IP: THE DIGITAL FUTURE WILL ALWAYS INCLUDE THE BIG APPLE [SJ

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

THE DIGITAL FUTURE WILL ALWAYS INCLUDE THE BIG APPLE 




Published: Monday, May 26, 1997 
Section: Business Monday 
Page: 1E 


DAN GILLMOR colunm 


TO UNDERSTAND why New York City's Silicon Alley matters, ask yourself 
whether New York matters. Then consider New Yorkers Paul Cimino, Janet 
Stites and Michael Wheeler. They're part of the information-technology 
future, but they wouldn't dream of doing their work in Silicon Valley.


No doubt, the world will continue to place high value on the digital 
toolmakers, the software and hardware engineers who have made Silicon Valley 
so powerful. But the boosters of places like Silicon Alley -- home to scores 
of technology startups and new-media experiments by established companies -- 
see the digital economy evolving their way: toward ''content,'' to use the 
inelegant word encompassing information of all sorts.


Long before Silicon Valley earned its nickname, New York lured and fueled 
talent and ambition. The smart, hungry people who made this city a mecca for 
finance and media, among other things, are peering beyond technology's 
toolmaking age. They're using the tools to create the next generation of the 
powerhouse industries their predecessors built -- industries derived 
fundamentally from information, from content in the broadest sense of the
word.


''Silicon Alley'' may be a play on Silicon Valley, but the ill-defined 
district in lower Manhattan more strongly resembles -- and in some sense 
competes with -- San Francisco's south-of-Market Multimedia Gulch. I don't 
think either needs to worry much about the other; both have innate strengths.


The idea of not being in New York was almost laughable to Cimino, Stites, 
Wheeler and others I spoke with here. In each case, their reasons made 
perfect sense, and stemmed from the one thing technology has been unable to 
replace, at least so far: the multiplier effect of actual face-to-face 
interaction as opposed to digital networking.


''This is the only place where you can get heavy-duty programmers working 
with East Village artists,'' said Cimino, chief executive at Snickelways 
Interactive, a small electronic-commerce company on Varick Street, in the 
heart of Silicon Alley.


''New York is more or less the global business center,'' he observed. ''As 
far as business solutions go, this is where some of the better solutions 
will be hatched.''


Snickelways, named from a medieval word for a village's shop-lined pathways, 
is one of the hatcheries. Once deep into interactive television, which 
essentially imploded several years ago, the company retooled itself for 
Internet marketing. It also focused carefully.


For Snickelways, content is about pure information: using the Internet to 
expand a company's reach -- preferably a company in an old industry -- by 
more efficiently connecting sellers with buyers. Its best-known customer is 
Fruit of the Loom, for which Snickelways (http://www.snickel\ ways.com) 
built a Web-based system the manufacturer has, in turn, given to its 
wholesalers. Retailers use standard Web browsers to order items from the 
wholesalers. Retailers can order from any manufacturer whose goods are 
stocked by wholesal ers, but Fruit of the Loom gets prime placement in the 
computer system and a shot at every order.


''We see stodgy old markets becoming as sophisticated as the stock 
markets,'' Cimino said. ''The future is customer-centric.''


I might well have discovered Snickelways through an Internet search or other 
means. But I learned about it the old-fashioned way, when Janet Stites 
pointed out in a conversation that Silicon Alley is about much more than 
splashy new media.


Stites also brokers information, but in a distinctly low-tech manner. Oh, 
sure, she relies on her Macintosh for some tasks, and her company has a 
low-key Web site (http://www.alleycat\ news.com). But her fundamental 
product is pure information: her own.


She's the publisher of AlleyCat News, an expensive monthly newsletter about 
Silicon Alley, aimed at investors who are looking for ideas. She and a 
partner, Anna Wheatley, launched the publication and a parent company, 
AlleyCat Information Sciences, late last year.


> From her perch, Silicon Alley looks anything but monolithic.


In one camp, she said, are entrepreneurs who scratch together small 
companies by spending savings, maxing out credit cards or borrowing from 
family and friends. Her own venture certainly qualifies.


The old-line media companies, meanwhile, are investing heavily into the 
digital future. ''Every ad agency has a new media or Internet department, 
and so does every book and magazine publisher,'' she said.


So, of course, do the broadcasters. And at one such venture, geographically 
just north of Silicon Alley's theoretical boundaries, the corporate pockets 
could scarcely be deeper.


Michael Wheeler is president of MSNBC Desktop Video, an operation aiming to 
be the C-SPAN -- and more -- of business and economic news. At its root, 
Wheeler explained in his office high above Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown 
Manhattan, is ''the audio-visual conversion to digital.''


You can take any document or audio soundtrack or video tape and turn it into 
the zeroes and ones that make up digital content. Once you do that, you can 
make it available to anyone with a personal computer.


When it comes to content, MSNBC Desktop Video has plenty. It's repackaging 
an enormous amount of business-related information, from such corporate 
cousins as NBC News, the CNBC financial cable channel, the MSNBC news 
channel and the NBC local affiliates.


The Business Video service, available on the World Wide Web 
(http://businessvideo.\ msnbc.com), offers live audio and video of major 
speeches by executives and government officials; audio and video archives; 
text transcripts; and links to related coverage on the MSNBC Web site and 
related Web sites. Live broadcast coverage is also available on two 
dedicated channels via satellite and on some cable systems: MSNBC 
Professional and MSNBC Private Financial network.


Who will pay for this? How about business people who want to hear exactly 
what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said this morning, not how some 
wire service reporter interpreted the remarks?


The broadcasters learned the hard way when they dismissed the cable 
operators as a puny threat. As the Internet comes into its own, Wheeler 
said, ''we don't want to make that mistake again.'' 








Copyright 1997, The San Jose Mercury News.