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To reach the magazine: (415) 276-5000

Wired Digital's current properties HotBot (www.hotbot.com), the Web's best-rated search engine; Wired News (www.wired.com), the premier service for news of the digital world; HotWired (www.hotwired.com), the award-winning site about Web technology and culture; Webmonkey, the leading Web enthusiast's how-to site; and Suck (www.suck.com), featuring unpopular opinions on pop culture, are wholly owned by Lycos, Inc. (Nasdaq: LCOS).

Founded in 1995, Lycos, Inc. is a leading Web media company and one of the most visited hubs on the Internet, reaching one out of every two Web users. The Lycos Network is a unified set of Web sites that attracts a diverse audience by offering a variety of services, including leading Web navigation resources, homepage building and other Web community services, and a comprehensive shopping center.

HotWired
Webmonkey
Webmonkey Guides
RGB Gallery
Suck.com
Wired Magazine

HotBot has garnered these awards by offering Web users one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date "snapshots" of the Web currently available. HotBot indexes every word, link, and media file on more than 110 million Web documents and refreshes its entire database of documents every three to four weeks. It also allows users to construct sophisticated search queries of its index without previous knowledge of complex search terms and methodologies. Instead, HotBot offers users a simple, point-and-click interface, intuitive pulldown menus, and the ability to use plain English terminology for constructing searches.

For the broadest search experience possible, HotBot has partnered with leading information and technology companies to provide users with relevant search results and free searchable access to valuable data not available on the Web, including stocks, electronic commerce, classifieds, news, and business information.

Based on its expanding feature set, ongoing content development, and significant traffic growth, HotBot has emerged as one of the major Web portals in operation today. HotBot is the search site of choice for experienced users and Web beginners alike.

Wired News www.wired.com
Clear, concise, and complete, Wired News is the essential source for daily news and analysis of the technologies, companies, and people driving the information age. Going beyond traditional technology coverage, Wired News delivers an in-depth, informed insider's perspective on how technology is affecting business, culture, and politics on a daily basis. Launched in 1996, Wired News is available directly via the Web.

HotWired www.hotwired.com
HotWired was launched in 1994 as the Web's first site to feature original content and Fortune 500 advertising. HotWired's mission is to function as a highly interactive crossroads for the Web's large, emerging class of "participants" - professionals and enthusiasts who are actively involved in creating the Web and have made this medium a part of their lives. The site showcases the Web's best and latest technology, art, and design developments with offerings like RGB Gallery and Animation Express. And through the highly acclaimed Webmonkey site, HotWired teaches Web participants how to put these developments to use on a daily basis.

Suck www.suck.com
The longest running, most imitated, and most gleefully abusive daily column on the Web, Suck features unpopular opinions on pop culture.

Whereas Wired magazine (the company's print division at the time) wrote about the Digital Revolution, HotWired lived that revolution on a daily basis. HotWired's original mission was to show the way forward by developing and fostering "new thinking for a new medium," pioneering communication forms, building community, and developing new-media business models.

Every year since its launch, Wired Digital has won numerous industry awards for content and design. In addition, it has built a successful business, ranking among the top 20 highest-trafficked destinations on the Web, with revenues increasing faster than the industry as a whole last year. Along the way, it has pioneered many firsts, including:

• First Web site to accept and model its business around advertising and sponsorship. HotWired invented the ad banner. Charter advertisers included IBM, AT&T, Sprint, MCI, Volvo, Zima, and Club Med.
  
• First to integrate community-building chat and forum activities throughout its media content.
  
• First to recognize the value of membership systems, even on free Web sites like HotWired.

By February 1995, HotWired boasted a membership of 100,000 and became widely recognized as the leading cultural icon of the new Web generation. The site's how-to section for Web developers, called Webmonkey, was launched in August 1996 and quickly rose to prominence as the leading Web-developer resource site. Today, HotWired hosts more than 600,000 visitors each month.

