Dow Jones & Company and Excite Form New Company, Work.com

Posted on February 22, 2000

Excite@Home and Dow Jones & Company have announced the formation of a new company, Work.com, which will develop a business portal. Work.com will focus on the business-to-business market and build a leading business portal designed primarily for the needs of small and medium-sized business Internet users. Excite@Home and Dow Jones will initially each have a 50 percent joint ownership stake in Work.com and equal representation on its board of directors.

``By combining Dow Jones' pre-eminent business news content, including the search and industry news innovations that have distinguished dowjones.com, with the demonstrated functionality and ability to drive traffic of Excite@Home, we are creating, in Work.com, the definitive news and information site for small business,'' said Peter R. Kann, chairman and CEO of Dow Jones & Company.

Dow Jones launched dowjones.com as a vertical portal for small business users in June 1999. In September 1999, @Work, Excite@Home's business-to-business division, launched Work.com as an online service targeted at the small and medium sized business. The combination of Work.com's functionality with dowjones.com's proprietary content will provide business professionals with information, applications and tools they need to manage their businesses. The combined Work.com site will launch later this year. A CEO of Work.com will be named soon; Ezra Palmer, editorial director of dowjones.com, was named Work.com's editor-in-chief. Work.com will be headquartered in Redwood City, California with editorial operations in the New York area.