Walmart.com will offer low-cost net access
Still seeing plenty of promise in the ongoing mainstreaming of the internet, Walmart.com, the internet branch of megaretailer Wal-Mart, has announced it will offer bargain-basement internet access service starting this fall. In doing so, Wal-Mart is following in the footsteps of rival Kmart’s Bluelight.com, which offers limited free access if users make purchases from Bluelight.com or don’t spend more than 12 hours a month online. Walmart.com’s service, dubbed Wal-Mart Connect, will cost less than $10 per month. Wal-Mart Connect will include instant messaging, internet access and email. In charging for its internet service, Wal-Mart appears to have learned from those that failed. Spinway and 1stUp, which powered many of the boutique-ish free email services that proliferated as recently as a year ago, both went out of business late last year. Wal-Mart Connect will be operated by CompuServe, a unit of AOL Time Warner.

Yahoo and Consumer Reports team for pay
In its ongoing search for revenue streams, Yahoo has announced the launch of a fee-based product ratings service with content from Consumer Reports magazine. According to Yahoo, the service will appear across its network and will be prominently featured on its shopping and auto sites. Users will have to pay $2.95 for detailed product reviews, although short summaries will be free. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In teaming up with Consumer Reports, Yahoo is again attempting to bring in revenue from sources beyond advertising. Yahoo charges fees for some services, such as email access via telephone. The Consumer Reports web site is one of the few that has generated a notable profit by charging a subscription fee. It charges $3.95 a month and has 560,000 subscribers. 

AtomShockwave axes most of staff
Animated content site AtomShockwave, which came into being when Atom Films merged with Shockwave six months ago, has handed walking papers to more than two-thirds of its staff. At the same time, it closed two of its U.S. offices, one in New York and another in Los Angeles. Roughly 120 out of its 170 employees were affected. The company will operate from its San Francisco headquarters, with offices in London and Japan. AtomShockwave describes the move as a "restructuring." Yet the company is hurting. In the last three quarters of 2000, the company lost $30.3 million on revenues of $13.2 million. In an attempt to bring in more revenue, AtomShockwave last month announced that it would start charging users to play some of its games, which are among its most popular features. AtomShockwave is one of the few dot.com entertainment companies left standing. Entertaindom, Pseudo, Pop.com and Icebox.com have all gone out of business.

IVillage stock rebounds and won't be delisted
Shares in women’s portal iVillage were trading so low earlier this year that the company faced delisting from the Nasdaq. No more: Since the stock has sustained a trading price of greater than $1 for 10 trading days in a row, iVillage shares will remain on the market. Nasdaq sent the company a letter stating that it was back in compliance. The Nasdaq had warned iVillage in April that, since it had been unable to keep its stock price at about $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, it was not complying with standards. Nasdaq gave iVillage until July 19 to boost its stock price or get booted. Delisting can mean the end for a dot.com. For example, Pets.com and Garden.com were delisted shortly before their demise. While iVillage’s stock is not flying high, having closed at $1.66 a share on Friday, observers are expecting a continued recovery, given that the acquisition of Women.com should be completed later this month. That deal includes a $20 million investment from Women.com part-owner Hearst Corporation.

DoubleClick acquires MessageMedia
Online ad-serving company DoubleClick has announced it is acquiring email marketing company MessageMedia. The deal, valued at $41 million, will expand DoubleClick’s email marketing capacity, which was already augmented by its February purchase of FloNetwork, another email marketing firm. MessageMedia distributes some 100 million opt-in emails per month for more than 300 advertisers, among them Cisco, ETrade, Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Columbia House. The acquisition also gives DoubleClick access to MessageMedia technology, including UnityMail and M3Platform, which is similar to DoubleClick’s DARTMail and FloNetwork products. DoubleClick says it will close the deal in the third quarter. On Thursday, DoubleClick announced a new privacy policy and introduced a new feature that lets consumers contact the company about privacy issues.

J. Lo is now a worm on the rampage
Singer and actor Jennifer Lopez is infamous for her revealing outfits. And yet they aren’t revealing enough for insatiable fans, many of whom are so eager to see more of her that they have fallen for another anonymously-sent email containing a harmful virus. It’s actually a worm that’s a variant of the infamous "I Love You" worm that caused a mess online a year ago. This new one arrives with a subject line that says "Where were you" and a message that says, "This is my pic in the beach." The attached file has the words "Jennifer," "Lopez" and "naked," along with the ".jpg" extension that means pictures online. Unfortunately for the dimwitted souls who click on the attachment, it actually ends with ".vbs," which should be a dead giveaway that the email is trouble. There are no estimates yet regarding how widespread the virus is, but at least one company, Panda Software, considers it a high risk, since it not only destroys a user’s multimedia files, much as the recent "Anna Kournikova" worm did, but also unleashes the Chernobyl virus, which destroys Windows executable files and can prevent users from being able to boot up their computers.

                                                           June 4, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

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