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To: vestor who wrote (98347)	9/22/1999 8:01:00 AM
From: Bouf	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 119973

POWERFUL NEWS ON ZD!!! Wednesday September 22 2:35 AM ET Ziff-Davis Plans Online Learning Community By Duncan Martell PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Ziff-Davis Inc. (NYSE:ZD - news), owner of the popular ZDNet Web site and best-selling PC magazine, is placing a bet on the growing number of virtual communities with plans to start a for-profit online learning community. Called SmartPlanet.com, Ziff-Davis is expected to unveil the effort Wednesday with a goal of opening the full site in October. Initially, membership will be free but starting in October, people can subscribe for $99 a year and gain access to myriad online courses. Backed by $10 million from Ziff-Davis, it will get at least that much next year as it adds more courses and links with more partners in the media, Internet service provider and e-commerce companies, said Chris Dobbrow, president and chief executive of SmartPlanet, in an interview. SmartPlanet joins other virtual communities that cater to specific interests or hobbies, such as women's-related site iVillage, babycenter.com, owned by eToys Inc. and theglobe.com. It will also face competition from other already established online learning sites such as Learn2.com and Click2learn.com., owned by Asymetric Learning Systems Inc. The site, the idea for which was conceived only this year and is an extension of Ziff-Davis' online computer learning site ZDU business unit, will offer a linked set of pursuits such as arts and society, body and mind, home and family, professional development and others. The ZDU effort, begun in 1995, now has more than 100,000 registered users who pay $70 a year for online courses related to technology and computing, Dobbrow said, who joins SmartPlanet after 13 years with Ziff-Davis. ``This was very successful in a particular area of interest and based on our research we think it will be portable to all the other categories that we'll be expanding into,' Dobbrow said. Based on Ziff-Davis' experience and its own projections, Dobbrow said SmartPlanet expects by October 2000 to be at a run-rate of one million registered users who generate $100 each in revenue. Ziff-Davis plans to generate sales through annual membership fees, fees that users pay on a per-course basis, and e-commerce sales. By hooking up with media companies, Internet service providers and others, SmartPlanet will be advertised on those companies' sites some will also become investors in SmartPlanet, Dobbrow said. He added that an initial public offering of the Foster City, Calif.-based firm is clearly a possibility. ``We've had a lot of interest from potential strategic investors, we're considering a couple of different investors now and it could happen as soon as the end of this year,' Dobbrow said. He declined to comment on the potential investors, adding that with the backing from Ziff-Davis and the strategic investors, it was unlikely the roster would include the usual suspects such as venture capital firms. ``There's an enormous opportunity in this space,' Dobbrow said, citing projections from Forrester Research that by 2003 business will sell $108 billion of goods and services to consumers online. Already, the annual education market -- higher education, kindergarten through high school, training and higher education -- is $740 billion, according to market research firm Eduventures. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------