Word: virtually
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...should be, but too many e-banks have provided customer service that is virtual, as in virtually nonexistent. One ex-patron says he spent 40 minutes on hold every time he called NetBank. Jim Bruene, editor of Online Banking Report, agrees that virtual banks need faster service. "Now you're lucky to get an e-mail response in two days," he says. "At some point, that response at a good wired bank will be in two minutes...
...since low overhead enables virtual banks to offer checking accounts with an average of triple the interest and half the maintenance fees of off-line banks, according to Bankrate.com Now, with slow customer growth and high marketing costs, the e-field is narrowing. Bank One is grounding WingspanBank.com after a $150 million launch. CompuBank sold its accounts to NetBank in March, and Lighthousebank is looking for a buyer...
...users and the kind of dazzlingly diverse and comprehensive music choice you get on a network that size. BearShare was the best of a crop of programs that used Gnutella technology; but the way Gnutella works means you're largely limited to rifling through the collections of 25,000 virtual neighbors. Close but no cigar, as Thomas Dolby sang (and you'd have little chance of finding that track, for one). Aimster had the neat idea of piggybacking on AOL's instant messenger service, but it turned out to be plagued by bugs. And if anyone without a computer science...
...ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts, viewers see a rotating array of corporate pitches on the backstop behind home plate that are invisible to fans in the stands. In Mexico logos for Pepsi and Tecate magically appear on the field during soccer games. Virtual ads, though, are just the beginning of a world in which advertising will be far more pervasive. If Williams gets his way, PVI will soon be digitally inserting products, not just brand names, into syndicated and prime-time programming. PVI is already negotiating with TNT (owned by TIME's parent, AOL Time Warner) and Studios...
Williams believes that PVI's high-tech hocus-pocus, already the target of some media watchdogs, could easily triple the ad dollars each program generates. With iPoint, the system Williams has been developing, digital set-top boxes could tailor virtual ads to individual viewers, based on their demographics and buying habits. Pizza Hut could go after Domino's customers, enticing them to click on an image to order a pie. "We can literally target individual TV sets," says Williams. He just has to hope that most people, unlike him, are still busy watching them...