Re: UKNM: Real Names

[Mike Bracken]

It seems to me that RealNames has as many marketing and perception problems

as technical ones. Another service - go.com IIRC - launched at roughly the

same time and got loads of attention despite having a much poorer service -

it's essentially a dutch auction for preferential listings. 


Although they've got a deal with AltaVista, which at least gives them some

publicity but isn't too good financially, they really need to get deals

with other 'portals' to establish a de facto standard, but as was rightly

pointed out, there's nothing technical to stop others doing this. 


I doubt that even if there was a widespread take-up of RealNames in the UK

and Europe whether this would influence the bigger picture enough to make

it popular with Yahoo, Netscape et al. Hypothetical I know, but would it be

worth any marketing spend if it didn't really take-off in the US but did

here?


Mike




> Real Names has a serious problem, the idea is simple and can easily be

> copied (heck the code is a simple database lookup and redirect).

> 

> Shame really,