Always-On.com
Tony Perkins has started a new site... Always-On.com.
But AlwaysOn’s business model is even more significant than its approach to technology and business content. Perkins started the site with nothing more than a $150 blogging software package called pMachine, and put only about $50,000 into the site’s development, he says. He has a tiny staff—only three full-time and three part-time employees. But from day one, he claims, his costs have been more than covered by his four paying sponsors—Accenture, KPMG, technology-oriented law firm Gray Cary, and the Silicon Valley Bank.
And here’s the most revolutionary thing about AlwaysOn: Perkins has put his entire member database into the customer management service of Salesforce.com. When somebody signs up, their info—including, at a minimum, name, title, company, zip code, and favorite URL—goes directly into Salesforce. Most people voluntarily include significantly more. Then Perkins gives his advertisers and sponsors real-time (perhaps we should call it "always-on") access to his membership database by giving them Salesforce.com accounts. That allows them not only to see who’s getting their marketing messages but also gives them the ability to e-mail people in carefully sliced and diced segments—for example, all members who went to Stanford who live in Manhattan. One obvious risk: unwelcome spam could turn off members and sully the site’s reputation. Perkins says he will work to insure sponsors don’t abuse the privilege. Only time will tell if this works, but he has innovatively attempted to solve one of the most vexing problems faced by media companies up to now—they don’t really know who is looking at their stuff. That makes the task of selling advertising infinitely harder.
11:18:42 PM 
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