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To: Mark Fowler who wrote (30292)	12/17/1998 10:15:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Mark, I opened 1k short shares @ 270 closed @ 265. All in 35 minutes. Thats enough for me. How do you eat an elephant? One bite @ a time. Cmgi announced split. In @ 84. Great article in todays WSJ. >>When David S. Wetherell, a little-known superstar of Internet investing, says that the secret to his success is finding "viral" Web sites, he isn't talking about a hacker's destructive software. A viral site, says the chief executive of Internet conglomerate CMG Information Services Inc., is one where information grows as if by self-replication. The more visitors, the more data; the more data, the greater the value of the site. Three years ago, Mr. Wetherell saw viral qualities in Lycos Inc. and invested $2 million in the Web gateway. The investment has since self-replicated into $460 million in Lycos shares either sold or still held by CMG. Mr. Wetherell was an early investor in GeoCities, widely used to help people build personal home pages. Recent investments include Open Market Inc., a developer of software for online retailers. With picks like these, Mr. Wetherell has turned CMG, a former supplier of academic mailing lists, into an Internet heavyweight, with investments in 31 companies and a stock-market value of just under $2 billion. In the past two years, Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. each have bought 4.9% stakes in CMG. Last year, Sumitomo Corp. of Japan invested $10 million in CMG for a 2.3% stake. 'Extremely Viral' Thursday, CMG is expected to announce its latest pick: Ancestry.com Inc., an Orem, Utah, online genealogy-research firm. Betting that genealogy is about to make a big breakthrough on the Web, CMG has agreed to invest $10 million for a 30% stake in Ancestry. The company's soon-to-be-released Web site, MyFamily.com, allows extended families to share information; it is "extremely viral," Mr. Wetherell says. With a personal stake in CMG of 20%, he has turned his sharp eye as a venture capitalist into a publicly traded investment vehicle for people looking for a piggyback ride on his winning streak. Right now, investors place an enormous multiple on Mr. Wetherell's investing skills.<<