KILLER APATHY

As the public debate over broadband shifts from access to content, some of us have begun to recognize that the toughest terrain to cross in the residential broadband industry is not necessarily the last mile. It's a much shorter distance: Namely, the American attention span.

Sen. Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings said it plainly last month on the Congress floor: “85% of Americans have access to broadband, but only 10% to 12% have signed up.” One of the acknowledged sources of this Internet apathy is a lack of compelling content to justify a high-speed connection. Sure, the World Wide Web has millions of channels, but there's nothing on.

One Web surfer was quoted in the New York Times last month likening the Web to the streets of Tijuana, Mexico: “Everywhere you go, someone is jumping on you to buy something.”

A recent Forbes article pointed out that television in its early days faced a similar adoption slump until Milton Berle arrived — a “killer app” before the term existed. Just by putting on a dress and cracking jokes, Berle drove television adoption up more than 400% in a single year, brought a rush of competition to the medium and changed the American lifestyle forever. If only broadband could find its own version of such a phenomenon: a comedian in drag to bring the whole nation online.

Have no illusions, broadband providers: Uncle Milty is not going to save you.

When broadband providers abandon their hopes of discovering the Internet's “killer app,” they will be closer to understanding its most valuable property. The Internet is most interesting for the same reason that it is opposite from those glowing wooden boxes that delivered Milton Berle.

Unlike television, the Internet is better suited not to unify the entire nation, but to maintain its diversity. Even AOL — so far, the Internet's closest thing to Berle's “Texaco Star Theater” — found that one of its most popular applications was enabling users to divide themselves into countless rooms based on their own interests rather than dishing out “must-see” content for the masses.

American culture is growing further away from the days when everyone in America gathered around their TV sets at the same time to watch the same program and laugh at the same jokes. Broadband is well-suited to the current culture, but it requires a more segmented marketing approach and a diverse content offering. Finding killer applications one market segment at a time may seem more laborious than the search for a Holy Grail, but it will be far more rewarding. Consider the fact that broadband's adoption rate has already surpassed that of television in its early years.

Even in Tijuana, people are discovering things they like — things that match their own tastes. We should all be watching them.