Prospero Significantly Expands Market Share with Major New Customers, Including Kaplan, Inc.; NASCAR.com; Knight Ridder Digital and Abebooks.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LITTLETON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 2003

Prospero Continues to Set the Standard for Web-based Interactivity

and Collaboration

Prospero Technologies LLC, a leading provider of Web-based collaboration services, today announced that it has signed agreements to provide services for several of the Web's most prominent sites. New clients include Kaplan, Inc., known for its test preparation, educational training and online learning services; NASCAR.com (part of Turner Sports Interactive), one of the largest and fastest-growing sports sites on the Internet; Knight Ridder Digital (KRD), the online subsidiary of Knight Ridder (NYSE: KRI), and Abebooks.com, an international marketplace for used, rare and out-of-print books.

These new clients add to the significant momentum Prospero has experienced over the past few months, including last November's acquisitions of Talk City and Delphi Forums. Together these acquisitions form one of the largest member-managed discussion networks on the Web and are a natural complement to Prospero's core offerings in advanced online community infrastructure and management tools.

"We're delighted by our continued traction with A-list companies like Kaplan, Inc., NASCAR.com, Knight Ridder Digital and Abebooks," said Dan Bruns, president, Prospero Technologies. "Despite a tough economy, Prospero has focused 100% of its efforts on the marketplace for Web-based collaboration, and has aggressively grown its business with strategic acquisitions. The strategy is paying off with growing market share and an enviable roster of customers who have turned to Prospero to leverage technology and expertise to build brand excitement, customer loyalty and to generate profits."

New customers for Prospero include:

Kaplan, Inc. - selected Prospero to provide Web-based collaboration services for online degree programs with Kaplan College, part of the company's higher education division. A $621M subsidiary of The Washington Post Company, Kaplan is best known for its test preparation services but in recent years has pioneered new territory in education, entering into businesses such as post-secondary education, professional training, publishing, international programs, K-12 programs for schools and families and online learning. Prospero and Kaplan worked together to rapidly deploy new collaborative elements for many of Kaplan College's online classrooms. Class-specific lesson plans are posted in the forums to encourage student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction. Prospero's Select Groups(R) technology and Seamless Registration enable Kaplan College to restrict access to enrolled students. Participation in the Web-based discussion forums is a key component of how students are graded.

"Kaplan is an exciting new partnership for Prospero because Kaplan is such a respected leader in the eLearning market," said Prospero's Dan Bruns.

NASCAR.com /Turner Sports Interactive (TSI)- turned to Prospero to provide message boards and event chats for NASCAR.com. Replacing NASCAR's previous vendor, Prospero worked with the NASCAR.com project team to meet a tight pre-Christmas holiday launch deadline for new online discussion forums.

NASCAR.com is one of the fastest-growing sports sites on the Internet, consistently ranking among the top in its category. In 2002, NASCAR.com received over 1.5 billion page-views and averaged nearly three million unique users per month. The NASCAR.com community section includes message boards for nearly all drivers in the major series, including Winston Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck racing. In the first six weeks after launch of the forums, over 200,000 users posted more than 125,000 messages.

Knight Ridder Digital (KRD) - a subsidiary company of Knight Ridder (NYSE: KRI), develops and manages the Internet properties of Knight Ridder, the nation's second largest newspaper publisher.

Again, working on a very tight deadline, Prospero launched an advanced community for 30 distinct KRD online properties within three weeks of signing a contract. Examples of their sites include MercuryNews.com, ThatsRacin.com, Tallahassee.com, Charlotte.com, Philly.com, KansasCity.com, TwinCities.com, Ohio.com and Kentucky.com.

KRD joins many prestigious publishing customers on Prospero's customer list, including Washington Post, Tribune Companies and The Wall Street Journal.

Abebooks - headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia and Dusseldorf, Germany, Abebooks is the world's largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books. The company has strategic partnerships with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and eBay/Half.com.

Abebooks is launching two important online communities powered by Prospero's advanced forums - a community of 10,000 booksellers and a new community of book buyers. In each case, the forums will foster interaction among all community members as well as with Abebooks. The community interaction will add tremendous value to the Abebooks brand and expand selling avenues for booksellers.

Prospero is also transforming Abebooks' existing and successful email-based search program to a forum. Named "BookSleuth," the program enables potential buyers to post sketchy details of a book and to draw upon the community of book lovers to figure out the unknown title and author. The recent overwhelming surge in BookSleuth questions and popularity will be handled more efficiently with Prospero's forum technology.

The Prospero Services Suite

Prospero's suite of services are already delivering business benefits for major Web sites such as Washingtonpost.com, Fox Entertainment, Ziff-Davis Media, Tribune Interactive, About.com/Primedia, Elektra Records, BusinessWeek and Major League Baseball. These services include Select Groups(R), services that are tailored to match tiered and for-pay membership plans; Active Content(R), a tool that integrates discussion areas (forums) with the overall site, and Cluster Controls, for community management (a key feature of the WeightWatchers.com implementation). Other Prospero offerings include feature-rich message boards, hosted live events, end-user personalization, remote posting, automated e-mails, network promotions, syndication and private labeling, internationalization, moderation tools, reporting tools and user-created forums.

About Prospero Technologies

Prospero Technologies Corporation is a well-established solutions provider, specializing in Web-based customer interactivity and collaboration technology. Prospero's enterprise-class solutions include a full suite of interactive services integrated with customer registration, member directories, customer profiling, activity tracking, management controls and reporting. Prospero's community infrastructure services are currently being provided to approximately 60 customers including Amazon.com, About.com, The Washington Post, Fox Entertainment, BusinessWeek, US News and World Report, Major League Baseball's MLB.com, Hot Jobs, Wharton Business School and Ziff-Davis Media. Prospero can be found on the Web at http://www.prospero.com/