Excite, Inc. Extends International Presence to Australia, Asia-Pacific
PR Newswire - September 08, 1998 00:14
XCIT %MLM V%PRN P%PRN
Establishes Joint Venture With Leading Australian Publisher
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Excite, Inc. (Nasdaq: XCIT) today announced Excite Asia Pacific with the formation of a joint venture between Excite and LibertyOne, a J.B. Fairfax Company and leading Australian publisher. The partnership establishes Excite as the first portal to form a joint-venture with a local partner in the Australian marketplace and strategically positions the company to expand into the rest of the Asia-Pacific marketplace.
New Company to Offer Services for all Asian-Pacific Audiences
The joint venture will leverage the strengths of each party to build an Excite-branded, advertising and commerce supported Web portal with local English language content initially for the Australian market. The newly-established company will then branch out to build localized portals for the New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore markets.
Ownership of the Joint Venture will be shared equally between Excite, Inc. and LibertyOne. LibertyOne, the interactive media arm of the J.B. Fairfax Group owns the digital rights to important local and worldwide personalities, including Greg Norman. LibertyOne, through its affiliation with the Fairfax Group and its digital sales group LibertyOne Online, has a comprehensive understanding of developing and selling interactive media properties.
"Following on our Japanese joint-venture announced last year, this deal expands our presence and ability to move aggressively in one of the largest online growth areas in the world the Asia-Pacific region," said George Bell, CEO, Excite, Inc. "The combination of our strong Internet brand and services with LibertyOne's leading local marketing and sales and infrastructure lets us execute immediately."
Working Together for all Asian-Pacific Consumers
Each local service will extend all of Excite's award-winning services, including search, personalization, channels, chat, email, Excite Communities and commerce. The first service to launch will be the Australian service at excite.com.au in the fourth quarter with localized services for each Asian-Pacific country to follow.
Graham Bristow, Managing Director, LibertyOne commented, "On a global basis, the Internet is one of the most dynamic growth industries, particularly within the Asian Pacific region. We are ideally located in Australia to be at the forefront of this boom and we believe that this joint venture with Excite will establish LibertyOne as the region's most progressive Internet investment company."
About LibertyOne
LibertyOne Limited is global Internet investment group, with strategic investments and alliances that position the name "LibertyOne" at the cutting edge of the Internet and Telecommunications industries. LibertyOne's major shareholder is J.B. Fairfax Press Pty Ltd, part of the Marinya Media Group and one of Asia Pacific's largest publishing, printing and distribution groups. The Fairfaxes are considered to be one of the foremost publishers in Australasia, upholding a family tradition that dates back to the early 1800s.
LibertyOne achieves Internet synergy via its majority-owned subsidiary companies including:
Digital Rights International (DRI) -- an Internet brand and electronic commerce management company that owns the rights to high profile celebrities. The first project will be Greg Norman Interactive (GNI), which has been specifically established to manage the use of Australian golfing sensation Greg Norman's name and likeness on the Internet.
Fastpac -- An online communications company providing business-critical Internet outsourcing solutions for companies conducting business on the Internet.
Comtel Technologies -- a world leader in cutting edge ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) technology commercializing and distributing specialist customer-premise ATM technology through a 20 year licensing agreement with the Telstra Corporation of Australia.
About Excite, Inc.
Founded in 1994, Excite, Inc. is a global media company offering consumers a personalized Web start page on www.excite.com and a 'back to basics' Web search service on www.webcrawler.com, and advertisers the best one-to-one marketing services available online. The Excite Network consists of two of the largest brands on the Web, Excite (www.excite.com) and WebCrawler (www.webcrawler.com), and its subsidiaries; Classifieds2000, MatchLogic, Inc., Excite Japan Co., Ltd. and Excite UK, Ltd.. Localized versions of Excite are available in France, Germany, the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden, Japan and Australia. Based in Redwood City, Calif., Excite, Inc. has strategic relationships with America Online, Inc., Apple Computer, Inc., CUC Investments Inc., Intuit Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., Prodigy Internet and Tribune Company.
SOURCE Excite, Inc.
/CONTACTS: Melissa Walia of Excite, Inc., 650-569-2213, or
melissa@excite.com; or Diana Pettinato, Public Relations Manager of
LibertyOne, 61-2-9555-6847, or diana@libertyone.com.au/
/Web site: webcrawler.com
/Web site: excite.com
(XCIT) |
