New Trends and Developments

We are constantly searching for trends that help you get a better sense of where the Internet is going and how you might be able to use this knowledge to improve your Web site's performance.

Any new trends you think could have an important impact on the way we promote Web sites?  We'd like to know about them.   Email us at newtrends@trafficdigest.com.

Growing Reluctance to Approve Reciprocal Links
It seems to us that the Net is becoming less charitable.  Fewer sites, especially the successful sites, are as willing to grant reciprocal link requests.   They seem to feel that helping other sites will detract from their success.   Increasingly, we suspect that in the future extraordinary steps are going to be required to get successful sites to link to you.  We've even published an article describing some of these extraordinary steps. 

New Weapons in War Against Spam
Why should you be interested in the war against spam?  Because, the more aggressive you are in promoting your site, the wider the spam floodgates open.  Fortunately, others are working to see that someday you might safely promote without experiencing a tidalwave.  Lucent Technologies announced a new tool in its Lucent Personalized Web Assistant that assigns you a unique user name and email address to use at each Web site you visit that requires registration, such as at search engines.   If that site sells your name to a spammer, you can simply instruct your email program to filter out messages to the registered address.  For more information, visit http://ipwa.com:8000/filter.html.  As the anti-spam war heats up, one hopes that soon we'll be free from the bulk of unwanted email solicitations.

Another, different anti-spam weapon: a new service called Boxfree at http://members.aol.com/boxfree/index.html will for $4.95 per month take your name off over 3200 email and bulk mail lists.

Market Research Gets Cranked up for Online Surveys
Increasingly, consumer testing is growing.  Companies can test consumer tastes for a fraction of offline tests.  Testers can be reached at home, any time instead of being rounded up at selected locations.  AOL has even started reducing subscriber's bills to encourage more participation in sponsors' surveys.  Is this a trend you can take advantage of at your site?  Perhaps conducting tests for companies in your field of interest?

Quantum Leap in Internet Software Sales Predicted
IDC Research projects that sales of Internet and intranet software will jump from $916 million in 1996 to $12 billion by 2000.  If you sell Internet software or plan to, this should encourage you to hang in there.

Web Increasingly Going Global
Web owners too frequently forget that the Web is a global phenomenon, not just a US one.   Recent trend studies indicate that the rest of the world is slowly catching up.   Research firm International Data Corporation projects that 50% of Web users by 2000 will be from outside the US, up from 23% in 1995.  Are you ready to promote your site to global markets?

What Will Replace Banners Ads?
Declining click-through rates and ad rates suggest that static banner ads are losing their effectiveness. Advertisers are scrambling to find the next generation of ad technology that will propel Internet advertising to the next level.  Stay tuned.  It's sure to affect your promotion efforts.

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