Excite Canada this week launched its online media
property, Excite.ca.
Excite Canada was created last June with a 50-50 joint venture partnership Canadian between Excite@Home (ATHM) and Rogers Media, a
subsidiary of Rogers Communications. The venture is valued at $30
million.
Excite.ca features 15 popular topic areas or “channels” such as automotive,
careers, computers, health, and real estate. Excite.ca’s directory provides
users with access to the global
reach of Excite Search , which has indexed more than 250 million Web pages and
multimedia items.
The service, which leverages the Excite.com International Network, is
aggressively targeting Canadians coast to coast, and expects to attract many
of the Canadian users currently registered with Excite.com.
“Canada is a vastly important market to us, in both narrowband and
broadband,” said George Bell, president and CEO of Excite@Home. “This
partnership is an example of how combining the world class online services
of Excite and the Canadian presence of Rogers will create a winning
combination for consumers.”
Nearly half of the Canadian population — 49 percent of Canadians aged 12 and above —
are now Internet users, according to a September 1999 Internet study by
ACNielsen. An even larger group–two thirds of Canadians–have some
form of Internet access.