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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The O who wrote (25718)	3/29/2001 12:19:46 PM
From: silversoldier a/k/a SI Sy	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 28311

Hi Redneck and other bruised and battered former GNETers. I wonder if INSP will continue to retain the lofty No.8 Media Metrix position very long. Today, Beautiful Rudi posted message No. 25720 on this thread. It concerns an e-mail announcement, dated March 29, to SI members, advising that beginning April 1, there will be a charge of $9.99 per month for Screamer, the streaming real time portfolio tracker which, heretofore, was provided as a vaunted free service. The e-mail indicated tech support and billing for Screamer will be provided by Money.net. I am unable to copy and paste the text of the e-mail, but I assume all members received an identical message. The message anonymously bore a "signature" of The Silicon Investor Team. Will Real Time Quotes suffer a similar fate? I continue to be perplexed by INSP's failure to respond to inquiries concerning its status with Digeo Broadband. Today I visited Digeo's web site. Digeo is a Wired World Company, meaning, of course, that it is a Paul Allen company. The site shows no mention of GNET or INSP as one of the founders. It simply lists VV (wholly owned by PA) and Charter. The profile of members of the Digeo team contains references to many companies where they held leadership positions, but neither GNET nor INSP appears in that recitation. Why is INSP being so secretive about this subject. It either is a 19% equity member of Digeo or it is not. GNET was a 19% equity member of Broadband Partners, Digeo's predecessor, prior to the merger. Are INSP shareholders not entitled to the truth? Sy

To: The O who wrote (25718)	3/30/2001 12:56:41 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 28311

Hi O....on 3/20/2001, there was an INSP announcement re CNNSI....Here's a little background from October 15, 2000 on that announcement... Sandbox.com.(Company Business and Marketing) Author/s: Kathleen Murphy Issue: Oct 15, 2000 findarticles.com A GAME SITE GETTING SERIOUS PROMOTIONAL HELP FROM SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, CNN, AND GO2NET INTERACTIVE GAME PROVIDER SANDBOX.COM IS POSI-tioning itself to serve a very attractive demographic group: young male Net users. Sandbox print ads boldly proclaim: "We're better than porn for 3.5 million guys," alluding to the site's special appeal to an audience of 18- to 34-year-old men. Sponsors such as LifeMinders, National Geographic, and Sports Illustrated have supported Sandbox content, which includes fantasy sports leagues, play-for-fun casino games, and sweepstakes. The company, backed by heavyweight venture capitalists, expects to have a positive cash flow in the near future. Larry Cotter, 30, president and CEO, says Sandbox's revenues are $5 million per quarter, largely from direct marketing, banner ads, and e-mail marketing to its more than one million members. Promotional deals with CNN/Sports Illustrated give Sandbox a significant amount of co-branded advertising across many properties, including CNNSI.com, Sports Illustrated, CNN Sports Illustrated (a cable network), and CNN Headline News. Having Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures as an investor is also helping with promotion because it's puffing Sandbox's ads on Go2Net and all of its on-line properties, including Silicon Investor, Meta Crawler, Dogpile, and Playsite. Sandbox expects to work closely with InfoSpace, which has agreed to acquire Go2Net, and with other Vulcan companies, including The Sporting News and Digeo, a broadband portal. Sandbox also provides games and direct marketing to CNNSI and Go2Net. One new initiative is Sandbox's $100 million free nationwide lottery that offers chances to play by Internet and phone, which Cotter says will extend the company's reach beyond young men. Cotter says that getting CNNSI and Go2Net signed on as partners was worth giving up some equity to get the Sandbox brand in front of sports fans. "When we look at the effect of branding, we look at how it translates into membership numbers," Cotter says. "Our revenue is driven through our membership numbers." The deals might not pay off in faster profitability, Cotter says, but "our cash flow will be higher than if we hadn't done these deals." "Our biggest competitive advantage," he adds, "is our ability to use our database marketing engine to monetize our users." AT A GLANCE FOUNDED: SANDBOX July 1999 through the merger of Wall Street Sports and Sandbox Entertainment. EMPLOYEES: 90 DIGS: 10,000 square feet in Reston, Va., at about $25 per square foot annually. Other offices include Phoenix, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. IN THE CORNER OFFICE: Larry Cotter, president and CEO, formerly of Moovies Inc.; Bill Carey, COO, and previously a senior consultant in the Gateway Group division of Price Waterhouse; and Brian Daum, CFO, formerly the CFO of Multimedia Medical Systems.