Word of the Day with Ike DeLorenzo

Word of the Day

Located just off Brady Street and down the block from an ancient SRO hotel, the offices of Parlez Commuications does indeed qualify as one of those famed “South of Market” Internet start-ups – by about fifty yards. The reality of Parlez is not one of those spacious warehouse spaces filled with neon orange speedboats tucked into corners to create a sense of ‘coziness’ or huge 3-D logo models of last month’s branding project hanging from the ceiling. Stashed away in a windowless room with two desks, three iMacs, and a glassed-in refrigerator that also doubles as a bookshelf, where Yoohoos and O’Reilly books jockey for space in the chill. But what the little web company lacks in luxury it more than makes up for in its flagship product – a freebie listserv with one of the largest independent mailing lists on the Internet, known to students, professors, bibliophiles and word-nerds as “Word of the Day.”

 

Delivering exactly what the name implies each and every day to at least 148,000 unique addresses, “Word-of-the-Day” features a word generally not of common usage, (like “feckless,” “apoplectic,” and “lugubrious”) offers an origin of the word, a definition, and an example of its usage in context. The current listing of previous words runs to the tune of 966 – that’s almost three years, and close to ancient history in the Internet world. The site also includes occasional literary contests like “Guess the Author”, and short feature articles such as the current one on Hippocrates’ “The Four Humors” as well as a listing of the 100 best novels of the century (according to Random House’s Modern Library) with commentary on the list.

 

List founder and Parlez principal is Michael “Ike” DeLorenzo, a graduate of MIT with degrees in philosophy and biology who’s been working with computers since high school. While working for StarNine, Apple’s on-line division, in the mid-‘90s, DeLorenzo helped to develop two major software products for Macintosh-based services on the Internet – the ubiquitous WebStar and ListStar.

 

“While I was working for StarNine, I began playing around with lists to see how I could create functionality between lists and the Web,” said the bespeckled DeLorenzo, 30. “So I started my own list in order to get a sense of what might be needed to incorporate web and lists together automatically.”

 

The result was “Word of the Day.” In the beginning, DeLorenzo kept a pretty low profile for his list, writing one a day and sending it off to a small group of friends, associates, and business contacts. Within a matter of months, however, the list grew exponentially, outstripping the capabilities of the Macintosh LC 475 that he had dedicated as its server. So he brought the list home from work, set up an ISDN line, and bought WOTD a better machine. He now has three other editors scattered around the world who assist with the project – Chris in Japan, George in Washington, D.C., and Katie, who can be found in the less exotic but still quite far-flung land of Palo Alto.

 

“Word of the Day made me realize that the Internet is a force of its own,” said Lorenzo. “Whereas in traditional media you create huge campaigns to make the market respond to you and your products, on the Internet, a really small niche market can be created virtually overnight if you are offering something that people actually want.”

 

Over the years, “Word of the Day” has been the target of both love letters, thank you notes, and hate mail. While checking through his list logs recently, DeLorenzo discovered that the Iranian Prime Minister Muhammed Katami, members of the United Arab Emirates UN delegation, and New York Times Magazine’s consummate word-nerd William Safire can be counted among the membership.

 

“It’s really amazing the kinds of people who are subscribed and who send us mail. We get hate mail from the left and right, saying we’re pro-fascist on the one hand and pro-gay on the other. People read a whole lot into our content. At one point, we said something bad about Orrin Hatch, and he personally responded. When Theodore H. White died, we ran a quote by him, and we got this outpouring of mail from all over the world from people who knew him personally, thanking us for the tribute. So it really runs the gamut.”

 

“Word of the Day” is advertising-supported, with ads on the website and occasional ads in the body of the mail. When it comes to demographics, DeLorenzo figures that for the most part, his readership is primarily comprised of over-educated word snobs like himself. But a growing number of WOTD’s letters are coming from people who want to learn English, and hope that subscribing to WOTD can help them.

 

“People around the world are currently experiencing the Internet as an English-only environment, although that’s changing pretty quickly,” said DeLorenzo. “And in a lot of these countries, logging into high-bandwidth sites is just too expensive, so they rely on e-mail for the bulk of their Internet experience.”

 

Parlez was recently approached by a Hungarian investor who wants to take the WOTD concept global with a new service called “WordBurger,” which will deliver business-related words and concepts in eight different languages througout China, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Though the content will be created in Budapest and then diseminated to language editors, Parlez will be running list administration and creating the websites for the service.

 

“It’s very exciting to use the Internet in this manner,” said DeLorenzo. “WOTD began as a little experiment, really. But people are frenetic about getting it.   What’s really fun is to send out the Word and then watch responses come in as people are arriving at work on the east coast, the west coast, Japan, Europe – watching the mail is like watching the sunrise all over the world. And that’s cool.”

April 19th, 1999 by