CommonPlaces Accelerates Roll-Out of Online Services to Colleges & Universities Across U.S. With Additions to Campus Operations Team.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 1999--

Aggressive CollegeBytes.com Deployment Now

Underway After Six Months of Research & Testing Among

Higher Education Institutions Across the U.S.

CommonPlaces LLC, creators of CollegeBytes.com, the first full-service Internet hub for college audiences, is rapidly accelerating deployment of CollegeBytes.com to U.S. colleges and universities with the addition of a team of seasoned campus operations professionals. The move comes on the heels of an aggressive six-month research and testing phase where CommonPlaces executives met with higher education institutions across the country to preview CollegeBytes.com, discuss each institution's current online capabilities and clarify each college or university's specific needs in the area of Web-based offerings for students, parents and faculty.

CollegeBytes.com has been designed from the ground up based on this feedback and will be formally launched in August. The full-service, self-evolving, personalized Internet hub enables colleges for the first time to receive free online tools, resources and community-building capabilities that are customized for each school, without incurring software licensing or service fees. CollegeBytes.com's tools are designed to enhance the overall college experience and will include value-add offerings such as courseware; calendaring capabilities; and integrated messaging, in addition to global resources including academic search scholarship databases; live news feeds; local area information; and others.

CommonPlaces' new campus operations team brings significant senior level relationship management experience to the collegiate sector. The team will work directly with U.S. colleges, including those institutions that participated in the research and testing phase, and the more than 250 colleges that have already expressed interest in CollegeBytes.com. CommonPlaces' team will be augmented with campus operations professionals from Network Event Theater (NASDAQ:NM NETS), CommonPlaces' exclusive partner and partial owner, and the nation's largest on-campus media and marketing services organization with a presence on over 2,000 campuses.

"Our goal is to bring CollegeBytes.com to every institution of higher education in the country," said Ben Bassi, founder, president and CEO of CommonPlaces. "To achieve this mission we are bringing the highest caliber of seasoned professionals to CommonPlaces. Each individual within our campus operations team has a tremendous track record in forging high level strategic relationships with leading global organizations. We are excited about this new team and we will continue to add the highest level of talent to our company as we deploy CollegeBytes.com across the country."

Campus Operations Staff Bring Wealth of Experience

CommonPlaces has appointed eight new campus operations professionals to its team, including Bill Gino, who has joined the company as General Manager, Campus Operations. Gino has extensive experience in sales and marketing, and was formerly Director of Business Development for Iona Technologies, where he most recently secured $26 million in sales - four times over his quota - through signing enterprise deals with companies like Chrysler, Liberty Mutual, BankBoston, Kaiser Permanente, Andersen Consulting, Cambridge Technology Partners and Deloite & Touche. Prior to Iona, Gino was sales director at Firefly, one of the Web's first personalized communities and creators of advanced software for personalizing Web sites while protecting individual privacy, where he typically surpassed sales quotas by more than 300 percent. At Object Design, Gino was Manager of Strategic Accounts and Business Development Director, responsible for selling object-oriented technologies to companies including NBC, Time-Warner, Open Market and Goldman Sachs. Gino has also held senior roles with companies including Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and McDonnell Douglas Corp.

"I have worked with CommonPlaces CEO Ben Bassi and CTO Mark Palmer in the past, and I was extremely intrigued and excited by this opportunity to work with CommonPlaces," said Bill Gino. "CommonPlaces is taking a unique and innovative approach to addressing a critical unmet need among the college market. By providing a suite of free Internet tools and resources customized specifically for each school, CommonPlaces is helping higher education organizations easily extend their campus community online and provide their students with a wealth of unique and useful services. I am excited to be a part of what this company is doing."

In addition to Gino, CommonPlaces has added four new Campus Operations Regional Managers. Joshua Matthew Block, formerly New England & Eastern Canada Regional Manager for Quest Software Inc., will cover the Northeast region. At Quest, Block successfully worked with East Coast organizations including Harvard University and Dartmouth College, University of Vermont, University of New Hampshire, Northeastern University, and University of Massachusetts in delivering ERP solutions and development tools. Block has also worked with companies including Wallop Software Inc., FTP Software Inc., and ON Technologies, Inc., in sales and marketing capacities. In each role, Block was extremely successful in establishing high-level relationships and significantly surpassing sales quotas.

