Microsoft and American City Business Journals Form Alliance

Posted on January 24, 2001

Microsoft Corp. and American City Business Journals Inc., a publisher of metropolitan business newspapers, announced that they have entered into a strategic content relationship. ACBJ will provide news about local and national business developments to Microsoft bCentral small-business service customers in 40 U.S. markets. As new markets are added, localized content will be delivered through the Microsoft bCentral website. The agreement encompasses joint marketing and online co-branding for both the bCentral service and ACBJ's >bizjournals.com, with ACBJ offering the bCentral service's wide range of online business services for small businesses.

``Microsoft clearly understands the small-business market,'' said Ray Shaw, CEO at ACBJ. ``The real value of this new relationship is that Microsoft has incredible services for small businesses. Combine those services with our exceptional resources of local news and information, and you have a very, very strong offering that helps small-business owners build their businesses in a much more effective way.''

As part of this agreement, MSNBC, the Internet news site that is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News, will be the premier provider of national news for ACBJ's bizjournals.com website, and ACBJ will provide select local business news content to MSNBC.com.