Frank,
What is your read on this?
Jeff asked earlier if a strategic partnership for RDI Marketing
was in the works with American Interactive Media (BB:AIME, aime-inc.com )? He cited the news release: biz.yahoo.com
Now note the following new release from AIME:
biz.yahoo.com
The part that interest me was:
Through a recent agreement with UUNET, an MCI WorldCom Company (Nasdaq:WCOM - news), AIME is able to offer Internet access via local telephone numbers to millions of U.S. households, according to Mark Graff, chief executive officer and president of AIME.
UUNET will provide AIME with access to more than 1,000 Points of Presence (POPs) throughout the United States and in Canada, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as connections to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) around the world. This will allow AIME to market Internet access, as well as customized content and e-commerce services, to hundreds of millions of households. As part of the agreement, UUNET will also provide technical support and daily subscriber usage reports for AIME.
AIME's relationship with UUNET complements its recently established strategic relationship with MMG Direct to develop an Affinity Access Program. The program was set up to market custom Internet packages to affinity groups, initially to MMG Direct's client roster. The MMG client base including affinity memberships exceeds thirty million individuals. AIME previously announced its first affinity relationship via MMG with Preferred Consumer Network (PCN), a membership-based discount shopping service with nearly 500,000 members across the U.S.
''Our relationship with UUNET, a leading Internet service provider, enables AIME to support the Internet access needs of large affinity group customers such as PCN for our webPASSPORT Internet portal service,'' said Graff.
John Folger said on the conference call to expect PCN to be on board within 45 days. I believe that would be by February 11. It appears the primary purpose of PCN is the AIME connection!
Also remember on the conference call Eric Bauchman said that the internet navigational site was based in both the US and Singapore. He further said the navigational site would be on other content and provide a world wide site. He claimed the site would multi-lingual and have more robust features and flexibility than Yahoo or Netscape. In other words an Asian Yahoo?
Eric further stated that RDI Marketing would be the "main e-commerce" back bone of that site and would "own" a significant portion of that operation. He further stated that arrangements were being completed before announcements would be made.
John Folger stated the demo site would be up and running by mid-January. Add to this the fact that the Smallcap Journal is scheduled to hit the streets sometime next week to about 100,000 readers featuring RDIM and we indeed should have an interesting week!
Looks to me, from reading between the lines, that RDIM is going to own a portion of AIME when the dust settles.
BTW, AIME closed at 4 1/16 today, up 5/16.
I noticed that SI has a thread on AIME, but I haven't had time to check it out yet:
Subject 19911
Makes for interesting reading, doesn't it!
Cisco |