Steven Gendel, formerly Director of Sales and Marketing for Timecruiser Computing Corp., will cover the New York metro region for CommonPlaces. At Timecruiser, Gendel worked with education, government and Fortune 500 customers worldwide. He was responsible for rolling out new breakthrough products and was successful in forging relationships with U.S. colleges such as the University of Alberta and the Central Virginia Community College.

Covering the Southeast will be Michael Burnstine, who joins the company from his position as President and COO of Florida-based InterAction Media Corp., which developed, implemented and operated a national network of state-of-the-art multimedia interactive kiosks and information centers at universities. At IMC, Burnstine previously served as Director of Collegiate Marketing, where he forged agreements with more than 50 universities to secure the adoption of the company's revolutionary kiosk system.

Paul Randall Branch will cover the Midwest, and he comes from the Randall Branch Agency, where he was Agency Principal, orchestrating operational and management aspects of the independent agency. During his tenure, Branch grew the agency's premium by 20 percent. Prior to this, Branch was President and Regional Marketing Manager for Katonah Group, where he managed over 25 independent groups that collectively produced $7,000,000.

CommonPlaces is also adding Boris Bulanov, previously with Iona Technologies and Object Design, Inc., as Principal Consulting Engineer, Campus Operations. Bulanov brings a proven track record of creating unconventional solutions for high-end data processing systems. At Object Design, he was Principal, Application Engineering, where he introduced leading software development organizations to distributed processing infrastructures. Bulanov also served as a Senior Software Developer for IBM.

Two new Campus Outreach Specialists, Carey McKinley and Jenna Brochu, are also both joining CommonPlaces. McKinley previously was with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she served as financial assistant in the School of Science Dean's Office. Prior to MIT, McKinley worked at Harvard University, where she was the Assistant to the Associate Dean for Development. In these roles, McKinley was exposed to critical aspects of university administration, and was successful in developing strong relationships with faculty, administration and alumni. Brochu joins CommonPlaces from OfficeTeam, a division of Robert Half International, where she was office and HR Manager for the organization. Prior to this role, Brochu was a Program Coordinator with Miller Consulting Group.

About Network Event Theater (NET)

NET is the nation's leading college campus media, marketing services and promotions company, comprised of five media, marketing services and promotions properties: Network Event Theater(R), the nation's only national network of theaters on college campuses; American Passage(R), the leading college newspaper advertising placement service reaching more than 2,000 campuses, and the leading campus postering and promotions company; Beyond the Wall(R), the largest print poster catalog with a circulation over four million reaching over 600 campuses; Campus Voice(R), an editorial wall media network reaching over 400 campuses with more than 100 million passers-by each month; and HotStamp(tm), the largest national free postcard advertising brand with niche programs on and off college campuses, movie theaters and record stores utilizing over 2,000 postcard racks that distribute over six million postcards each month. In addition, CommonPlaces is the partially-owned online unit of NET.

About CommonPlaces

CommonPlaces, founded by senior Internet veterans, is the first company to create comprehensive, personalized and self-evolving online communities for specialized audiences with common interests. CommonPlaces' first Internet community is CollegeBytes.com, a full-service online hub with free tools and resources for the entire collegiate community (faculty, administration and students). CommonPlaces has joined forces with Network Event Theater (NASDAQ: NM NETS), the nation's largest campus media and marketing services company, to leverage NET's more than 50 years of aggregate college marketing experience and nationwide distribution on more than 2,000 colleges. CommonPlaces' management, along with NET, owns the substantial majority of the equity of CommonPlaces LLC. CommonPlaces is poised to become the market leader in delivering comprehensive online tools and resources for the college community including more than 15 million U.S. college students. More information about the company can be found at http://www.commonplaces.com.