In the rush to attract traffic to its site and to climb up the ratings charts, Lycos Inc has acquired web directory and email provider WhoWhere? Inc for $133m in Lycos stock. Along with its email, phone and address directories, WhoWhere also incorporates MailCity free email, which has 9.3 million users and the AngelFire advertising-supported web community, which has 1.3 million members. Lycos already owns web community Tripod Inc, which it acquired in February for $58m (02/04/98) and which has 1.8 million users currently, but the company says there are no plans to merge the Tripod and AngelFire communities for the foreseeable future, as Lycos says the two complement each other. However, it will be producing a web guide (the 23rd) on the Lycos site to webpage communities, which will point to the combined Tripod-AngelFire community. Waltham, Massachusetts-based Lycos was busy touting various ratings from companies such as Media Metrix Inc and RelevantKnowledge Inc saying it now owned three of the top ten web sites (Lycos, Tripod and WhoWhere) and then sliced and diced the figures every which way. WhoWhere will remain in its Mountain View, California headquarters and company chief executive Dave Fuller becomes VP and general manager of Lycos’ WhoWhere division. There are 105 staff at WhoWhere, who will all become Lycos employees under the deal. Asked whether or not WhoWhere is profitable, Lycos says it is close, but it reckons it will have an immediate positive effect on earnings. Apparently late last month, Zapata Corp, the ultra-acquisitive web portal wannabe spun out of a food processing company, tried to buy WhoWhere for $400m, but was turned down, in much the same way it was prevented from buying Excite Inc before that. Zapata has been sending out form letters to companies it wants to acquire and advertises on its site for companies that want to be acquired to contact it. Lycos closed down $4.375, or 6.4% at $63.5625.
