MySimon.Com%20By%20Amit%20Phull

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MySimon.ComBy Amit Phull
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Corporate Background

• Founded in April, 1998, by Michael Yang and
  Yeogirl Yun 1.
• Virtual Learning Agent (VLA) technology was
  created by Yeogirl 1.
• Acquired by CNET Networks in 2000 for 736
  million 8.

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Simply Put

• mySimon.com is a comparison shopping service that
  allows users to search the internet for the best
  prices of a wide-array of products.
• Users can browse specifically, or by category and
  are able to sort their search results according
  to several different pertinent characteristics of
  the product (i.e. popularity, price, etc).

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Business Objectives

• Exclusive, innovative, automatic information
  discovery system is ideal for an e-commerce Web
  shopping service.
• Empowers consumers to find the best values for
  virtually any product on the Web.
• Presents price information in a format that is
  easy to read and sort.

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Company Sophistication

• Announced partnership with Britannica.com in
  2000, linking Britannica sites to related mySimon
  pages 2.
• Partnered with USAToday.com to be the sites
  exclusive provider of comparison shopping
  services 5.
• Struck a deal with About.com to incorporate
  mySimons shopping engine into Abouts network of
  460 sites 3.

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Innovative Technology

• Uses intelligent agent and advanced parallel
  search technologies to automatically comb Web
  merchants' sites for product and price
  information 1.
• Creates mass quantities of intelligent agents
  that mimic human behavior and can be "trained" to
  extract specific information from any merchant
  Web site 1.

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Simplicity

• mySimons user interface is very simple.
• Hundreds of categories can be easily searched.
• Results are nicely tabulated and sorted as the
  user demands.

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Awards and Honors

• mySimon.com is a winner of the Forbes favorite
  award 11.
• Won the EPpy award for Best Internet Shopping
  Service 11.
• Has been rated as one of Times Top 50 websites.
  Winner of the best comparison shopping site 7.

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Competition

• mySimon does face competition from services such
  as those offered by Yahoo! and the new Froogle
  (by Google) 4.
• Still, rated the number one comparison shopping
  portal on the internet and continues to grow.

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How Money is Made

• Bulk of their revenue comes from generating
  buyers for their e-retailer clients 6.
• MySimon makes anywhere from a few cents to almost
  a dollar on each consumer that clicks through a
  link on its site to one of its merchant partners
  6.
• Also makes revenue through deals with merchants
  to provide advertising, etc.

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Customers?? Inventory??

• Because comparative shopping sites such as
  mySimon.com make the bulk of their revenue by
  generating buyers for their e-retailer clients,
  customers, in a sense are their inventory 6.
• A lot is invested into managing user behavior and
  traffic.

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Parent Company Profile

• CNET Networks, Inc. is a global media company.
  It manages a vast internet network, has print
  publications, and manages a huge technology
  product database.
• You may have heard of CNET Reviews.

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Business Plan

• CNETs (thus mySimons) business plan is sound in
  that they deal primarily in the business of
  information.
• There are no great overhead costs associated with
  administering their business.
• Extensive staffs are not really necessary.

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BUT

• Despite a solid business plan, CNET (including
  mySimon) was hit hard by the bursting of the
  e-commerce bubble.
• The company has not been profitable for the last
  few years 10.
• Recently, they significantly readjusted their
  workforce through laying off employees 9.

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How Then in the Sweet Spot?

• Although not recently profitable, CNET has been
  significantly rising as of late, and promises to
  be one of the companies at the head of the tech
  rebound.

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How Then in the Sweet Spot?

• In releasing their latest quarterly reports and
  guidance, CNET executives have shown gradually
  curbing losses, and forecast profit as early as
  next year 12.
• CNET has been upgraded to outperform by many
  traders, including Solomon Smith Barney 12.

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The Future

• New categories are being offered such as the
  newest music category 11.
• New services such as Gift Finder and Shopping
  Guides continue to be added to enhance the
  robustness of the service 11.

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Random News

• mySimon co-founder Yeogirl Yun has made the news
  again recently by heading up the development of
  the newest search engine WiseNut. This search
  engine was highlighted by Time magazine, and is
  expected to compete with Google 7.

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References

• http//eurozdnet-de.mysimon.com/corporate/index.jh
  tml?pgidbackgrounder
• http//siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php
  /448741
• http//siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php
  /915511
• http//zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-977042.html
• http//www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/382701
  
• http//www.internetwk.com/ebizapps/ebiz072400-3.ht
  m
• http//www.time.com/time/2002/tech/best/search.htm
  l
• http//www.sdtimes.com/cols/webwatch_024.htm
• http//www.cnet.com/aboutcnet/0-13613-7-20096942.h
  tml
• http//www.google.com/search?hlenlrieUTF-8oe
  UTF-8prev/search3Fq3DCNET2Bstock26hl3Den2
  6lr3D26ie3DUTF-826oe3DUTF-8qstocksCNET
• http//www.mysimon.com/
• http//www.multexinvestor.com/