Back in the 80’s when I first discovered e-mail I was all excited about its marketing potential. Now I want to hide under a rock but unfortunately there are none in cyberspace. It’s less solid than sand.

I guess once we became successful at replacing the postage stamp with computers, modems and automation we must have been a bit naïve if we couldn’t see a tidal wave of spam rising at warp speed on the horizon. Now we are drowning in the flood it has created trying after the fact to figure out how to clean up the mess and how to tighten the reins.

It’s only in the last few months that there have been very serious moves on the part of major ISP’s to combat spam, new bills proposed to impose stiff fines. The War on Iraq may be looming but the War on Spam has really begun. Unfortunately the enemy in this War on Spam is fairly invisible and not so easy to eradicate. And blocking techniques can make collateral damage out any legitimate email publisher with the wrong word in the subject line or body of the message.

Despite this onslaught of spam, market researchers are predicting a huge rise in permission-based marketing e-mails over the next five years. Unless the spam situation is drastically cleaned up during that time, the rise in the number of marketing e-mails may be more about fighting to gain share of mailbox than marketing itself.

Besides issues about e-mail, business survival has been a major challenge online.

In the Feb 10th issue of Crains New York Business I came across an interesting article on the front page: Tech firms abandon Wall St: High costs, hassles lead public companies to go private. It seems that as many of the surviving public dot com companies shrank in size the cost and time to maintain a public company did not go down. To avoid the close scrutiny of Wall Street, many of these battered veterans of the now burst cyber bubble economy are going private using "methods from mergers with private companies to bankruptcy restructurings."

Small is beautiful but not when you’ve been de-listed from NASDAQ, have millions in debt and no investor confidence in your stock. Then small and private is the most attractive life form in the financial universe. But not for too long, perhaps. There are VC’s out there, Crain’s reports, that believe some of these very same companies could go public again in two or four years. Fasten your seat beats, this time it might not be a bubble it could be a real roller coaster ride we’re in for.

On the bright side there are several dot.coms that have survived that are profitable: MarketWatch.com Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc., LookSmart Ltd. and Autobytel Inc. just recently reported their first quarterly profits. The list of the Internet's publicly held money makers include eBay Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Overture Services Inc., Expedia Inc., FindWhat.com Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc.

Several privately owned dot-coms, including search engines Google and DealTime, say they have been making money, too.

InfoSpace Inc., Netflix Inc. and Overstock.com Inc. may be the next dot-coms to become profitable this year.

A recent study from WebSideStory.com reveals that more people are going directly to web sites by direct navigation (typing in URLs) than using search engines. The best explanation for this is that branding campaigns have ingrained company’s URL’s in people’s minds and in their browser’s favorites lists. See this chart for the exact stats:

According to a study done by UCLA the Internet will max out at 80% of the US population in the next few years or at roughly 84 million households. The other 20% can either not afford a computer or have no interest in getting online. For the full story click here.

AlleyEvent.com is a leading provider of Internet based event listings to the new media community. The site provides "the most current, comprehensive, easily accessible calendar of the area's new media events, and a number of other special services in development."

But what’s most interesting is the site’s free, customized, weekly email with listings of all of the events of the types you specify including the AlleyEvent Speaker ALERT Newsletter that lists conferences looking for speakers and where to apply.

To find out more go to: http://www.alleyevent.com/ 

	FITA's Trade Shows Worldwide (http://www.fita.org/tshows.html). You just enter the name of the industry, the city or country (or leave those boxes blank if you want a worldwide listing of shows You get detailed information for every show, including who to contact if you want to attend.
	go-events.com (http://www.go-events.com). This site has a database of tens of thousands of events worldwide, and you can search it for free. Search by keyword or category, and you'll get a detailed listing of events, complete with location, dates, and contact information.
	ExpoWorld.net (http://www.expoworld.net). Las Vegas certainly knows how to put on a show, and this site, sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Bureau, has plenty of information about trade shows worldwide. You can do a keyword search, or browse the categories, where you'll find links to convention bureaus, industry publications, major exhibit halls, online forums and mailing lists, trade associations, and much more.

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