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Event
Summary
WOBURN, Massachusetts, and DENVER, Colorado February 2000 - iCAST,
an online entertainment company, and Tribal Voice, a leading provider
of co-branded instant messaging and interactive communications, both majority-owned
operating companies of CMGI, Inc. (NASDAQ: CMGI), announced the availability
of a preview version of iCASTER, a next-generation multimedia player
with integrated online presence detection and interoperable instant messaging
- enabling entertainment fans to play, share and communicate around multimedia
with one application.
Market
Impact
Icast,
a CMGI company, has released a beta version 1.0 of iCaster. iCaster is
a multimedia software component which allows for Audio and Video capabilities
and has integrated Tribal Voice's PowWow Instant Messaging Service. The
software is expected to allow millions of users worldwide to communicate
via Instant Messaging (IM).
The
software is targeted at the booming Internet entertainment industry, and
takes the standard multimedia application to the next level, through the
integration of Instant Messaging. The IM product will interact with AOL,
Microsoft, AT&T, and Tribal Voice users. iCast hopes to build a large
Internet based community through the appeal of user generated multimedia
in conjunction with mainstream 'Hollywood' media.
Icast
is the only entity within the Instant Messaging space to combine messaging
with media. We believe competition will be fierce from the joint venture
of AOL and Time Warner, which when put together, have the ability to destroy
iCaster.
We expect that iCaster will be a hit among home user Netizens during the
short term, but will lose considerable client base when competition from
AOL/Time Warner begins by the end of the 4th quarter (probability 65%).
User
Recommendations
If
you love Instant Messaging and are either a music or video fan, iCast.com
will appeal to you.
We
recommend waiting for the next release of iCaster to verify that any existing
bugs have been resolved prior to installation on your system. Users should
enjoy the ability to share music with a dash of Instant Messaging tossed
in.
We
believe iCaster has the ability to reach 40 million Internet users, which
is down from iCast's estimation of 60 million due to AOL's action to disallow
iCaster Instant Messaging from linking to AOL's Instant Messenger. However,
attracting and retaining 40 million users will take 2-3 years (probability
80%).