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

To: Gary105 who wrote (176)	7/2/1998 8:41:00 PM
From: Obewon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

One of the issues which has been missed by most is that go2net is not JUST a "portal-to-be". 1. Like many of its much bigger competitors, the company has an internet product to sell to others. Please note the recent agreements with Earthlink and Lycos to license its JAVA games technology. Only Yahoo! among the major portals has proprietary tech to do this so there is the possibility of more licensing fees (ie recurring revenue from each user that uses the games sites at Earthlink and Lycos Web domains) down the road. 2. SI is a very focused and well travelled site for which Brad and Jeff have long term demographics of its users. This in turn allows go2net to more easily compete for advertising dollars than its cousins with little to no history. The two tier membership structure also keeps members (who actually make the site so good) from getting irritated at having to wait for banners to load. 3. Another advantage of the two tier structure is the revenue stream from new SI members. I was discussing the economics with one of the company's employees and he stated one of the primary differences go2net would have versus its competition is that (I quote), "Go2net will be profitable this year." (This came from one of the guys envolved with the revenue side of go2net rather than the tech side so I tend to believe it.) Beyond those somewhat concrete reasons, you also have the possibility that the entire company could be swallowed by a rival. I have looked at the assets that go2net has Internet wise and determined that several potential partners exist for go2nets properties. My short list include Earhtlink, Lycos, Excite, and Alta Vista (Compaq). IMHO Alta Vista is going to have to make an acquisition if it wants to keep up with the bigger boys of the Net. Its got a great search engine technology but little else to its portal. (By the way, I own Compaq stock so I have a bias here.) The Digital - Compaq merger has kind of left Alta Vista flapping in the breeze while Internet stocks have climbed 200% in the past seven months. OB

To: Gary105 who wrote (176)	7/2/1998 8:57:00 PM
From: White Shoes	Respond to of 28311

Gary, believe me I accept some of these arguments. However, the problem to me is that some of these companies are really running other businesses and pretending to be involved in this one. Hell where do we stop valuing, every co. called a portal gets a value attached "per user"? When the shakeout comes because there isn't enough differentiation amongst all of these, many won't turn a profit ever, as it often goes in tech, media, fashion, etc. I have seen Netscape's Netcenter old and new and it is unimpressive. I love NSCP as a company and hoped it might double to $40 over time. They can't justify that double all in a week IMO but of course you have to be invested to catch these drafts, you also need to know when to take the money and run IMO! In other words two of the many problems with this model is competition and margins. From what I can tell these companies give a lot of stuff away. Granted overhead is low...so what does that mean, mainly that the lower quality companies will show up for the game, never do anything for lack of a brand name, and turn out to be short term speculations. Not saying GNET is one of those. In general I favor the 'soft' communicative tech plays over gizmo investing. But why do these things always seem to tack on $10 bil of market cap all in one week? What makes all of this harder is that even though you can say they'll come back to earth Edgar Bronfman or Quaker Oats could come along tomorrow and pay way too much for NSCP. Maybe they already are!