brochureware
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brochureware
(marketing, jargon)Planned but non-existent product like
vaporware, but with the added implication that marketing is
actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures).
Brochureware is often deployed to con customers into not
committing to an existing product of the competition's.
The term is now especially applicable to new websites, web site revisions, and ancillary services such as customer support and product return.
Owing to the explosion of database-driven, cookie-using dot-coms (of the sort that can now deduce that you are, in fact, a dog), the term is now also used to describe sites made up of static HTML pages that contain not much more than contact info and mission statements. The term suggests that the company is small, irrelevant to the web, local in scope, clueless, broke, just starting out, or some combination thereof.
Many new companies without product, funding, or even staff, post brochureware with investor info and press releases to help publicise their ventures. As of December 1999, examples include pop.com and cdradio.com.
Small-timers that really have no business on the web such as lawncare companies and divorce laywers inexplicably have brochureware made that stays unchanged for years.
The term is now especially applicable to new websites, web site revisions, and ancillary services such as customer support and product return.
Owing to the explosion of database-driven, cookie-using dot-coms (of the sort that can now deduce that you are, in fact, a dog), the term is now also used to describe sites made up of static HTML pages that contain not much more than contact info and mission statements. The term suggests that the company is small, irrelevant to the web, local in scope, clueless, broke, just starting out, or some combination thereof.
Many new companies without product, funding, or even staff, post brochureware with investor info and press releases to help publicise their ventures. As of December 1999, examples include pop.com and cdradio.com.
Small-timers that really have no business on the web such as lawncare companies and divorce laywers inexplicably have brochureware made that stays unchanged for years.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
brochureware
A website that advertises a product but contains only the equivalent of a paper brochure with no interaction. A website can be much more elaborate. For example, it can zoom into images for more detail, make recommendations based on user input, provide downloads of software demos, compute and process the sale and remember the questions users asked the last time they visited. All this is missing in brochureware. See wares.Copyright © 1981-2019 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.