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Technology Stocks : Lycos -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MR. PANAMA (I am a PLAYER) who wrote (768)	7/20/1998 9:28:00 PM
From: Andie Wei-Ku Lin	Respond to of 2439

July 18, 1998 Net portal site Lycos looking for alliances, not a merger partner By Frances Katz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Chicago -- Lycos is not for sale, according to founder, president and CEO Bob Davis. Of course, he won't rule out any offers, but he has his own plan and vision for the company that doesn't need a major media partner to succeed. None of the Web search engines like being called search engines anymore, but Davis doesn't mind using the term to describe his company, even as he notes the millions of users who visit the Lycos site daily spend only 25 percent of their time searching for information. With the recent additions of Lycos chat, Lycos free e-mail and the acquisition of Tripod (http://www.tripod.com), a Massachusetts-based Web site with news and information for the twentysomething market that includes a first-rate Web publishing tool kit, Davis says the company is more of a "hub" than a portal or a search engine. "The term portal implies that you bring people in and then you send them off somewhere," he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution prior to his keynote speech Friday at Summer Internet World in Chicago. "Calling us a search engine is OK, but we do so much more. I like to think of us as the Lycos Media Network." Davis is all too familiar with and perhaps a little tired of hearing his company's name bandied about as a potential merger target. He points out Lycos already has partnerships with Viacom, Warner Bros., People magazine, the Pathfinder Web site and European media giant Bertlesmann. "While I would never rule out the possibility of some kind of a deal with CBS or whoever, we are our own media company. Media companies depend on the Web, and we will continue to partner with them," says Davis. Davis says he's committed to developing Lycos as an independent entity and has made several acquisitions of smaller technology companies to enhance its service offerings.. Lycos' business plan is similar to the growth plans for Yahoo! and traditional media player NBC. Like Yahoo!, Lycos' original search features attract viewers, but once the eyeballs are there, Lycos has developed ways to retain viewers through chat, e-mail and home page building. And, like NBC, Lycos is quietly acquiring strategic partners to strengthen the range of offerings in the long term. The company inked a unique deal with Major League Baseball, which allows every player in the majors to put up his own home page on the Lycos network. But there's more to industry than alliances and free e-mail, Davis says. "The real challenge is to continue to make it easy, fun and family-friendly and protect free speech on the Net." Last week Lycos rolled out an optional Web filter called "Safety Net," which allows objectionable materials to be filtered out of searches. "It isn't enough to search," he says. "We are interested in building the Lycos brand as an identity and as a destination."