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To: Mark Oliver who wrote (7515)	12/22/1999 1:35:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Respond to of 10081

Not sure how this fits into the puzzle, but I see Excite integrating services here that are not part of the old static web viewing, which includes more dynamic push and pull, as well as providing an interactive conduit for people to do things they could never do before. Regards, Mark Excite@Home Picks V-Stream For New Portal By Max Smetannikov, Inter@ctive Week December 20, 1999 4:47 PM ET The new small-business portal Excite@Home plans to launch by mid-2000 already has its first application - V-Stream's voice, video and data collaboration tool. The companies today announced plans to incorporate V-Stream's technology into Excite@Home's offerings. Besides being part of Excite@Home's new small and midsized business-oriented portal Work.com, the service will be bundled with existing consumer-oriented Excite@Home services such as online clubs and personal ads. The deal with Excite@Home is just the first of a number of relationships that V-Stream is seeking to develop with Internet service providers, online services and portals that go after the small and midsized business audience. Such partnerships would complement V-Stream's own efforts to ramp up direct sales. "Our direct sales force targets large enterprises, and we pursue relationships like the one with Excite@Home to create a channel to reach a broader market," said Paul Berberian, chief executive of V-Stream. Excite@Home already has found that adding voice to text-based communications services boosts their popularity. The service provider ran a test by adding voice-recording capability to a lagging section of the Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards portal. Doing so boosted card circulation on that portion of the site by 30 percent. For Excite@Home's consumer-oriented services, the portal will use V-Stream's newest offering, called Beep - a free voice-to-e-mail tool used to publish voice on the Web and send it via e-mail by using a telephone. V-Stream's flagship service, NetCall, gives participants of traditional telephone conferences an opportunity to collaborate over the Web through PowerPoint slides and other graphics presentations. It also enables hosts to set up conference calls automatically. When the Work.com portal launches next year, it will feature applications such as NetCall, targeted at small and midsized businesses, along with content - giving these companies more efficiency-enhancing tools. The V-Stream service will cost roughly the same as regular long-distance telephone calls, Berberian said. "We just started building Work.com's services and application pieces of the offering," said Brian Birney, Work.com's director of business development. "The portal will have three categories of applications - horizontal, front- and back-office - which include apps aimed at performing everyday tasks like collaborating via V-Stream, front-office apps like building storefronts and back-office efficiency tools like benefits and payroll management." Both consumer and Work.com offerings from Excite@Home are due next year.