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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ftth who wrote (10662)	6/7/1999 12:49:00 AM
From: E. Davies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

The content is zilcho (and therefore the advertising dollars) and no one keeps the service because of the content. This seems as appropriate a place as any to point out something I realized. ATHM can earn content dollars (if they earn any) from AOL users as well as @home users! We all are so protective of the concept that if you are the ISP then you get the ad dollars but how true is that? We all know that the "home page advantage" doesnt mean very much. Heck, with @home you dont even need to use their software setup at all! Add to that the fact that with always on service people wont be firing up the browser except when they have to reset the machine and you see that the "home page" wont be seen much even if the user is too stupid to figure out how to change it. Excite makes money in the public domain from the public. Add in a really good broadband function and they continue making money anyway. Who cares who the ISP is? Too take the other side a moment- being the ISP does have a few advantages that people dont think about. One is that the ISP knows who you are and where you have been. Targeted advertising is worth more than generic banner ads. The other is that @home has talked (do they have it?) about some kind of system where you register with them all your basic info (CC # included) and then there is some kind of "one touch" buying set up. Obviously I'm weak on the details. I'd like to add that personally I feel that broadband will really only be at its optimum completely within a broadband network like @home's. But if any ISP were to join to the same headends a broadband peering would be a simple and obvious thing. ERic