The question of who controls the Internet has been debated in technical circles since the network’s birth. In the past few years, however, that debate has spread to diplomatic conversations all over the world, coming to a head on the 15th of November, 2005.

It is important to understand the Internet’s childhood to fully grasp the world wide debate about Internet Governance.

The story starts at the Department of Defense of the United States which created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA. ARPA was created to research, among other things, computer science with a bent toward networking computers. Even before the project grew to the point where an “Internet” concept was actually the goal, the project’s director, J.C.R. Licklider¹ expressed the desire to someday link entire communities together and took to calling the group of computer scientists on the project the “Intergalactic Network”.

As the ARPANET concept grew, leading universities were included in the government’s research. Before long Licklider’s dream of community computing was well on its way with professors and students at collages around the country participating in ARPA research projects.

The route from this early collegiate/governmental “Intergalactic Network” to today’s well known Internet was made possible by many people, but at the forefront was one man, Dr. Jon Postel² from the University of Southern California. When asked, Internet professionals will tell you that up until 1998 one man ran the Internet; Dr. Postel. He handled issues such as who controlled domain name country codes like .uk, and edited most of the technical specifications for the Internet.

In 1998, many businesses, governments and individuals, including Dr. Postel, thought it best that an organization be created to take over the work Dr. Postel had performed for the past 30 years. The Clinton presidential administration helped to facilitate a series of negotiations between members of the business and governmental communities which finally resulted in the creation of the private-sector, non-profit US Corporation, ICANN which took over the good Doctor’s life-long work. Dr. Postel passed away form a heart attack during the negotiations and never saw the completion of the organization he helped put in place.

ICANN, or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers³, currently controls the Internet Domain Name System. This organization decides which countries are given country domains and how those domains function.

Herein lies the issue brought forth for debate by countries around the globe on November 15th, 2005. The Internet, created and maintained by the United States, appears to be controlled exclusively by the United States Government.

The United States Department of Commerce, who helps set general policies for ICANN, officially decries any interference in the day to day functions or direct policy making of this corporation. But diplomats from around the globe are not so certain, stating that the federal government maintains direct control of the corporation.

The interesting twist in this story is that the foreign diplomats are correct. It is a common legal principle that the creator controls the creature. Just because the US federal government does not make day to day decisions for ICANN does not mean that it can not.

The real issue here is wither we Americans want the Internet, which we have graciously shared with the world, to be controlled by world governments that make it policy to curtail free speech. China, Cuba, France, and Syria; these are the countries clamoring for United Nations control of the Internet. How should the United States respond to such a demand? We already have.

On November 15th, diplomats met to iron out the design and policies of a global organization, charted under the United Nations that was to take the place of ICANN. The United States of America gave its official response in a four paragraph document entitled: “Domain Names: U.S. Principles on the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System”. In this document the Department of Commerce states decisively that “The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS)”.

The Internet has become a world resource; a haven of free speech in a world of tyrants. Currently the United States is the only bastion of liberty in the world and we will continue to hold and protect the Internet for the people of our planet.

Further Reading:

• J.C.R. Licklider
  • Man-Computer Symbiosis by J.C.R. Licklider
  • The computer as a Communications Device by J.C.R. Licklider & Robert Taylor
  • Google Book Search for J.C.R. Licklider
• Jon Postel
  • Dr. Postel’s Home Page at the University of Southern California
  • Remembering Jonathan B. Postel
• ICANN
  • ICANN Web Site

So your new web site is up and running. Great! So now what? Web sites are just like children, always eating. Many a small business owner has ordered up an awesome web site only to find out that thousands of visitors didn’t appear overnight.

Yes, you must advertise your new web site. Every piece of promotional material needs the address. Every email should link to your site. Every person in your company should order new business cards with the new web address included.

Web sites that boast large volumes of traffic had people behind the scenes working very hard to generate that traffic. This week we are going to talk about link exchanges, pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising.

A link exchange occurs when the owner or webmaster of web site A contacts the owner or webmaster of web site B to propose a link swap. In this transaction you agree to place a link from your site to theirs in return for a link back. Now this affects you in two ways. First, the more incoming links you have on the Internet, the higher your rank in the search engines. Second, a visitor to the other web site may click on that link and visit your site.

The link exchange is such a powerful tool that many abuse it in their search for search-engine dominance. There are so called “link exchanges” or “link communities” on the web that will allow you to add your web address and have it linked to multiple web sites automatically. If that old adage comes the mind, “If it’s too good to be true…” you are on the right track; it is too good to be true. In fact, the search engines penalize web sites that participate in such get-links-fast schemes. Link exchanges must be done the hard way; one email at a time.

