By Penelope Patsuris ust when you thought that every inch of the Internet had been commercially exploited, along comes the Comet Cursor. In the nine months since its launch, Comet has had 6.3 million downloads, thanks primarily to its alliances with sites that have fanatical followings. Comet Cursors can also be found at the official sites for Beanie Babies and Dilbert.
Fans love it, and sites see it as yet another way to promote their content.
The cursor generates additional brand awareness, drives more traffic to the banner itself and increases clickthroughs. That's a nice little recurring revenue stream, but hardly the road to great wealth. In order to make money, Comet is touting its graphic cursors as the next big innovation in Internet advertising. If Comet can manage to make its technology ubiquitous, these kitschy cursors will probably be as commonplace as screensavers or PC wallpaper. The cursor concept, however, is far more commercially adaptable, and potentially quite profitable.