They said the media is not the same, and that new generations will use them differently. Never before have we had a medium that is so universal right from the beginning. Some of the most interesting presentations concerned the experiences of users, although these raised as many questions as they answered. Mark Santoleri of WorldGate Communications talked about the company's technology which is installed in cable systems in North and South America. They attract six to eight per cent of their customers through telemarketing, a very high success rate and most of these customers have no previous experience with the Internet.
Different markets have different usage pattern.
However, e-mail was popular with everyone, especially the elderly, and local content is key to usage. Many of the companies proposed a function called channel hyperlinking which is the ability to link TV content and Web content, thus integrating the media. One of the main reasons for this is to enhance the advertising potential of the media and this supposes that viewers will click on an ad product placement to see more information. An April 1999 study of WorldGate users in 1400 homes showed 13,100 incidents of hyperlinking over this time. This rather low figure was attributed to most users not knowing that the hyperlinks existed.