In partnership with a University of California at Berkeley professor and graduate student doing research on a backend search technology, code-named Inktomi, Wired Digital outlined the features necessary to create a new, powerful search tool and developed an intuitive, easy-to-use interface based on that functionality. HotBot launched to quick consumer and competitive notoriety by offering the largest and most frequently updated searchable index of the Web, as well as the broadest set of search features then available.

Since its launch, HotBot has been rated the No. 1 search engine on the Web in independent reviews from the top consumer-oriented computer and personal-finance publications in the United States. HotBot has been awarded top honors such as "best search site on the Web" by SmartMoney, PC Magazine, PC Computing, PC World, New Media, and CNET for its sophisticated search features and easy-to-use interface.

Today, HotBot attracts more than 7.1 million unique users a month. To assist these users in capitalizing on the numerous, cost-effective online shopping opportunities now available, Wired Digital launched an online commerce marketplace, the HotBot Shopping Directory (shop.hotbot.com), in June 1998. The directory combines premium goods and services from over 40 of the Web's leading retail merchants with an innovative shopping-comparison service.

HotBot continues to expand its user search experience through partnerships with best-of-class information providers that offer up-to-the-minute searches on specialized information categories including stocks, electronic commerce, news headlines, email addresses, domain names, classifieds, Usenet groups, and job opportunities.

Based on its expanding feature set, ongoing content development, and significant traffic growth, HotBot has emerged as one of the major Web portals in operation today.

Founded in 1995, Lycos, Inc. is a leading Web media company and one of the most visited hubs on the Internet, reaching one out of every two Web users. The Lycos Network is a unified set of Web sites that attracts a diverse audience by offering a variety of services, including leading Web navigation resources, homepage building and other Web community services, and a comprehensive shopping center.

HotBot, Editor's Choice Award, Chip magazine

HotBot, Paul Sherlock Award for Marketing Excellence, American Marketing Association

Wired News, Silver Award for Best Media/News, AdTech (May)

HotBot, Best Search Engine on the Web, CNET (April)

1998
HotBot, #1 Search Engine, PC Computing

HotBot, Information Award of Excellence, NewMedia Magazine - Invision Awards

HotBot, Gold Award, Search Engine/Portal Site, NewMedia Magazine - Invision Awards

HotBot, #1 Search Site on the Web, PC Computing

HotBot, #1 Search Engine, PC World - World Class Awards

HotBot, Web's Best Search Engine, SmartMoney

Wired News, Best Information Design Award, Communication Arts

HotWired, Best Content/Utility Web Site, SF Multimedia Summit

HotBot, Best Internet Search Engine, CNET

1997
HotBot, Editor's Choice Award, PC Magazine

HotBot, #1 Search Engine, Internet World

HotBot, #1 Search Engine, ComputerLife

HotBot, #1 Search Engine, PC Computing

HotWired, Best Design, ID Magazine Interactive Media Review

1996
HotBot, Editor's Choice Award, PC Magazine

HotWired, Top Web Sites of '96, Time

1995
HotWired, Best Online Publication, Computer Press Awards

HotWired, Top Ten Web Sites of the Year, Entertainment Weekly

HotWired, Best Arts and Entertainment Site, NII

HotWired, Web Site Design of the Year, Digital Hollywood

Prior to joining Wired Digital, Beth was a vice president at H. W. Jesse & Co., an investment banking and business strategy consulting firm in San Francisco. Before that she was a principal at investment banking firm Sterling Payot Company and she spent four years as a systems engineer for IBM.

Prior to joining Wired News, Shirk was news director for SF Gate, the online editorial service of the Chronicle Publishing Company. Shirk has been a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Des Moines Register and Tribune, and Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Prior to becoming a general manager, Casey was HotBot's director of product management. In this position, Casey was responsible for the successful integration of the open directory project into the HotBot search engine.

Before joining Lycos, Casey was vice president of marketing for mBED Software, a developer of multimedia Web authoring tools. He managed all marketing programs and product development for the company. Before that, Casey spent four years at Apple Computer as product manager of the computer maker's QuickTime VR authoring products.