A magistrate in the home country of Breaking News, Trinidad and Tobago, ordered an investigation into how a picture of one of the accused in the Sean Luke murder case got on the Internet. The boy is 13 years old and his picture is supposed to be protected because he is a minor. Ever since she made this comment, one of the top search phrases for and from Trinidad was "Sean Luke's killer face."

If you don't have one already, this court order only highlights the need to get your website as soon as possible because from a business perspective, it shows the true advertising power of the World Wide Web.

Here's what the magistrate's request teaches us:

No website, no business
The magistrate said that her daughter told her that the picture was on the Internet. Her daughter and her daughters' friends are going to be the driving force behind the international economy tomorrow. If you don't have a website, you may not even show up on their radar screen. "Oh well, I can wait until they do become the driving force and then get in." Here's some Breaking News for you: it has already started happening. Multi-million dollar corporations are complaining about competition from online merchants. So what you should really say is, "I am going to wait until everyone else has established their brands on the Internet and by then I would have missed the boat but I like to play catch-up."

The Power of Word of Mouth
Again, the magistrate said her daughter was the source of information. Now, you can advertise all you want, pour millions of dollars into TV, radio, and press ads. But when someone you know and trust tells you that Singer has the best quality furniture, you're going to buy from Singer, even if you just saw ten Courts ads on TV. Given the fact that the Internet is still a game of search-and-find, people feel accomplished when they "find" something on the Internet and they tell their friends about it, many times even when their friends never asked.

Just fix it
From our preliminary investigations, we found that the owner of the website where the picture was allegedly published acted quickly to remove the picture. What happens if you invest a few thousand dollars into a press ad and then after it's published you realise it contains a mistake that you made when you submitted it to the newspaper. You just lost your money! Not with the Internet. In the same way, the Trinidadian Canada-based student acted quickly to remove the picture, you can remove anything from your website in fractions of a second. You can fix your ad as soon as you find errors.

No Mediator
Now, this is a power that ought to be used responsibly. There is no active mediator of content on the Internet and with blogs, basically anyone can publish anything. In old-school advertising, publishers still check ads to ensure that they adhere to (1) their own rules (2) advertising rules and (3) laws of the land.

Small Advertising Fees In a future issue, we will publish a comparison chart on the cost-effectiveness of advertising in different media including the Internet. However, what is undisputable is that advertising on the Internet gives one of the best Cost-Per-Thousand ratios. With a website of your own, you stand to save a lot. Don't think you need to advertise? Let me know who you are so that I can bump you off our list. :-) Seriously though, if no one knows about you, no one can buy from you. It's that simple.

Interactivity
Only on the Internet can someone go into your ad in detail and interact with it. If your website is your 24-hour ad, then you can even put systems in place on your website to get information from customers and stay in touch with them. That can't happen with any other media.

There are many other reasons to stop waiting and act now but I'm always eager to hear what you think. So drop me a line or two especially if we're not on the same page.

Aleem Khan is an accredited Internet Expert with the International Internet Authority, a secure and reliable place to getYourNAMEin.com.