DEAL LINKS AOL WITH NET PORTAL HOMESTORE OFFERS REAL ESTATE CONTENT.Byline: Jason Z. Cohen cohen or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. Staff Writer THOUSAND OAKS Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. - Online real estate portal Homestore.com Inc. will become the exclusive provider of home and moving content for America Online See AOL. members in a five-year deal worth more than $200 million. The deal calls for Homestore.com to provide content for a home-related channel to be created on America Online's service as well as its other online properties, including AOL.com, CompuServe and Netscape Netcenter. Investors responded favorably fa·vor·a·ble adj. 1. Advantageous; helpful: favorable winds. 2. Encouraging; propitious: a favorable diagnosis. 3. to the announcement, sending Homestore.com's share prices up by more than 25 percent. The company's stock closed Monday at $22.88 per share, an increase of $4.63. As part of the deal, America Online receives 3.9 million shares of Homestore.com's stock, about 5 percent of Homestore.com's outstanding shares. AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. also gets a guarantee the stock will meet performance targets and $20 million in cash. As part of the stock price guarantee, Homestore.com will secure a $90 million letter of credit, the company said. What Homestore.com gets in return is prominent placement before the eyes of America Online's 22 million subscribers by way of a dedicated channel, one of 19 on AOL's service including CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. Sportsline and Smartmoney.com. Although much of Homestore.com's business is done via partnerships with other businesses, the America Online deal stands out, said Stuart Wolff, Homestore.com's chief executive officer. ``AOL is about as big as you can get. They're very unique. We don't expect to run around doing numerous deals of this magnitude,'' Wolff said. ``When it comes to traffic, this is a very strong deal from that perspective.'' The agreement is an expansion of an earlier deal between Homestore.com and America Online. In 1998, the two companies formed a partnership under which Homestore.com provides some content for AOL's properties. America Online chose Homestore.com to provide its real estate content because of its leadership in the sector, Bob Pittman, AOL's president and Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. , said in a statement. ``Having easy access to its property listings, services and content will be a real benefit to our members and users of our Web-based brands,'' Pittman said. Homestore.com's leadership has attracted the attention of the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Antitrust The antitrust laws apply to virtually all industries and to every level of business, including manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and marketing. They prohibit a variety of practices that restrain trade. Division, which requested information about the company's business practices as part of an investigation into possible anti-competitive practices Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent and/or reduce competition in a market (see restraint of trade). Anti-competitive practices can include: Wolff said he does not expect the AOL deal to be affected by the investigation. The company has done nothing wrong, he said. Among the content Homestore.com will be providing on AOL are new and existing home listings, apartment rentals and information about moving, decorating and home and garden care, Wolff said. ``We get programming for all of our different content areas,'' Wolff said. ``We'll create some unique content for them. Some of the links will be directly to our site.'' |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion