Cocktail Party Crib Sheet | Traffick.com - Internet Search Enlightenment

The cocktail party season is upon us. And you know what this means: the need to come up with glib chatter when talking with people who are not always as interesting as yourself. Your goal: wow 'em, and then make a fast getaway.

This year, as every year, many people have made a lot of money investing in technology stocks. They'll be crowing about making their killing on Red Hat, or Corel. Say something clever like "I never liked Linus, always sucking his thumb and carrying that blanket," and turn to discussion of some larger corporate entities: the portal companies.

To do this, you'll have to feign interest in the fortunes of Go Network or the origins of AOL. In such situations it is best to hint at deep knowledge, and avoid specifics. Light humor is used to keep your questioner off balance, and while you have the chance you should wander off in search of more punch, leaving a hip yet businesslike aura in your wake.

To aid you, we've concocted the following lazy person's guide to some major web portals, complete with suggested repartee. Feel free to add your own ingredients for that true holiday flair.

Yahoo:

Humble Origins: A directory of the neat stuff that Jerry Yang and David Filo found on the Internet. After working on it for awhile, and doing rather well, venture capitalists yanked them out of their trailer-run office and set them on their way, creating a legendary success story that has left many people broke in trailers, toiling on bad web directories.

If it were a Super Hero: Yahoo-man! With that Y! logo on his chest. Y! indeed?

Source of Yahoo-man!'s super powers: First Super-Hero advantage! His sidekick, Surfer-Girl, is not to be trifled with. Her motto is "you can get a better listing with honey than you can with vinegar." Hint: you won't get listed if you run a website that contains "Yahoo" and "sucks" in the same sentence.

AOL:

Humble origins: A clunky dialup service with proprietary content, competing with clunky rivals Compuserve and Prodigy

If it were a Super Hero: CD-Man. Can snail mail with the best of them. Don't try to run: wields CD like a deadly boomerang.

Source of CD-Man's Super Powers: The Conflater, a powerful energy ray which makes victims pay for bad dialup service, because they think that's the only way to get "free Internet content."

Succeeds in spite of: Now has oxymoronic foreign presences such as "America On-Line Germany."

Common confusion for CD-man: Tendency of his grandchildren to exclaim "You're AOL" when they mean "You're SOL." Cheeky monkeys!

Excite:

Humble origins: Another early search and directory service, originally called Architext.

It it were a Super Hero: Me-2-man - anything Yahoo can do, he can do not quite as well.

Source of Me-2-Man's Super Powers: A new business concept called the "Just-in-Time Acquisition." But Me-2-Man was brash. He went too far. Using his power to acquire a greeting card site for $780 million looks like the biggest fiasco since Jesse Ventura conquered Minnesota.

Succeeds in spite of: Recurring service outages, slow response times, misplaced user ID's. Free e-mail? You get what you pay for!

Biggest mystery: How his pal Jughead eats all those burgers without getting fat. (Plus, why the Excite search engine hardly refers any traffic to Traffick. Is it something we said?)

Go Network:

Humble origins: Piles of Disney cash built a me-too portal around a me-too search engine. Translation: about as humble as animated rooster Foghorn Leghorn. You wouldn't know humble, ah say, you wouldn't know humble, boy, if it bit yah in the keester.

If it were a Super Hero: Mighty Mouse. Or Chuck E. Cheese, depending on depth of e-commerce ambitions.

Source of Mighty Mouse's Super Powers: The Converger, a powerful bolt of energy which puts the Go logo on the TV Screen when you're watching football on cable. Only they can't use that green traffic light logo anymore, since that lawsuit from Goto.com.

Succeeds in spite of: Lord-of-the-Flies-like hierarchical system for its Go Guide human-edited directory.

Often confused with: Go2Net; Goto.com; Magellan Internet Guide's "green light websites"; GO trains (commuter trains run in the Toronto area); Goo, a popular Japanese search engine...need we go on?

Lycos:

If it were a Mythical 20-th Century Figure: James Dean at Dead Man's Curve

Source of his mythical powers: The Y-Cannon. Can attract a hipper demographic by firing off a single press release.

What might annoy us next year: Free home page service, AngeLycosPod, a newly merged jumble of services that includes the ultra-hip 6-8 age demographic.

Mystifying even to Lycos: Why Lycos acquired Quote.com, or, why others didn't.

Party on! We'll be back soon with a more serious look at a major web-based app that anchors all the portals. It's called e-mail!