OMKT/LCOS News
Lycos Aligns With Open Market For Strategic Expansion of The Electronic Marketplace
PR Newswire, Wednesday, February 03, 1999 at 07:16
Enhanced Commercial Platform Will Link Millions of Shoppers with
Thousands of Vendors
BURLINGTON and WALTHAM, Mass., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Open Market, Inc.
(NASDAQ:OMKT), the market share leader in Internet commerce software, and
Lycos, Inc. (NASDAQ:LCOS), the second most visited hub on the Internet and
the world's largest online community, today announced that they have entered
into a revenue-sharing agreement to integrate the power of Open Market's
software solutions into Lycos' burgeoning e-commerce infrastructure. The
agreement calls for installation of Open Market's Transact(TM) software to
power Lycos' electronic marketplace, and distribution of Open Market's
ShopSite(TM) store-building software to enable the development of a seamlessly
integrated community of retailers and suppliers.
"This agreement with Open Market establishes the integrated platform from
which we will continue to propel our aggressive e-commerce strategy," remarked
Bob Davis, Lycos CEO. "Open Market is not only the premier developer of
e-commerce solution software in the industry, but also a strategic ally in
expanding the role that an Internet hub will play as the e-commerce potential
of the Web is eventually realized."
"The Lycos Network will serve as a catalyst for realizing our vision of
Open Market's best-in-class software powering the largest integrated community
of buyers and sellers in the world," explained Gary Eichhorn, Open Market CEO.
"This initiative is the first step by Lycos and Open Market to jointly reshape
the Internet commerce landscape into an open buying community."
"The features that have made Open Market's Transact the undisputed
software-of-choice for serious e-commerce applications, and ShopSite the most
popular storefront creation software package, will deliver a platform that
offers the ultimate in convenience and efficiency for both the shopper and the
vendor," noted Jeff Bennett, Lycos vice president of e-commerce. Transact
will provide Lycos a complete set of end-to-end commerce services including
online customer authentication and authorization; online order and payment
processing; automated tax and shipping calculations; online order tracking and
status; and online customer service. Businesses of all sizes will be able to
easily establish storefronts of their own on the Lycos Network using Open
Market's ShopSite.
The addition of Open Market's ShopSite software strengthens Lycos'
community lead by offering merchants and individuals a co-branded "Store
Building Site" to establish their own marketing platform on the Web. The
development will allow individual members of Lycos community sites, Tripod and
Angelfire, to commerce-enable their individual pages and become online
merchants. ShopSite TX is a first-of-a-kind solution which combines quick,
easy, and inexpensive storefront creation with the no-compromise Internet
commerce infrastructure of Open Market's Transact.
Lycos announced its unique merchant-of-record commerce strategy with its
launch of the Lycos Store in December 1998. The alliance with Open Market is
a significant step in the expansion of the Lycos e-commerce model.
The alliance between Lycos and Open Market includes plans to offer ISPs
and hosting companies everywhere the ability to connect into the Lycos
Network, thus allowing the thousands of existing ShopSite merchants hosted at
over 80 ISPs around the world to broaden their reach by "plugging in" to
Lycos' community of over 20 million shoppers.
About Lycos, Inc.
Founded in 1995, Lycos, Inc. is a leading Web media company and owner of
the Lycos Network, the second most visited hub on the Internet reaching
46.5 percent of Web users. The Lycos Network is a unified set of Web sites
that attracts a diverse audience by offering a variety of services, including
leading Web navigation resources, homepage building and other Web community
services and a comprehensive shopping center. The Lycos Network is composed
of premium sites: Lycos.com, Tripod, WhoWhere, Angelfire, MailCity, HotBot,
HotWired, Wired News, Webmonkey and Suck.com. Lycos.com
(http://www.lycos.com), "Your Personal Internet Guide," is dedicated to
helping each individual user locate, retrieve and manage information tailored
to his or her personal interests. Headquartered near Boston in Waltham,
Mass., Lycos, Inc. is a global Internet leader with a major presence
throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.
More About Open Market
Founded in 1994, Open Market, Inc. is the market-share leader in Internet
commerce software. Open Market's high-performance application software
products and professional services allow its customers to engage in
business-to-consumer and business-to-business Internet commerce, information
commerce, and commercial publishing. Among Open Market's distinguished roster
of global customers are 7 of the 15 top domains on the Web, including Time
Warner Pathfinder.com, major industrials such as Ingram Micro and Acer, more
than 700 publishers including the top 10 commercial publishers, and 11 of 14
of the world's top national telephone companies. The company, headquartered
in Burlington, Massachusetts, with offices in Japan, Canada, the UK, France,
Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, and Australia can be reached by calling
1-888-OPEN-MKT or by visiting openmarket.com.
SOURCE Open Market, Inc.
-0- 02/03/99
/CONTACT: Beth Winkowski, media, 781-359-7411, or
winkowski@openmarket.com, or Julie Lorigan, investors, 781-359-7589, or
lorigan@openmarket.com, both of Open Market; or Brian Payea of Lycos, Inc.,
media, 781-370-2885, or bpayea@lycos.com; or Sean Audet of Schwartz
Communications, 781-684-6576, or saudet@schwartz-pr.com/
/Company News On-Call: prnewswire.com or fax,
800-758-5804, ext. 112653/
/Web site: openmarket.com
lycos.com
Companies or Securities discussed in this article:
Symbol Name
NASDAQ:OMKT Open Market Inc
NASDAQ:LCOS Lycos Inc
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