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Technology Stocks : WavePhore (WAVO)- VBI fed WaveTop for WebTV -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim P Mitchell who wrote (789)	11/25/1997 8:49:00 AM
From: BGL	Respond to of 2843

Monday November 24, 8:26 pm Eastern Time Web/online subscribers hit 25.3 million-study STAMFORD, Conn., Nov 24 (Reuters) - The number of people subscribing to services via the Internet or online services hit 25.3 million in the third quarter, a 5.6 percent rise from the previous three-month period, said a survey published Monday. Electronic Information Report (EIR) said its quarterly survey found subscriber growth was boosted by the growth of news delivered into business and professional services and by America Online Inc.'s (NYSE:AOL - news) solid consumer performance. Ben de la Cruz, the publication's managing editor, said the rise of news information delivered to business people and professionals in a new category of services dubbed ''current awareness'' was helping drive growth in the sector. Current awarness services generally combine the day's top news stories, often broken into industry groupings and in many cases customized to match an individual user's interests, depending on the sophistication of the filtering software. ''While higher-priced research services remain a strong business, the future growth of professional/business online services will center on current awarness news services,'' he said. The newsletter, published by Cowles/Simba Information, tracked more than 90 online services operated by 53 information providers in the consumer, business and professional and financial information industries. The 29 business and professional services tracked -- including Reed-Elsevier's(REED.L) (ELSN.AS) Lexis-Nexis, Hoover's and Desktop Data's (Nasdaq:DTOP - news) NewsEDGE -- gained an aggregate 7 percent to 3.9 million paid subscribers. Among the faster-growing services in the ''current awareness'' category was WavePhore Inc.'s (Nasdaq:WAVO - news) Newscast, which grew by roughly 55,000 subscribers, or 53 percent, to 158,000. OneSource drove its subscriber base up 129.7 percent to 29,500 during the three-month period, the survey found, while Hoover's subscriptions rose 26.7 percent to 209,198. ''A lot of these current awareness news services just need to strike one or two large enterprise deals (to show a large growth spurt),'' de la Cruz said. America Online led the consumer segment, growing by 9.3 percent to 9.4 million subscribers by the end of quarter on Sept. 30, according to the survey. The leading online provider has since said it has topped 10 million subscribers. CompuServe, now owned by America Online, posted a decline of 0.6 percent, while Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Microsoft Network was flat at 2.3 millioin subscribers, according to the survey. In aggregate, the 13 consumer Web and online services grew to 20.2 million in the third quarter, an increase of 5.5 percent from the second quarter of this year. ''Despite its access problems, America Online continues to perform like a well-oiled machine and looks to run away from the field,'' said de la Cruz.

To: Jim P Mitchell who wrote (789)	11/25/1997 8:54:00 AM
From: BGL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2843

Why are people making such a big deal about WAVO newscast growth rate? Isn't most of this rapid growth from the Paracel On-line acquisition -- which isn't really revenue generating growth in the short-term. The only positive result from the Parcel acquisition which I see is: (a) One less competetor (b) Strengthened brand name recognition through more subscribers (c) Anything interesting from Paracel technology How was this acquisition financed anyway? Was it share dillution (non-debt) or a debt offering? Boy, I hope it pays off. BGL