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Microcap & Penny Stocks : XSNI - X-Stream Network -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacalyn Deaner who wrote (960)	5/30/1999 4:47:00 AM
From: 2MAR$	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3519

can you imagine if yahoo offered it's 60mil users a free ISP? Read: The writing is already on the wall. We have witnessed high-speed Internet service provider At Home (ATHM) acquire portal site Excite (XCIT) earlier this year. That merger marked the first true combination of content and connectivity under one Internet company. The pattern is likely to continue in the coming months, but I can just as easily see the reverse occurring. Content players will add connectivity services. Mega portals like Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista and the GO Network have incredible brand recognition which they could artfully leverage by launching their own free ISP. Sure, portals like Lycos and Yahoo already offer co-branded Internet access through partnerships with AT&T (T), but by launching their own ISPs, the portals would wholly-own all of their subscribers and registration data. More importantly, free ISPs drive substantial traffic to the portal sites, which are pre-loaded as the default Web page on each ISP subscriber's browser. In only nine months of operation, Dixons Group's free ISP, Freeserve, has become the largest ISP in the U.K. and that country's third-busiest portal site. Already, a free U.S.-based ISP called NetZero, backed by Bill Gross's idealab, has rapidly built a customer base of more than 800,000 subscribers in only eight months. In fact, NetZero is now the fastest growing ISP in history. NetZero's model is entirely supported by advertising and e-commerce revenue. The online ad market is not yet large enough to turn a free ISP into a profitable endeavor, but profitability will arrive in the next few years as one-to-one marketing online improves and the online ad pie grows. The time to rapidly acquire eyeballs is now. Can you imagine how many of Yahoo's 60 million users would sign up for a Yahoo free ISP if it was offered? I'd guess in the millions. Yahoo could take the free ISP and offer a co-branded version of its Internet service to hundreds of partners, including PC makers, e-tailers, online brokers and off-line banks. Eventually, the same portal-owned free ISPs could partner with the Baby Bells and offer their subscribers a premium broadband DSL package for a flat monthly fee. The co-branding possibilities of a portal-owned free ISP seem almost endless. Once a free ISP latches on to a subscriber, there are numerous add-on premium services that can be peddled to each subscriber. Dozens of free ISPs now exist in the U.K., and it seems inevitable that the free ISP craze will soon catch fire here in the U.S. I wonder if any of the portals will leverage their brand and existing corral of eyeballs to take advantage of this opportunity? Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here, but it seems that the first major portal that goes the free ISP route and joins connectivity with their existing content and e-commerce capabilities, will pull away in the Great Portal Derby of 1999. America Online (AOL) Chief Executive Steve Case figured this out more than 10 years ago. He realized he needed connectivity as the base to build his e-commerce and advertising empire. Maybe one of the portals will wake up and realize this next. ...and what is the most favorite word in the english language? "free"! aloha, be gaay, "spice girl"! 2mars