Netscape announces service for small businesses

Reshma Kapadia

NEW YORK: Netscape, a unit of America Online Inc., is expected to introduce
on Wednesday a new service aimed at helping small businesses get online.

The new service, called Netbusiness, aims to offer a personalized and
community-focused approach to help small businesses in their online endeavors -
from creating an online presence and attracting customers to making transactions
with suppliers and consumers.

Netbusiness will be available across several AOL brands, including AOL.com
and CompuServe, for free and will incorporate several of AOL's services
including localized entertainment guide Digital City, MapQuest and popular
instant messaging service ICQ.

It will also be incorporated into the next version of AOL's browser, Netscape
6.0, due out later this fall.

"The core to the site is helping businesses get online," said
Netscape senior vice president for small business Fred Singer in a recent
interview. "Of the businesses that are small, only one-third are on the
Web. What AOL did for consumers we are trying to do for small businesses. No one
has put together the right mix of content and services for (small businesses).
We are going in a major way and we have the resources to do it."

The service will target local businesses, a group that overlaps with AOL's
current 24 million subscribers, he added.

Netbusiness, which has been in a test phase since July, will have several
components, including a "My Industry" feature that will provide
customized market news and research reports for the user.

My Business will offer users a "Netbusiness Card" where business
owners can post their information and be integrated into AOL yellow pages,
allowing them to generate awareness of their products and services.

It also has an instant message feature customized for business users that
lets customers and businesses swap real-time messages whenever they are online.

My Life, another area on the Netbusiness destination, aims at providing
information on lifestyle issues.

Shop Direct will offer direct access to the best prices for office products,
general services and administrative support among other things.

Among the partners providing services to Netbusiness will be BigStep.com
Inc., FedEx Corp., TMP Worldwide Inc.'s online careers site Monster.com, Network
Solutions Inc., PurchasePro.com Inc., Stamps.com Inc. and Office Depot Inc.

Netscape plans to expand the partners but Singer said the company had aimed
at making things "easy and simple" in the first introduction of the
product.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.