Web Surfers Now Can Cruise Dry Land; Vicinity Opens New Markets for Web Publishers with GeoEnabled Web Services.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 15, 1996--Vicinity Corporation today announced the general availability of its YourTown(tm) GeoEnabled(tm) family of services for Web publishers, giving them a breakthrough technology to attract consumers to the Web, connect them to businesses locally or nationwide, and refine advertising on the Web.

GeoEnabling creates a new class of Web content and services that add a real-world context to the Web. Using GeoEnabled services, Web surfers can explore geographically, locating businesses and other points of interest and depicting them on Vicinity Interactive Maps (VIMs) as well as in tabular and textual formats.

Web publishers representing a range of market segments can integrate the YourTown services into their Web sites, thereby greatly enhancing their value and enjoyment for users. Primary market segments for YourTown include travel, yellow pages, search engines/Web guides, newspapers, magazines, electronic classifieds, and others.

YourTown services include:

-- GeoEnabled directories that can easily integrate the millions of business sites, landmarks, and other locations that define an audience's community of geography or interest. Publishers can integrate these directories into WWW versions of their Web services, magazines, newspapers, or other publications.

-- Proximity searches that enable users to find information based on geographical locations, such as finding the three banks nearest a user's office or home location.

-- Door-to-door driving directions in selected metropolitan areas.

Vicinity was the first vendor of geographically oriented Web services to offer Web publishers the ability to private label its unique, geographical content and services. Vicinity's customers brand YourTown with their own name, graphical "wrapper," and overall Web site context.

"The importance of brands on the Web is widely acknowledged," said Vicinity president and CEO, Hal Logan. "Vicinity's approach has always been to help our customers leverage their brand by delivering the highest quality geographical content filtering through a very focused OEM/private label business model."

Since April 1996, basic YourTown services have already been enjoyed by millions of users of Lycos, Yahoo!, GeoCities, Travelocity, InfoSeek, and other leading Web venues. Vicinity is now in the process of adding more powerful YourTown features to many of these same sites.

YourTown GeoEnabled services are available immediately. For more details (including quick links and complete URLs to our customer sites), Vicinity can be contacted via its corporate Web site at http://www.vicinity.com, or via telephone at 408/732-5947.

Advertising Enablers

YourTown services make the Web a substantially more interesting and engaging place for users to spend time, increasing the appeal of GeoEnabled Web sites to advertisers. Vicinity has designed YourTown to accommodate multiple forms of advertising, including traditional banners with map-resident logos that can be linked to advertisers' home pages or a special advertising page dedicated to a particular store location. These advertising features will be enabled over the next six months.

Using YourTown services, national and regional businesses with broad networks of retail and service locations can enable their customers and prospects to find the outlets most convenient to their homes or offices. For the first time, small businesses that trade in specific geographical areas can advertise cost-effectively on the Web by targeting their messages only to Web users in their areas.

GeoTag Web Localization 

Vicinity is offering a specification -- called GeoTag Web Localization -- for adding geographical context to any entity on the Web that has a location in the real world. This context gives Web publishers the ability to enable geographically focused advertising on the Web.

By integrating GeoEnabled services into their Web sites, Web publishers can, for the first time, offer businesses advertising opportunities targeted to geographically defined audiences. The result is reduced random advertising on the Web and more effective, profitable Web advertising investments.

GeoTag represents a technical specification that, when broadly implemented and deployed, will bring the Web equivalent of direct mail targeted to consumers/customers in precisely defined geographical locations.

According to Logan, "GeoEnabled content and services will expand the Web from simply a 'browsing' resource to a practical tool tied to the daily lives of Web users. Our business partners have exciting plans to add Web-based geographics to their sites in ways that will surely accelerate the growth of advertising and promotion on the Web. "Vicinity's mission is to drive this trend by providing a broad range of GeoEnabled services that draw more consumers to the Web for everyday use and makes the Web more valuable for users and businesses. GeoTag is a key element in fulfilling that mission," concluded Logan.

Vicinity and its development partners will provide more details on the GeoTag specification and its deployment on the Web in coming weeks.

Market Background

Web content to date has been largely confined to text and static graphics with little useful connection to the physical world where people conduct their daily lives. Of the several forms of Web content approaching market readiness, GeoEnabled content is the only one with clear immediate demand and utility, and without significant barriers to advancement. Others, such as dynamic graphics, full motion video, and voice, are encountering varied obstacles including powerful entrenched competition, insufficient Internet transmission infrastructure, unevenly adopted standards, and others.

According to Rama Aysola, Vicinity's vice president of programming and content, "GeoEnabled content and services are compelling and obvious next steps for the World Wide Web. We estimate a significant percentage of all Web sites will be GeoEnabled at some level within 3-5 years."

Free Interactive Mapping Service

The Web community can also enjoy Vicinity's free MapBlast!(tm) service, which allows interactive maps of any U.S. location to be created, embedded in home pages, Web sites, and e-mailed to friends and associates. MapBlast! is available at http://www.mapblast.com or through Vicinity's corporate Web site at http://www.vicinity.com. (See related release).

About Vicinity Corporation

Vicinity Corporation, founded in August of 1995, has established itself through key partner/customer alliances as the premier supplier of geographically oriented or "GeoEnabled" content and services exclusively for the World Wide Web. Vicinity is a member of the CMGI (CMG Information Services) family of Internet-focused companies that also include Lycos, Planet Direct, GeoCities, NetCarta, PinPaper, Black Sun Interactive, Ikonic, Freemark Communications, TELET Communications and CyberVillages Corp.

Vicinity uses high quality digital maps and navigation quality databases from ETAK, Inc., the leading supplier of digital road maps. Vicinity is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and has development and sales offices in Boston, MA. Web address: http://www.vicinity.com. Corporate offices: 408/732-5940.

YourTown, GeoEnabled, and MapBlast! are trademarks of Vicinity Corporation. Vicinity is a trademark of Vicinity Corporation. All other names are properties of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Vicinity Corp.

Greg Xenakis, 408/732-5950

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or

Nancy Teater, 415/321-0252 (for Vicinity Corp.)

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