NEW PARTNERSHIP OFFERS CONSUMERS CANDIDATES COMPREHENSIVE DESTINATION FOR POLITICS ON THE NET.

Politics.com, a New York-based political Web site, has forged a partnership with Prospero Technologies, Virage Inc., The Center for Responsive Politics, and Democracy Data & Communications, under which the three political and Internet technology companies and non-profit political research organization will offer consumers and candidates an integrated, fully interactive destination for politics via an extensive line of new interactive features as well as access to in-depth political research and information.

"These partnerships deliver on our fundamental commitment to close the gap between citizens and all levels of government, by providing them with the opportunity to organize, communicate and research relevant issues at a single Web site," says Marc Jacobson, president of Politics.com. "We will continue to strive to make it easy to engage both citizens and government representatives in the political process and to provide the most comprehensive political destination on the Web."

Prospero Technologies, created by the combined resources of Delphi Forums and Well Engaged, is one of the Web's leading audience activation services companies. Prospero's ASP solution includes message boards and chat. Its communities are among the most popular and user-friendly on the Web. Users - including citizens and representatives - will now be able to engage in real-time dialogue, create their own web pages and discussion areas, post messages, participate in polls, and talk about the political news of the day. Campaigns can also use password- protected forums to develop strategies and organize in a more private area.

Under the arrangement, Politics.com users will also have on- demand access to video coverage of the American presidential campaign with Virage Inc.'s Campaign 2000 Video Search Engine. Via a simple search engine-style interface, Virage's technology allows users to type in any topic or keyword to quickly locate items of interest from hours of unfiltered C-SPAN coverage of the presidential candidates.

Politics.com users will be able to access research on political candidates and officeholders, including corporate, PAC and individual contributors, as well as a wide range of original research on the role of money throughout the political system from the Center for Responsive Politics. The Center is a leading non-partisan and non-profit research organization that studies the role of money in federal politics.

Another key feature Politics.com users will soon be able to lookup their elected representatives through a legislator lookup search engine created and managed by Democracy Data & Communications (DDC). The legislator lookup search engine identifies the precise state and federal legislators for virtually every unique address in the country.