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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lyle Bean who wrote (24268)	6/28/1999 11:25:00 AM
From: Jenne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Eyeing AOL, Juno plans all-out blitz Armed with fresh IPO cash, Juno Online will upgrade its e-mail client and push for new subscribers. By Todd Spangler, Inter@ctive Week June 28, 1999 5:41 AM PT Juno Online Services next week will launch the next version of its Internet and e-mail access client as part of its most aggressive marketing and advertising campaign to date to acquire new subscribers. Can Juno offer a challenge to AOL? Add your comments to the bottom of this page. With a huge infusion of cash totaling about $150 million - $84.5 million from its recent initial public offering and $65 million in private investments from Intel (Nasdaq:INTC), News Corp. and others - Juno (Nasdaq:JWEB) now has the resources to build itself into the most powerful Internet consumer brand next to America Online (NYSE:AOL), according to President Charles Ardai. Looking for alternatives "Choice is something that has been conspicuously absent in the Internet space - there's AOL and everybody else; and it's like they're NBC and then you have public access cable," Ardai said. "Our goal is to become a strong consumer alternative to AOL." MORE FROM ZDNET: ZDNet Guide to ISPs ICQ Chats Up Web-Based Free E-Mail Juno patents offline ad delivery The advantage Juno has over AOL or any other Internet service provider, Ardai said, is that Juno has a lower overall cost of acquiring subscribers. Its entry-level pricing for basic e-mail service is zero. Juno started life in 1996 offering free e-mail via its own software and dial-up access network, based on an advertising and revenue-sharing business model. Unlike the Web-based free e-mail services that require you to already have some kind of Internet access, Juno provides the connection with its e-mail service. Last year, Juno added fee-based services for e-mail with attachments and Web access. Of Juno's 6.8 million users, 207,000 have signed up for the premium services, which Ardai said was in line with the company's expectations. Now, Juno's main aim is to promote its services, acquire new users and convert more free e-mail users into paying Internet subscribers. Ardai said: "We want to bring Juno to people's attention and, in the short term, grow the subscriber base while the mainstream consumer land rush is still going on." To that end, Juno earlier this month began a $20 million-plus television and radio advertising campaign in nine markets, including Boston, New York, Phoenix and San Francisco. Ardai said Juno recently distributed 1.5 million CD-ROMs with the Juno software in an AOL-style direct mailing. Software for novices Juno also is fine-tuning its software for Net novices. The new Juno 3.0 software, to be released July 5 for Windows 95 and later, will make it much easier for people to sign up and use the service, Ardai said. "We did extensive user testing to find out why people weren't signing up for Juno, and we've cleaned up the process," he said. Juno 3.0 also will have new multimedia features, including support for e-mail messages formatted with HyperText Markup Language, sound with banner ads and better handling of file attachments for premium Juno service users. Soon after the release of Juno 3.0, the company plans to redesign the start page that Web customers see when they log on to the service. Last week, two financial analysts released very strong subscriber growth projections for Juno, yielding a bump in Juno's stock price from around $11 to more than $21 late last week. In a report, Bear, Stearns & Co. analyst James Henry said Juno could reach 10 million users in 12 months.