inCommon Adds Six New Publishers to Roster of Downtown Push Technology Adopters; Publishers Embrace Downtown's Innovative Content Delivery and Web Acceleration Technology to Build News, Information and Entertainment Channels

Business Wire, March 13, 1997

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 1997--inCommon, LLC, today announced that six leading newspaper, magazine and Internet-based publishers are adopting Downtown -- inCommon's advanced push technology publishing platform -- to deliver news, information and entertainment directly to users' desktops.

Beginning today, new channels on Downtown users' desktops will be available from Preview Travel, Inc., PC World, MovieLink, Los Angeles Times, The Auto Channel, and Astrology.net. They join a host of other leading publishers using Downtown's push technology for content acceleration and delivery, including: Yahoo! Inc., USA TODAY, SportsLine USA, Inc., Research Holdings, Ltd., The New York Times, The Motley Fool, Inc., Excite, Inc., EnviroLink, Data Broadcasting Corporation, CNET Inc., CMP Media, Inc., Channel A, and CBS Up-to-the-Minute.

"We are pleased to welcome these new content partners to Downtown," said Jay Verkler, founder and CEO of the company. "Downtown is increasingly becoming recognized by publishers as the solution of choice for deploying push strategies. By offering the only integration of best-of-breed push delivery, advertising management services and personalization technology, inCommon is pushing the envelope of push publishing."

inCommon today also announced new agreements with three leading technology partners that will unite Downtown's push publishing framework with NetGravity's AdServer, WiseWire intelligent agent, and Informix's Universal Web Architecture. This will provide Internet publishers the ability to capture more accurate ad scheduling and tracking and user demographic information. (See press release entitled, "inCommon Integrates Downtown Push Technology With Leading Ad Tracking, Intelligent Agent and Commercial Database Products.")

Downtown is the industry's most comprehensive push technology publishing platform, offering acceleration and delivery of top Web content directly to users. Downtown integrates automatic content delivery, new content notification, and accelerated Web browsing in a single, easy-to-use product that can be personalized for individual use. Downtown resides on a user's screen in the form of a convenient channel bar -- similar to a toolbar.

Combining intelligent networking technologies with integrated functionality, Downtown is the first publishing solution that effectively addresses the critical limitations of the Internet as a delivery mechanism. Downtown gives content publishers new options for packaging and delivering news, entertainment, stock quotes or other information, while providing consumers more control over how they select and retrieve information from the Internet to their desktops.

How to Access Downtown

News, information, and entertainment channels from leading publishers is available from inCommon's site at http://www.incommon.com . Users new to the Downtown Internet acceleration and delivery system must first install Downtown, which can be downloaded free from http://www.incommon.com .

About inCommon

inCommon creates state-of-the-art technologies and solutions designed to bring people and information together on the Internet. The company is developing relationships with key technology and content partners to enhance the overall impact of its technology. Downtown, the company's first product, is an integrated publishing platform that allows publishers to build direct two-way relationships with their interested readers without compromising user control. Founded in April 1996, inCommon is privately held and is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. inCommon can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.incommon.com .

DOWNTOWN PARTNER COMMENTS

Preview Travel Inc. http://www.previewtravel.com Keith Butler, Vice President, Business Development

"Downtown will enable Preview Travel to feed travel news, fare tracking and other timely information directly to our customer's desktops. Their low bandwidth, non-intrusive delivery solution offers unique opportunities for personalized delivery of Web content."

PC World http://www.PCWorld.com/ Sara Frankel, Director, Business Development and Planning

"PC World is hoping to use Downtown's compelling user interface to maintain a strong brand presence and to establish a dynamic one-to-one relationship with our users, with the result of making users return more frequently to the PC World web site."

The Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/ Harry Chandler, Director of New Business Development

"Downtown's unique interface and acceleration technology is an excellent complement to our distribution methods. We are excited to be offering our readers a new way to get the LA Times delivered."

MovieFone Inc. http://www.movielink.com Christine Fakundiny, MovieLink Product Manager

"Downtown allows us to be more closely connected with our MovieLink users. We can contact them with new announcements and they can more easily and quickly access our award-winning site."

The Auto Channel http://www.theautochannel.com Bob Gordon, President