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 web sites, 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.

[Jargon File]

(2001-05-10)