Harris Interactive Announces I-Matter.Com The Most Comprehensive Site For Youth Attitudes And Behavior On The Web; The Harris Youth Poll - Allowing Teens To Voice Their Opinions

Business Wire, Nov 8, 1999

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 1999--

Harris Interactive, the nation's leading market research company, today launched i-matter.com, a youth-oriented portal in conjunction with The Harris Youth Poll - a comprehensive study of youth attitudes and behavior that is designed to keep one abreast of the ever-changing youth culture.

i-matter.com offers a virtual community where kids and teens learn about polling, take part in opinion polls, and discuss their opinions. This site will serve as the meeting point for the online community of young people that Harris Interactive will ask to participate in survey research. The site also serves as the polling "channel" for many leading youth sites and many of Harris's partners have chosen to link their youth-oriented sites to i-matter.com.

i-matter.com is a site on the Internet where teens can express their thoughts, beliefs, and opinions. "With the Internet as the media of choice for today's youth, it makes sense that a website should exist for them to congregate and make their voices heard," said Gordon Black, CEO of Harris Interactive. Kids will be in the control seat of this site, but parents can also get involved by participating in the registration process. Harris Interactive also encourages teachers to bring i-matter.com into the classroom and make it an integral part of the computer-learning curriculum.

i-matter.com will contain everything related to studies and polls dealing with youth, and is also a rich resource for all of Harris's publicly released polls regarding youth. "We hope to give young people a greater voice by creating this community," said John Geraci, Vice-President of Youth Research. "It is a place where kids and teens can express their opinions and later check back and see that it mattered - that it was covered in the media or a company used their input to make an important decision."

The primary focus for i-matter.com will be The Harris Youth Poll. For this poll, Harris Interactive has formed the Harris Youth Research Team, who are dedicated to designing and conducting studies among youth and their parents, and will provide marketers and advertisers with a new option to understand youth and how to market them.

"The ability to reach young consumers for survey research projects is critical for many organizations," adds Geraci. "Our youth team is the only one in the industry that can employ online methods for the kids and teenage markets as well as traditional telephone and focus group studies." The Harris Youth Team's experience is extensive and has conducted research with hundreds of thousands of kids, teenagers, and parents, using just about every imaginable research methodology including focus group, online methods, and in-school methods, to name a few.

Generation Y will have an even greater impact on the marketplace and on our culture than their baby boomer parents," said John Geraci, Vice-President of Youth Research. Too many marketers see Gen Y as simply a demographic phenomenon. Successful youth marketers will be those that understand that the Internet is central to the lives of young people and is fundamentally changing our culture. Our clients now have a way to survey kids and teens efficiently and reliably in this new medium."

An extension of the Harris Youth Poll is the Harris Youth Panel. At 500,000 registered users, it is by far the largest youth panel to date. It targets ages 8 to 18 and can be combined with the adult panel to create any age range needed for a project. Further, through participation in the Harris Youth Poll, this panel is fully profiled to allow for a tight targeting of particular respondent groups. It is possible to survey both parents and their children and link their data together_providing a richness to the relevance of the parent/child reaction that has never before been available.

It should also be noted that in addition to proprietary research for clients, Harris Interactive will be conducting a number of polls on i-matter.com in the upcoming year, including:

- An ongoing election poll to determine youth opinion of the 2000

presidential race and campaign issues.

- An ongoing parallel study to the Harris Poll, which will enable

comparisons between youth opinion and adults.

- Dozens of (non-scientific) daily polls on sports, school, health,

technology, fashion, current events, entertainment, health, and

relationships.

About Harris Interactive

Harris Interactive (www.harrisinteractive.com) is a leading market research and polling firm, using Internet-based and traditional methodologies to provide its clients with information about the views, experiences and attitudes of people worldwide. Known for its Harris Poll, Harris Interactive has over 40 years experience in providing its clients with market research and polling services, including custom research, multi-client research, service bureau research and customer relationship services. Harris Interactive conducts its Internet research using its Internet database of approximately 4.2 million online panelists and its proprietary technology.