The EarthWeb Papers

EarthWeb's Challenge

TechTransform, October 31, 2001: In early 99, Micro House International, in which Riggs Eckelberry then served as COO, was acquired by EarthWeb to help it create premium content for its information technologist audience.

EarthWeb went public on a promise - to add premium value to the IT buyer-seller channel. The attempt to make good on that promise on the short fuse of public stock ownership created chaos in itself, preventing the implementation of badly needed customer-facing systems. These planning docs, never implemented, proposed some solutions.

The tech crash of 2000 ultimately forced EarthWeb to abandon the multi-line vision and reorganize solely around the very successful Dice.com IT recruitment subsidiary; ironically, a business that had managed to keep itself completely separate from the rest.

Enterprise Relationship Management

This document outlined integrated customer management for all lines of business at EarthWeb. It proposed to start with an experiment at its Boulder-based subsidiary, the former Micro House International (MHI).

The Marketing Funnel

This document expanded on the Enterprise Relationship Management document to explore the Marketing Funnel itself in detail.This has generic applicability.

The Marketing Manufacturing Flow

Responding to EarthWeb's call for proposals, Hill Holiday/iCube came up with some cool concepts. Their idea of treating marketing as a factory, with an actual manufacturing flow, was very useful. Their diagrams are included here.

The Network Plus Business Model

This analysis of a competitor led to the outline for a new kind of business model, dubbed "Network Plus". This model included a way for specialized websites to cross-market to other sites.

HOW DOES YOUR INTERNET PRESENCE COMPARE?

Dublin-based Web developer NUA (now operating only as an online information resource) once had a cool ladder on its website, depicting the ten steps in website functionality. Here it is.

So...where does your Internet presence rank?