How a local online service and a science museum found each other....
Almost three years ago, New Jersey Online and the Liberty Science Center
decided to work together on the Web. The relationship started, frankly,
for the sake of having a relationship; it seemed to make sense that both
local institutions should work together in this new medium.
During a tour of the museum, NJO saw the work of an entomologist who specialized
in cockroaches, and it took only a glance outside, toward the state's infamous
refineries and swamps, to come up with the concept for The Yuckiest Site
on the Internet http://www.yucky.com,
a fun, educational service that started with roaches and later conquered
more yucky frontiers.
The site got much positive attention, being written up in magazines and
Web services and getting thousands of links from other sites; its traffic
has grown steadily ever since. Such relationships seemed to be a good idea,
and other Advance Publications Internet services reached similar alliances
with museums in other cities.
.... and what happened after they spent some time together.
The Liberty Science Center relationship is over today, and two of the
other museum relationships are in the process of breaking up.
Why?
In hindsight, it's easy to see: These institutions want to control their
own Web fate. They want to use their sites to reward or extract more financial
support from their sponsors and they want to sell memberships and merchandise.
As a group, they were not 100 percent comfortable with the Advance Internet
services selling advertising space either to their valued sponsors or to
their valued sponsors' competitors. The Advance Internet services, on the
same count, were not comfortable with putting out most of the resources
necessary to build and promote these sites without full freedom to seek
revenue wherever they could. So they split up.
In the case of the Yuckiest Site on the Internet, the Liberty Science
Center said it wanted to take over its own fate online. So New Jersey Online
negotiated with the center to acquire and retain complete rights to the
name and the concept behind the site. Since then, the site has grown to
include worms, developed new characters (Wendell the Worm), and fearlessly
answered such yucky questions as what are burps and even why does poop
smell. Traffic has soared to a level of 1.5 million page views a month
with no significant investment in marketing.
In the case of the other museums, each sought to take over its own Web
sites because of deeper financial relationships with other sponsors and
partners. So they are negotiating to buy the work done by Advance Internet
services, which in turn is negotiating to maintain ongoing content and
marketing relationships with the museums: The local Advance Internet sites
will be the exclusive suppliers of information on restaurants, hotels,
events, and attractions for the museums' web audiences; the museums will
place the local services' addresses on their sites and on their marketing
materials; the services and museums will cosponsor events.
Who got what after the love affair ended.
The breakups were cordial.
In truth, every player ended up winning. The museums got a start on
the Internet at virtually no cost; they received promotion and positive
attention on the Web, and they were able to acquire online experience with
next to no risk.
With Yucky, New Jersey Online ends up with a winning site that gets
high traffic, advertising revenue, and no end of good publicity and goodwill.
And for the museum, the local services will end up getting traffic from
the museum sites, which will now receive heavy promotional resources from
their big sponsors and partners. And the local services lose the often
time-consuming and distracting effort of having to work with outside players.
A lesson learned.
In hindsight, it perhaps should have been obvious that this is how
these relationships would end. But the truth is that even today, players
can sit down at the table to make a deal and confess: "We don't know
who should be paying whom here." Back in the early days of the Web
-- an ancient two or three years ago -- this was even more of a hermaphroditic
medium, a dance among worms: No one could figure out anyone else's gender
and thus it was hard to court, let alone marry. Still, along the way, we
all learned lessons and came away wiser. if not richer.
