Hear Ye! Lycos Unveils “Announcement” App

Lycos, Inc. today launched a personalized service that invites users to post announcements on the Web, the latest offering in what many in the Internet space are billing as the “community craze.”

The “Personal Internet Guide” just got more personal with the new pagebuilder
application that allows users to post custom engagement, wedding and birth announcements.

Users can also create e-mail lists for people to receive the posts, and Lycos said it will also allow people to create resumes and sports and celebrity fan pages that can be accessed by other Lycos members via galleries.

To create announcements, users fill out a questionnaire and then pick from various templates, fonts and colors. The announcement can then be e-mailed to interested relatives, friends and co-workers.

“This new service is another example of how Lycos is offering its users a
richer and more complete Internet experience each and every time they sign
onto the Web,” said Jan Horsfall, vice president of marketing at Lycos, in a statement. “By
developing a personal page technology, Lycos is offering its users a new
way for people to easily and regularly communicate with family and friends.”

In recent months, the Web hub has focused heavily on building the most comprehensive community-focused site on the Net, as evidenced by the acquisition of sites such as WhoWhere?, angelfire.com, and
mailcity.com last week. The latest buys will help to further complement Lycos’ leading Tripod community site which it bought at the beginning of the year.

As was the case with other “portal” crazes such as free e-mail and personalized home pages, the other major hubs are also getting in on the community act. Both Excite and Yahoo! signaled that they won’t be left on the sidelines as they announced similar tools for creating personal home pages this week.