By Sophia Salis Kelter

Although he’s taken rightful credit for helping to popularize the Internet as we know it today, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore did not create the World Wide Web. Following the timeline, Gore was in his early twenties when the Internet was born. Research and endless hours of work at the hands of a handful contributed to the creation of the web that has so dramatically changed our lives in this twenty-first century. That’s why it’s hard, and almost unfair, to give full credit to any one individual or to exactly pinpoint the date and time of its birth. It’s especially difficult since the concept was reincarnated several times before it became what it is today.

For the sake of establishing context, we can say the web as a concept was born by Licklider and Kleinrock in the early ‘60s and, in its primitive functional form, in 1969. Co-crafted in Massachusetts by scientists at Stanford University and Cambridge’s Bolt Beranek & Newman, many involved in the web’s first incarnation acknowledged their work as having been built upon J.C.R. Licklider and Leonard Kleinrock’s research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The web was first dreamt of as Licklider’s “Galactic Network,” a dream that materialized in the summer of 1969. That’s when a group of widely separated computers first “talked” to each other.

Vinton Cerf of Stafford and Robert Kahn of BB&N emerge in a variety of sources as the leading scientists behind the web’s development. Cerf and Kahn spent much of the 1970’s collaborating on a project for the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Programs Agency. The idea was to establish a transmission system that would enable the sending of data between networks of computers running incompatible operating systems. It took time for a series of transmission schematics, named TCP/IP, to become one spider, spinning its network of threads, webbing together people in different places, of different languages, cultures.

So, what does Al Gore have to do with any of this? He was the first politician to fight for aggressive funding of the Internet’s growth and accessibility. On June 6^th, 2005, Gore received a “Webby” award by the hand of Vinton Cerf during a ceremony in New York. Gore was the first to utter the words, “information superhighway.”

Today, webmakers are giving the Internet a living, breathing identity. The notion sprouted from the brains of a few has become the most collaborative communications network the world has ever seen.

Some say the web is evil. Some say it really is the greatest thing since sliced bread, running water, indoor bathrooms and all that “good stuff.” Others, say the web is a canvas, reflecting the best and worst of our kind. Since the web brings us together in a way we’ve never been brought together before, it commands great capacity and possesses intrinsic power. With the Internet, comes a forum for enhanced personal communication and responsible commerce, along with an accessible market for corruption and propaganda. Ahhh, talk about sides of a coin.

The bottom line might shake out like this: who knew just how wide the World Wide Web would be? It’s not only wide-reaching in its capacity to network us, but wide-reaching in its power to steer commerce and communication. Those who refuse to acknowledge it, will fall to it. Good, bad or otherwise, the Internet monopolizes on our society’s frenzied, frantic pace. It provides a quick shop, look-up and is being seen more and more by each successive generation as an entertainment venue.

Learning the language of the Internet and having a presence there is of fundamental importance to today’s existing, and tomorrow’s new businesses. Visit

INET-OPTIMER.COM on Tuesday, March 19^th for our next piece outlining recently released e-commerce data from the census bureau. We’ll look at how this information helps us chart complete online spending for 2006 and what it means to businesses throughout this year.

INET-OPTIMIZER.COM can link you with the right resources for online success. For help or to access additional articles, visit INET-OPTIMIZER.COM.

Information for this article provided, in part, through:

-www.isoc.org

-“Who ‘created’ the Internet? It’s a tangled web” By David L. Chandler for The Boston Globe. Published Friday, October 20^th 2000. Article available on http://seattlepi.nwsource.com.

-“Man who claims he created the Internet gets award” By Nick Farell for www.TheInquirer.net.

Ride the Swelling Wave of Online Commerce

By Sophia Salis Kelter

Blood, sweat and tears…it’s hard to get around them when you’re starting, maintaining or growing your business. With changing times and technologies, there’s another item smart business leaders must add to their list of indispensable ingredients: SEO (Search Engine Optimization). For most men and women utterly immersed in the everyday affairs of running their companies, the term may seem like foreign tech language. Although it has yet to take its place in common business vernacular, companies enjoying accelerated Internet sales know the term well.

Online retailers have shown major and consistent gains over these last five years. Dozens of independent studies indicate this spike is just the beginning of a trend that will sweep the U.S. and all industrialized nations. Marketers are closely monitoring shoppers’ behavior and believe Generation X-ers, their children and grandchildren will more likely visit the Internet before visiting a shopping mall. Even when the sale doesn’t end on the Internet, in many cases, it starts there.

If you haven’t already grasped the importance of having an online presence, you’re in trouble. This is not an attempt to alarm you. It’s an attempt to shock you into reality. Let’s please assume you’ve already built a website. While it’s extremely important to have a website up and running, that’s simply not enough to rake in the online revenue you’re expecting it to. A viable website maximizes online sales potential through careful maintenance that’s driven with attention to SEO.

That’s the whole idea of Search Engine Optimization. When someone is looking for exactly what your business offers, does your website pop to the top of their search results? More and more, you’re hearing people advise others to just “Google it” or “Yahoo it.” Those searching the net are finding what they’re looking for by the graces of these search engines. If you’re not paying to appear at the top in traditional Pay-Per-Click fashion, what are you doing to ensure your site is hitting the 1-3 page range and not listed at the bottom of results page 21? Having a natural high page ranking makes all the difference in the world when it comes to developing a highly trafficked website.

Search Engine Optimization is about ranking high within natural search results. That’s, basically, everything your search turns up outside sponsored listings. At this point, sponsored listings may sound pretty appealing. Studies, however, indicate Pay-Per-Click ads are more often by-passed. Research shows 60% of online “searchers” use natural listings and 75% do not explore beyond the first three pages.

Now you have a basic sense of what it takes to make your website bring home the bacon. Stay with Inetoptimizer.com for bi-weekly updates that will help you chart the course to getting there. Between articles, speak with an Inetoptimizer expert about pushing your website to the top. Call Inetoptimizer toll-free at 800.581.9645.

Preview: On Tuesday, January 16^th, Inetoptimizer.com will release its next article, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” The content will feature an in-depth look at on-line trends that are defining the future of the Internet.