Online Inc. Announces the VirComm Awards for Excellence in Virtual Communities.

WILTON, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 12, 1999--Online Inc., host of the VirComm '99 conference for business-oriented virtual communities, announced the creation of the annual VirComm Awards for Excellence in Virtual Communities. The awards will be engraved crystal trophies given to winners in six categories:

- Social Communities with diverse populations - Affinity Communities - Recreational and personal interest - Affinity Communities - Professional - Product/Brand Communities - Intranet/Extranet Communities - Portal Communities - In addition, a Grand Prize winner will be announced

Judges for the VirComm Awards are a panel of veteran community builders, analysts, users, and reporters. Howard Rheingold, who coined the term "virtual community," and wrote the landmark book on the topic, will be joined by Dan Shafer, Master Builder at C/Net's Builder.Com; Katherine Prouty, leader of ZD University's Community Building course; Steve Bell, online community analyst at Forrester Research; Reva Basch, long time active member of The Well and best-selling author of Web research books; and Jeff Pemberton, CEO of Online Inc., who has been online since 1970, starting his career at The New York Times Information Bank.

Criteria for judging the virtual communities will include a five-point checklist comprising:

- Value to members - Vitality of site as evidenced by volume of discussion traffic - Quality of the discussions in relation to the charter of the

community - Technology: Utility of software, ease of navigation, robustness

and speed of performance - Overall graphic quality

On the Web-based nomination form, community nominees will be asked how their entry addresses two key issues:

- Is the site advancing the state-of-the-art in community building

with any novel features?

- Commercial aspects, such as advertisers and sponsors--has the site

been successful in attracting them? Are they adding to the value

of the site? What value has been created for the funders of the

community?

The VirComm Awards for Excellence will operate on an open submissions policy in which any business-based community may nominate itself by filling out the submission form on the VirComm site at http://www.vir-comm.com/awards and payment of a $75 entry fee. Nominations are open to any community that is operated as a business, for a business, or by a business. Entries are not restricted to "community only" sites but are open to Web sites where forum or chat communities are one or more components of a larger whole. The closing date for nominations is March 15.

The VirComm award ceremony will take place on April 27, day two of VirComm '99, the annual conference for profit-driven virtual communities held at the Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, VirComm program content is devoted exclusively to creating, building, growing, and managing online communities.

Commenting on the need for the awards, VirComm organizer Jeff Pemberton, noted that, "broad-based Web awards can only scratch the surface of the rich tapestry of community activity that ranges from fast-paced chat rooms to serious professional dialogs."

"The VirComm Awards will offer recognition to this diversity. In the future, we hope to extend the range of business-oriented categories and also include communities devoted to non-profit activities," Pemberton added.

The VirComm conference and awards are produced by Online Inc., publishers of ONLINE, DATABASE, and EMedia Professional magazines and organizers of the annual ONLINE WORLD, Intranets '99, DVD PRO Conference and Exhibition, and DVD PRO University. Talk City is the Corporate Sponsor and the CyberCafe Sponsor is KOZ, Inc. Media Sponsor is The Industry Standard. The Industry Sponsor is the Association for Interactive Media.