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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (25728)	11/12/1998 9:01:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

AOL to launch ICQ-based portalBy Bob Sullivan MSNBC Nov. 11 ˜ America Online will soon raise the stakes in the Internet portal business, launching a new portal site through an upgrade to its popular „ICQ‰ instant message software, MSNBC has learned. The company claims 21 million chatters use the software, and the newest version of ICQ will offer „desktop portal‰ services, allowing users to bypass portal sites such as MSN.com, Excite and Yahoo. AN UPGRADED VERSION of the ICQ client is about to be released, and that version includes Internet search and some other familiar portal functions, such as links to news, personal finance/investing and weather. „It‚s a next-generation desktop portal,‰ said ICQ spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer. „The portal really exists on the desktop, in the taskbar. „The way we look at it, usage levels on ICQ far outstrip that of a traditional portal. The implication for this is there will be all these other tools and functions users go to the Web for, and we‚re bringing them to the desktop.‰ <Picture> <Picture> Mirabilis: „Word of mouse‰ marketing<Picture> ICQ, which is Internetese for „I seek you,‰ raced to the front of the Internet instant message software business last year, signing up millions of users. In June, AOL bought Israel-based Mirabilis Ltd., the maker of ICQ, for $287 million. It‚s a relatively simple service, often described as a Web version of America Online‚s buddy list, which allows users to find out if friends are online, then send instant messages back and forth. Its growth has been stunning, with the service passing the 20 million mark in late October. The company says as many as 700,000 users are online simultaneously. The fervent community of ICQ users is attractive. AOL says users average 69 minutes of use per day, a „stickiness‰ Web portals can‚t claim. The company also claims 65,000 new users sign up every day. The new version of ICQ includes links to a number of other Internet portals, like Excite, AltaVista and Lycos. Noticably missing from the list: Yahoo. „We‚ve offered everyone the same deal,‰ said ICQ chief operating officer Fred Singer. He wouldn‚t describe the terms of the deal, other than to say it was „not transactional, just an agreement.‰ No new advertising is being introduced with the new client, Singer said. „We‚re very careful about how we introduce commerce to the community,‰ he said. „Right now, we‚re concentrating on providing them with convenience.* We‚ll have lots of opportunity to find ways to make it work.‰ The new client also offers a scheduling service and other personal productivity tools. Singer said ICQ users tend to be younger, technologically savvy, and ˜ what‚s most interesting for America Online ˜ overlap only 6 percent with AOL users. That means an ICQ portal wouldn‚t steal users from AOL.com, but it could threaten Yahoo, MSN.com, Excite and the rest. (MSN.com is a service of Microsoft, which is a partner in MSNBC.) Because the company has yet to announce the product, Singer wouldn‚t predict when it would be available. „Soon,‰ he said.