Rather than promoting and proliferating the kind of junk e-mail that earned
him his dubious moniker,
Wallace is backing an entertainment site dubbed PassThisOn.com that automatically
spawns no fewer than three browsers when patrons try to exit it
"Because control of content is in the hands of the viewer on the Net
If, that is, they ever come back.
Therein lies the high stakes in this form of marketing, known as multiple-window launching, or "exiting," in the industry. PassThisOn's tactic, which borrows heavily from marketing practices that largely have been confined to pornography sites, is the latest in a spate of seemingly desperate attempts to survive the digital economy's shakeout. The risk of alienating visitors is obvious, but the Internet industry's slowdown has led entrepreneurs to push traditional limits for success in a sector obsessed with traffic tallies.
"This is a game to juice the Web traffic numbers," said Laura Mitrovich, program manager in Internet market strategies for The Yankee Group. "In an era where we're not sure what the sustainable model will be, they're probably thinking this is better than nothing."
