Searching for a reason to get Mom online.
I need your help. But before I get to that, it's time for a little reality check. By now you've seen that commercial featuring a roomful of nerds bemoaning the fact that the Internet is now open to everyone. There is, they fear, no longer anything keeping people like their MOTHERS from invading their personal cyber-playground.
Now, let's be serious folks. It's not likely that their mothers - or mine - will be flocking to the Web anytime soon. It isn't the difficulty of getting online that's been keeping Mom away. Mothers thrive on challenges. Show me the nerd who can coordinate a family's schedule, remodel a house and balance the checkbook all while acting as chauffeur, doctor and warden to a handful of kids and grandkids - not to mention cooking, mending and getting out really tough stains - and I'll show you a nerd with better things to do with his time than program in UNIX.
And don't expect the argument that everyone else is online to carry much weight either. If everyone else jumped off a bridge would you? Of course you would! But Mom wouldn't.
What's keeping Mom offline is the lack of a truly compelling reason to get online. Mom's practical. She's not about to spend two grand on a computer and $19.95 a month just to e-mail Junior when, according to that nice Candace Bergen, she can actually talk to him for a dime a minute.
No, Mom isn't about to rush online just because it's the current hot technology. She has too many of the kids' eight track tapes, quadraphonic sound systems and electronic bread makers stored in her basement to fall for that.
What she needs is evidence that the Web actually offers something she'll find useful. That's not as easy as you might think. Consider the top ten sites listed in the Web Crawler 100, a recent compilation of the most popular spots on the Web:
- Welcome to Netscape
- Yahoo!
- WebCrawler Searching
- The Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Free Speech
- WebCounter Home Page
- Welcome to Microsoft
- Discover NCSA: The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- Lycos, Inc. Home Page
- Infoseek
- AltaVista Search: Main Page
Half point to other sites, a third offer software for viewing those sites, one counts visitors to your site and the other defends freedom of speech online. Mom's a big advocate of free speech - as long as it's not directed at her - but the way it's practiced online isn't something she'd be willing to pay to witness.
The fact is the information at these sites is absolutely useless to anyone who isn't already online. To Mom the Web would seem like some sort of electronic prom queen, fun to look at but totally self absorbed and ultimately not really worth the upkeep. Certainly not the kind of online service you want to settle down with.
The rest of the 100 don't offer much more. Two thirds are Internet or computer related. And after you throw out reference sites (Mom owns an encyclopedia), news sites (she has the Post delivered), rock music and Generation X lifestyle sites (not interested) and sports sites (ditto) you're left with the Playboy Web Space. Considering her consternation at finding the print version of that magazine in my bedroom years ago, I don't think she'll find the Web version a compelling reason to log on.
I've also searched my bookmarks for sites to interest Mom. I've found two. The first, How To Tie a Tie, was responsible for the nice four in hand I recently executed while donning a tie for the first time in a decade. Mom was suitably appreciative and I'm sure she'd like to support the nice folks who made it possible but I doubt she'll pay for the privilege. The second is my own home page. While some might describe it as a site only a mother could love, I suspect she'd actually view it about as often as she looks at my drawings she saved from the second grade.
