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Technology Stocks : CDNow (CDNW) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nimbus who wrote (1324)	6/23/1999 2:24:00 PM
From: Howard Feinstein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1465

Wall Street is certainly not treating CDNW like there is something exciting going on!! Stock is virtually listless!! Howie

To: Nimbus who wrote (1324)	6/24/1999 1:04:00 AM
From: $Mogul	Respond to of 1465

Youe mean DEATH and TAXES.

To: Nimbus who wrote (1324)	6/25/1999 6:27:00 AM
From: Nimbus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1465

StarMedia builds online store for Latin America (with CDNW) By Nicole Volpe NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) - StarMedia Network, the Spanish- and Portuguese-language Internet company, said on Thursday it had opened the first online shopping mall for Latin Americans to buy books, music, computers, flowers, plane tickets and other items. ''I am convinced (shopping online) will boom the same way it did in the United States,'' StarMedia Network Chief Executive Fernando Espuelas said in an interview. He said StarMedia's efforts to offer electronic shopping as part of its broad range of Internet news, chat, Web searching and other features compared to efforts begun three years ago among Internet services targeted at U.S. customers. ''The first-mover advantage as far as offering these services over the Internet in that region is very important,'' said analyst Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications Inc. StarMedia shoppers can buy items, with descriptions in Spanish and Portuguese, from online computer store Cyberian Outpost Inc. (Nasdaq:COOL - news), online travel agent Viajo.com, online flowershop 1-800-FLOWERS, bookseller barnesandnoble.com (Nasdaq:BNBN - news), and online music store CDnow (Nasdaq:CDNW - news). ''We've always seen two revenue streams for StarMedia -- advertising and e-commerce,'' Espuelas said. Internet sales in Latin America are expected to rise to more than $8 billion in 2003 from $300 million in 1998, International Data Corp. estimates. While use of the Internet in Latin America is growing at four times the rate of the rest of the world, online shopping has not caught on due to the expense, inconvenience and uncertainty of receiving mail through local postal systems. Espuelas said the StarMedia shopping site would confront that problem through a partnership with SkyBox Services Inc., a Miami-based package delivery company with its own distribution network throughout the region. ''Users can track their purchases as they are delivered, and StarMedia will guarantee it will arrive,'' said Espuelas. Sky Box sets up a U.S. address for customers, where mail and packages can be sent to be shipped out within 24-hours. The package would arrive to the customer at a predetermined cost, having already cleared customs. ''This is a paradigm shift,'' said Espuelas. ''The Fedex-DHL system in place now is set up to deliver documents and is geared toward the corporate customer rather than the consumer.'' Sky Box CEO Peter Weisberg said he undercuts FDX Corp.'s (NYSE:FDX - news) Fedex on price for most deliveries, but does not guarantee the speed of delivery that Fedex does. A remote location in the Brazilian jungle might take 12 days, he said. ''The customer is told beforehand how long it will take and how much it will cost,'' he said of the advantage of having customs charges handled as part of the delivery service. Espuelas said the ability to research and buy products online would empower Latin American consumers. ''This is not only about convenience,'' he said. ''The Internet will break a 500-year pattern of monopoly in Latin America.'' The consumers most likely to benefit from the service are the affluent classes, who have access to both computers and credit cards. However, that demographic allows online merchants to target the people in the region with money to spend. StarMedia face competition from local-based Web sites and Internet networks springing up in Mexico and South America, and from established U.S. Internet media companies such as America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) targeting the market.