SXSW '99 Continued

E-commerce

E-commerce is one of the latest web buzzwords and its contingent was strong at the Interactive Festival. Several experts offered their views on what can make or break a shopping site. "The biggest mistake is a lack of understanding of the retail experience," said Peter Merholz, an independent user's experience architect. "Shopping on the Web shouldn't be just quick -- it should be fun. It should inform. Shoppers should be able to turn into knowledgeable consumers. And, like the salespeople at your favorite stores, the site should remember you and your tastes, your needs." Merholz went on to suggest that aspiring web retailers observe successful real-world retail stores and see how they operate. "How are the goods displayed? What information is provided? How does the sales staff help you? How are you physically led through the store?"

E-porn

Also featured at SXSW was another money-making element of the web, one which is oft-ignored during conferences: porn sites. Again the focus was not so much on the adult-oriented sites themselves as it was on the business aspect of maintaining them. A recent set of statistics claims that online consumers collectively spend about $1 billion annually to purchase X-rated items. Despite this, sex-toy retailer Christophe Pettus of blowfish.com said it's still not easy to turn a profit and blamed the absence of a "centralized distribution center" (common at book and music sites) which would keep inventory moving.

Content Knowles, another panelist, already had an extensive business background -- with a "$6 million dollar whorehouse and a $2 million restaurant," she said -- when she became the proprietor of Babalon.com, a portal to other sexually explicit sites. Knowles predicted the new frontier of porn customers will be women, and estimated that they already make up about 30% of her site's visitors. "It's the triple question mark of the next century," she said. Pettus agreed, commenting with a grin, "I keep a file of letters [from both men and women] claiming I've saved marriages."

I Want My MP3

There were times during SXSW when the three conferences - interactive, music and film - seemed to overlap. Although the bands who'd assembled for the music festival wouldn't appear until later in the week, the business of music itself took center stage for the "I Want My MP3?" panel. Participants heatedly debated the latest potential threat to the recording industry's income. MP3 (a compression technology which makes files with sound quality comparable to that of a CD) is typically demonized by the recording industry at large because of the rampant pirating of MP3-encoded songs. At the same time it is espoused by independent musicians who want to become their own distributors, and hope the Internet will eliminate the need for record labels.

Panelist Paula Batson, a label representative from AT&T Corporation's digital music group, a2b (which has distributed music for artists such as Tori Amos, Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams), commented that record labels provide an "infrastructure" which includes booking, advertising and packaging - necessary tasks that often determine an artist's success. "It's easy to paint this as the big labels against the little artists," she said. "Protection of intellectual property helps the artists." After an hour of discussion, it was clear none of the panelists (who also included MP3.com's Michael Robertson, Austin attorney Randy Houston, and musician Adam Powell of the band Truman Peyote) had wavered from the opinions they held when the discussion began.

"Fuck You." "Fuck Me?"

The most talked-about happening of the conference occurred during the Monday morning keynote speech given by Michael Wolff, controversial author of the best-selling book, Burn Rate. To the bewilderment of the packed house, Wolff at one point lost his train of thought, blanking out for a full minute (he later said he "lost his notes" and was working from memory), and declared e-commerce "doomed." He also rankled members of the crowd - many of whom met through the web - with his skepticism concerning the Internet's community-building possibilities. Reports of his exact words varied from attendee to attendee (and from publication to publication). When asked afterwards to confirm his quote about community, Mr. Wolff recalled saying "If somebody says to you 'what we're about is building community,' I think it's reasonable to respond, 'Oh, fuck you.'"

Derek Powazek referenced the remark that afternoon when kicking off his "Design for Community" panel. "If there's anyone here who'd like to tell me to fuck off, let's go ahead and get that out of the way," he began with a laugh.

There were no takers.

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Shauna Wright is a writer and web designer currently based in Memphis, Tennessee. Her website Flaunt was a finalist for SXSW's Best Personal Website award.

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