UKNM: RE: Isram

[John Braithwaite]

Someone asked about Isram.


I had a funny call from them.... first of all I thought they said 'Islam'

and spent a while having a bizarre conversation with them until I mentioned

the headline on the homepage - something to do with 'holy war'... anyway

after that the chap (gimp?) who phoned me proceeded to tell me that, for the

benefit of being listed on a site that has yet to be launched in a category

that is at least 3 layers down from the top of the tree, I could be listed

for a mere �1500 per annum (I think that was about it).


After the laughter died down and a bit of waffle about consumer choice it

came down to this - they'll only list 35 sites in each category and once

they're filled, they're filled. If we don't get in then blah, blah (I

switched off for a while here).... After that I explained to him that I

thought that he had absolutely no grounds to expect site to pay that kind of

money for a small listing on a site that had no traffic whatsoever and no

grounds for those kind of charges. He gave me a few catchy questions

strikingly similar to the ones below.


He could hardly believe that I wasn't convinced by an offer like this and

his final throw of the dice was to tell me that they were backed by Saatchi

and Saatchi. The silence was deafening - So? What do S & S know about the

online world?


Suffice to say that the phone call stopped pretty soon afterwards with both

of us going our separate ways. Their concept has to be a joke - at least

Shopsmart lists everyone (it makes it's money based on results - a much

better route to follow!).


So what they're looking for here are the 'soundbites' - provide them if you

want to.


-- Original message


Do you think that it is fair to the consumer that companies can get within

the 1st 5 listings of a search engine via payments and technical trickery ?


Are we really giving the consumer a choice ?

Are we being governed on the net by companies that have financial clout ?


What is going to happen to the small to meduim size web company ?


Antony

www.isram.net

antonyisram [dot] net

01245 250025



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