Reading the recent news about the Microsoft / Yahoo tussle reminds me of the heady days of 1996, when I was still (like many people) wet behind the ears when it came to internet marketing. I joined one of the few internet marketing forums - on CompuServe, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, the guy who ran the forum had a private arrangement with Jerry Yang, one of the two founders of Yahoo! Forum members could get their websites fast-tracked into the Yahoo directory by using a special link.

And Jerry Yang used to personally add your website himself!

According to Forbes, Jerry is #317 in the list of the world’s richest people.

Around the same time, I was also able to exchange information with the webmaster of the BBC. He used some of my material on the BBC’s website, and I used some of his. At the time, he was the BBC’s only employee dealing with their website!

Want to see what the Marketing Magic website looked like in 1997? I didn’t even have a domain name for it!

http://tinyurl.com/6o8jr4

And only a few years earlier, Bill Gates said that Microsoft wasn’t interested in the internet because “it is a passing fad”