columbia, S.C., warehouse of
ReturnBuy Inc. to discover the groundbreaking news that "big
businesses have discovered the Internet's biggest flea market."

There must have been something in the air: This morning's news was
littered with reports and rehashes of the auction biz. An Associated
Press story picked up by numerous outlets pegged its report to eBay's
recent decision to charge subscription fees for software that helps
sellers manage auctions. Implementation of the subscription-based
software makes obsolete a different, eBay-sponsored system many
sellers bought a few years ago, and this predictably has sellers
crying foul. Too bad, the AP said, it's the wave of the future, citing
one Net researcher who noted, "There's a limit to good will. EBay is
hardly alone in starting to charge for things."

A Reuters report on what's happened to Yahoo since it started charging
small listing fees certainly backs that up. The portal's auction unit
reports that the percentage of listed merchandise being sold has
skyrocketed, as has overall bidding activity - even though analysts
estimate the site lost 90 percent of its U.S. listings when it
introduced the fees. "They are doing very well, it is just that now it
is on a much smaller scale," Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with U.S.
Bancorp Piper Jaffray told Reuters. "They are clearly no threat to
eBay."

The sum total of all this chin-stroking? The online auction world is
healthy but changing, and small sellers (who were almost universally
described as mom-and-pop) seem to be losing ground to the big guys.
What doesn't seem to be changing at all, though, is the media's
penchant for the next big auction. This week's example: the world's
oldest hockey stick, which Toronto's Globe and Mail called "a crude
length of hickory." Owner Gord Sharpe hopes it will sell for $2
million. In what is perhaps the most cogent analysis we've seen of the
entire online auction market, Sharpe recounted a comment from an
appraiser who had just been involved in a $2 million sale of a pair of
antique French candlesticks: "And they said hey, there are a heck of a
lot more hockey fans out there than candle-holder fans." - Michaela
Cavallaro

Goods From IBM, Disney Help eBay Post a Surge in Profits
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB991340890181239693.htm
(Paid subscription required.)

Online Auctions Continue to Boom, But Falling Prices Are Hurting
Sellers
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB991350495337273297.htm
(Paid subscription required.)

Controversial Fee Move by eBay Likely to Be Followed (AP)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/081069.htm

Yahoo Auctions Says Smaller Is Better
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-6145352.html

Owner of World's Oldest Hockey Stick Hopes to Score on eBay
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/D,C/20010601/gthockeystick?tf=RT/fullstory_Spt.html&cf=RT/config-neutral&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&slug=gthockeystick&date=20010601&archive=RTGAM&site=Sports&ad_page_name=breakingnews-sp


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Lessons From an Imaginary Life and Death

What can you say about an imaginary girl who died? Two weeks have
passed since the "death" of the nonexistent Kaycee Nichole Swenson,
and the torrent of words written about the affair has barely slowed.
In recent days journalists have been finding new lessons in the
aftermath of this convoluted Internet hoax.

Kaycee's tale was widely followed among Web loggers for more than a
year. When her death was announced on May 15, the bloggers plunged
into a frenzy of speculation and investigation. MSNBC was among the
first of the mainstream outlets to recount the deception and its
unraveling.

The New York Times' Katie Hafner turned in what may be the definitive
account on May 29. The reporter traveled to Peabody, Kan., to
interview Kaycee's creator in her home. Hafner noted that the good
gray Times itself was taken in by Kaycee last year, quoting her in an
article on computer use by college students. And Hafner elicited from
blogger Rogers Cadenhead the perfect quote to describe the whirl of
investigation following Kaycee's demise: "It was like a story being
reported by locusts. They swept in and just pulled facts out of the
air."

Editorializing on the site of NUA Internet Surveys, Kathy Foley drew a
lesson for Internet businesses from the Kaycee hoax: "Do not pretend
to would-be online customers that you are something you are not." And
the Register, of all outlets, found hope among the ashes. Its
Washington reporter, Thomas C Greene, not ordinarily a sentimental
sort, ended his piece this way: "Whether she was real or not seems
beside the point; surely the experience of compassion and the impulse
to do good ought to be relished regardless of the impetus." - Keith
Dawson

The End of the Whole Mess
http://vanderwoning.com/mess.shtml

A Painful Affair of the Internet Heart
http://www.msnbc.com/news/576899.asp

A Beautiful Life, an Early Death, a Fraud Exposed
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/31/technology/31HOAX.html
(Registration required.)

FBI Drops Net Diary Hoax (AP)
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6136629.html

Weaving a Tangled Web
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html

Plucky Leukemia Weblog Girl 'Dies'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19353.html


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MORE NEWS AT THESTANDARD.COM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ready, Set ... Office XP
By Dominic Gates
Microsoft's new suite of productivity applications is unleashed on the
world. But will it be all the company makes it out to be?
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26787,00.html?nl=mg

KPN Shares Dive 20 Percent on Issue Talk
By Reuters
The Dutch telco sees its shares hit their worst level since January
1997 after reports of a rights issue aimed at cutting an $18.6 billion
debt mountain.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26821,00.html?nl=mg

StarMedia's Stock Supernova
By Daniel Helft - Latin American Editor
The No. 1 Latin American Net company secures $36 million in funds and
sees its shares shoot up nearly 40%.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26814,00.html?nl=mg

U.S. Jobless Claims Hit Their Highest Point in a Month
By Reuters
The pace of hiring seems to have slowed, according to a government
report that depicts a weakening labor market.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26791,00.html?nl=mg


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MORE LINKS
~~~~~~~~~~
Synergy and the Day of Infamy
http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=589

Judge OKs FBI's Russian Hack
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2767013,00.html

National Book Awards Takes E-Books
http://www.msnbc.com/news/581087.asp

Another Suit Jogs the Industry's Memory of Napster
http://www.internetnews.com/streaming-news/article/0,,8161_776321,00.html

New 'Pop-Under' Web Advertising Earns Attention
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/062170.htm

Bounty Set for Sex.com Scammer
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,44177,00.html

PowerPoint Invades the Classroom
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/31/technology/31POWE.html
(Registration required.)

Failed Dot-Com President Scores Big (AP)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Japan-Loser-President.html
(Registration required.)

Virginia Gets Dot-Com License Plates
http://www.washtech.com/news/software/10141-1.html


STAFF
~~~~~
Written by Deborah Asbrand (dasbrand@world.std.com), Michaela
Cavallaro (mcavalla@maine.rr.com), Keith Dawson
(dawson@world.std.com), Jen Muehlbauer (jen@englishmajor.com), Lori
Patel (loripatel@hotmail.com) and David Sims (davesims@sonic.net).

Edited by Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com).

Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jduffy@thestandard.com).

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