New Online Alliances

One of the big new deals is the Lycos take over of Wired Digital. It will bring the popular HotBot search tool under the Lycos umbrella along with other content like Wired News and Webmonkey. Lycos acquired the popular young adult web community Tripod earlier this year. Earthlink Network, which has grown into one of the biggest Internet service providers and has a new alliance with Sprint, has made some deals to give subscribers new choices in their personal start pages. They can even use the colors and logos of their favorite NFL teams. Earthlink's Howard Lefkowitz says more people are on the net and...

"The average amount of time that people have been spedning online has in fact been increasing. We are seeing tremendous growth in that area. Last year, for example, it was in the twenty plus hour range, now it's in the 34 plus hour range and it continues to grow."

That means the average subscriber is spending more than an hour a day online.

"They come to us, on average, three times a day. Our members log on, on average, three times a day."