Pay-per-impression has been the standard for online advertising ever since there has been online advertising. This kind of advertising is measured by CPM or Cost Per Thousand ad views. You pay to have your ad placed on a person’s web page and the ad will remain there until it has been viewed one thousand times. Such web sites as Foxnews.com, eWitnessNews.com and CNN.com utilize this tried and true advertising model.

Pay-per-click advertising means just what it sounds like. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. Google and Yahoo! are pros at this type of advertising allowing you to place an ad in search results while only paying if your ad is clicked on.

When you search Google for “Neil Diamond” the page returned will contain search results on the left and “sponsored links” on the right of the page. These “sponsored links” are pay-per-click links. Try the same search in Yahoo! and you will see similar results.

What makes pay-per-click such a powerful tool, particularly when used with search engines, is your ability to further target your ads. Let us say you want to advertise your “steel blue widgets”. Not everyone needs a widget let alone a steel blue one. So, when setting up your ad using Google’s AdWords program you can specify that only people from Denmark, between the times of 8:00am and 1:00pm will see your ad when they search for “steel blue widgets”.

You have just narrowed down your target audience by three factors. Not only that, you only get charged when a person clicks; in one shot you have just created a wonderful sales lead.

How much should I pay? That’s a good question; unfortunately there isn’t one blanket answer. Pricing for pay-per-impression advertising is determined by the amount of traffic that web site receives. Foxnews.com is going to cost more than Herb’s Polka Plaza.

Pay-per-click advertising is priced eBay auction style. When you login to Google, for instance, you can find the going price for your key word of choice. You then place the highest price per click you are willing to pay and you basically bid your way up the positioning on the page. If your high bid is higher than your competitors then your price will be a few cents more then their high price. Of course your competitor can come back with an even higher price and outbid you.

I’ve seen everything from $0.10 up to $5.00 paid per click. You must consider how much that sales lead is worth to you. If your widgets sell for $20,000 apiece then you probably don’t mind spending $1.00 for 200 leads each month only to make one sale.

Over the past few weeks we have been discussing the basics of web site design with your business in mind. This week let’s continue this train of thought and delve into the world of online advertising.

So you have picked an awesome web site designer and by combining his skills with your business savvy your web site design is a killer. You’ve spent two days looking at different hosting companies and finally picked one with excellent support and uptime. Your site is scheduled to “go live” in four days; your designer is happy, you are happy, and now it’s time to get the word out.

There are essentially two types of advertising on the Internet: grassroots and structured.

Let’s start with grassroots. These are simple ways of advertising like sending a personal email to your friends and family. On one of my last projects, the web site owner sent out an email to his family introducing his site. Within a few hours we had several visitors and links placed on message boards and web sites.

Do you post messages on a message board? If so, many have a forum for posting a new web site introduction. Also, you can add a link to your site in your message board signature. Believe it or not, message boards produce a lot of traffic and search engines love them.

Do you have a blog? Blogs normally incur traffic and are indexed by search engines more frequently because their content changes so rapidly. You should definitely write a post about your new web site. What about your friends and business associates? Get them to write reviews of your site on their blogs.

What about your personal and business emails? You could place a link to your new site in your email signature. Every time you send an email that signature will be included automatically and there you go, free advertising.

Consider writting articles about your industry. There are thousands of web sites looking for good content. Find a web site that specializes in your industry and offer to write a weekly or monthly column for them. In exchange, you will get industry exposure and a link back to your site.

Structured advertising is, well, more involved. Such techniques as mass email, pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, and affiliate programs are used every day on the Internet.

Mass email is a touchy subject to many. Most of us have received far more SPAM than we care to remember, about subjects we don’t care to discuss. There are appropriate uses for mass email though. TigerDirect.com sends out email advertising for their computer sales every other day. They only send to past customers or those who have asked to be added to their mailing list. Also, they provide an “un-subscribe” link in the email to allow you to remove your email address from their list at any time. This is a fine example of responsible mass email marketing.

You can purchase software to allow you to send mass emails. These programs are somewhat expensive and must be installed by your designer on a server. Additionally, most hosts require that you purchase your own server to run the email program. As you can see, this can become pricy, but you must weigh the initial cost, volume of emails sent and what it would cost to use a fully hosted solution.

Constant Contact provides a solution that allows you to send mass emails through their system and is priced on volume of emails sent per month. The benefits include less upfront cost, customer support if you get stuck and they are responsible for the servers.

Check with your designer as well. Some designers have entered into agreements with email marketing companies to provide mass email solutions to their customers.

Next week we will look at Google and Yahoo! pay-per-click advertising opportunities. We will also discus impression based advertising.