By Nick Patience
Centraal Corp, purveyor of the RealNames web navigation system yesterday launched its personalized version of its service, called My RealNames. As we suggested last month, the system enables individuals who are registered users of one of the common web communities, such as GeoCities, or Tripod can register one free RealName (03/12/99). Additional RealNames cost $100 per name per year. Centraal’s resolvers map a brand name – or a person’s name in this case – to a URL through the use of a browser plug- in. The company vets the applications and rejects applications to register names of famous people, brand or trademarks or generic terms such as ‘car’, unless the company or individual is that person or holds that mark. In the eight-week quiet beta phase, Centraal signed up around 130,000 My RealNames from community users in 36 countries.
Palo Alto, California-based Centraal has been working on browser companies for some time to get its technology embedded into their software, and it appears it has succeeded – to a limited extent – with Microsoft Corp. In the new Internet Explorer 5.0, RealName is one of the search options in the browser’s Autosearch feature. Centraal chairman and chief executive Keith Teare says Centraal hasn’t formally announced the integration because it is not the default – there are other search options to choose from – but he says Centraal is committed to becoming the default. The company is talking to Microsoft about tighter integration.
There are still talks going on with America Online Inc’s Netscape Communications Corp’s, although they have been upset by the recent departures from Netscape, including senior VP business development Jennifer Bailey, who is reportedly due to resign in the summer and senior VP and Netcenter chief Mike Homer, who is taking a sabbatical. Centraal is now talking to pure-AOL people so it’s taking much longer that previously thought. The deal is thought to be for more than integration with Communicator, though details are sketchy.
In addition to the free personal RealNames, Centraal charges $100 per year for company or brand name registration and has a price- per-resolution model for the high-volume brand names, where companies are charged a small amount each time a user queries Centraal’s resolvers. Companies such as eBay, that has registered around 1,200 RealNames, use the high-volume model and Microsoft has apparently just switched to it on a six-week trial basis. Although it only accounts for about 20% of Centraal’s revenues right now, it will be main source of revenues for the company in the future, says Teare.
The company has established a premier partner program to encourage community web sites and others to promote its system. In order to be a member of the program, community web sites have to build a subscription to RealNames into their own registration process. In return they get revenue-sharing agreements for the $100 RealNames, the resolutions they generate for the high-volume RealNames and the banner ads shown on the Centraal’s page that displays the alternatives when users type in generic terms, such as ‘car.’ Centraal counts Compaq Computer Corp, Networks Solutions Inc and idealab! Capital Partners among its investors.
