Lycos Inc. Monday launched a woven auction service which allows users to access items listed by individuals, small businesses and major e-tailers all at once.

Lycos Auctions and Tripod Auctions will host individual sellers as well as retailers of all sizes, allowing consumers to browse and bid from all of the sources simultaneously.

Users can promote bid items and bargain-hunt from personal start pages, individual home pages and virtual store fronts. Lycos Network members have been automatically enrolled in the service.

Lycos expects the auction service to create multiple avenues for selling and shopping, including the first integration of community homepages and auction services. For businesses, Lycos has provided tools for creating virtual storefronts.

To keep track of the diversity of buying opportunities, users across the Lycos Network of properties can search for specific items or browse among multiple categories and, with just a few mouse clicks, begin the bidding.

Users can create "watch" lists on homepages and My Lycos start pages that alert them when selected items up for bid in a certain price range.

"Lycos Network auctions give users valuable functionality they can't get anywhere else on the Internet," said Don Zereski, vice president and general manager of Tripod. "We have developed a series of innovative features that link our huge Lycos Network audience together to create a full array of buying and selling opportunities."

The auction service will also feature real-time bidding, buyer comments on sellers, e-mail notification on item availability, auction monitoring from a member's homepage, regional item searches, and photo display of auction items. Users can also search on items by buyer, seller, product name or keyword, product category, price point or geography.

The basic auction listing service is free to Lycos and Tripod members, with premium services available for a fee.