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| The Weird, Wild World of Web Economy |
| By Tom Weber
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| June 03, 2000
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Rosemary Kelly of Holden would be the first to admit that she isn't the most computer-savvy person ever to click a mouse.
She'll tell you that the Internet can be a pretty overwhelming place at times, a seemingly limitless electronic smorgasbord of offerings that don't seem to have much connection to the tangible world of goods and services she grew up in.
Kelly isn't quite sure what a destination portal is, for instance, or why one named iWon . com (henceforth to be called "the dot-com") would phone her one evening last week and tell her that she just won $10,000 for -- well, for the simple reason that the Web site gives away $10,000 every single day and it was Kelly's turn to get lucky.
She didn't buy anything from the dot-com, or beat anyone in a trivia contest, or sign any binding agreements. She only used the site to check the weather, maybe read a news story or find a recipe - - 10 or 15 minutes of casual browsing in the mornings.
"Yes, it's a strange feeling to win all that money just for going on the Internet," Kelly said of her lucrative introduction to the weird world of the wired. "The whole thing's a bit bizarre, although I'm not complaining, mind you."
Curious myself about this bold new revolution called e-commerce -- where profit isn't necessarily a criterion for success, a tech company's stock prices can rise despite big losses, and sweepstakes and giveaways abound -- I had called Kelly to ask what she knew about the business and how she stumbled upon her good fortune. Like most of us, though, she's still trying to make sense of it all.
Kelly is 43 and a dietitian, working part time since her son was born six months ago. Her husband, Cavenaugh Kelly, is an occupational therapist at Community Health and Counseling in Lincoln. Originally from Farmington, the couple recently built a house in Holden. Until November, they had resisted buying their first home computer for fear that it might isolate them from each other.
"But we wanted to keep in touch with medical news from our fields, so we finally bought one," Kelly said.
In February, while feeding her son, Kelly saw a TV ad for the portal that bills itself as the Internet's largest guaranteed cash giveaway. So she registered for free and began browsing briefly each day, racking up points with every click until her name was picked. Her friends were suspicious; "What kind of business," they asked, "gives away $10,000 a day?"
"I'm not completely sure how it works," she said. "All I can think is they must make a lot of money on the ads they carry, although I never bothered with them. That's what's so strange; you don't have to do anything. Only in America."
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