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When "push" comes to shove

Push technology is all the rage -- What does this mean for Java?

By William Blundon, JavaWorld.com, 04/01/97

Access your mental archives and retrieve an image of Will Robinson (the young co-star of the series) walking buoyantly through some bucolic, oddly vegetated, alien landscape. Suddenly from off-camera come the flailing mechanical arms of the family robot, wheels turning, lights flashing, and declaiming: "Danger, Will Robinson. Danger, Will Robinson (or whatever the equivalent may be in your local language)."

Now think about push technology

Push products are all the rage. It is impossible to read the popular press and not see an article proclaiming it as the Next Big Thing. It is, or at least it probably is the next big thing, and there are three major reasons why.

First, the Internet is a major story, but it is rapidly becoming old news. The media needs a fresh angle and push is it (not a great reason for all the hoopla, but an important one). Second, already there is an awful lot of content on the 'Net, and it continues to grow exponentially. There are a number of excellent search engines in the market, but finding what you want, when you want it is becoming increasingly time consuming. Finally, making money on the Web has been harder than many people thought it would be. Everyone is in search of an improved business model. The first law of venture capital is that there is always money to be made where need and technology meet.

So what does this mean to you? Well, if you are not using a push product today, you probably will be in the future. The most important reason for this is nicely encapsulated in the name of the leading push company: Pointcast. The broadcasting model of the television age achieved maximum profitability by identifying the largest viewing audience and selling advertising to vendors of mass-market products. Despite a large investment in research, developing a demographic profile of this audience has always been rudimentary. In the broadcast media, this has led to programming for the least common denominator. Cable television has increased the ability of advertisers to reach a select audience, but good demographics are still hard to come by.

Pointcast, and the other push vendors -- such as BackWeb, Data Channel, Individual's Freeloader, Intermind, Lanacom, Marimba, and Wayfarer (see Resources) -- have learned an important lesson from television. In a world of unlimited information, rather than broadcast to the masses, it can be more lucrative to "narrowcast" information to a select audience. Most people do not want 1,000 television channels -- they want one channel that shows what they want to see when they want to see it. Letting people configure to their specific needs the presentation of information from a multitude of channels is good for the consumer and great for business.