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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy?

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To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (26543)4/7/1999 3:06:00 PM
From: Spartex  Read Replies (1) of 42771
 
What trends do see creating investment opportunities in the
Internet arena?

Franco: One thing I'm finding more and more
attractive is this model of a commerce network as
opposed to just a pure online retailer. An example is
Digital River (DRIV). Its business model is to go to
software publishers and sign them up to distribute
their titles, and then go to online retailers and sign
them up to sell the software products. So Digital
River is functioning as a software distributor in the
online world, giving software publishers much
broader distribution than they would have in the
physical world, and giving retailers a whole library of
software titles as opposed to the dozen or so you
typically find on the shelves at CompUSA, plus the
ability to download this stuff online.

The idea of a commerce network is that the more points you add to the
network the more valuable the whole network becomes. The more
software publishers Digital River signs up the more attractive they are for
an Internet retailer who wants to sell software, as they've got this
enormous library that they can offer from day one, rather than having to go
and sign up all the software publishers themselves.

This sounds like what some of the new online auto sites are doing,
serving as a middleman between consumers and auto dealers.

Franco: Right. With Autobytel (ABTL), the more consumers they sign up
the more attractive it is for dealers, and the more dealers they sign up the
better geographic coverage they have and the more attractive it is for
consumers. So it kind of feeds on itself.

cbs.marketwatch.com

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Isn't Novell's I-chain concept something that would do exactly what Digital River is doing, but without the grunt/manual effort? Very interesting to hear about companies like this, and software that could put them out of business. QuadK
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