Realize Communications Inc, the start-up with a web-based service offering a spam-free subset of Usenet has named a new chief executive. John Brush was formerly executive VP at Kao Infosystems, where he managed its software services division. He founded a company called West Coast Telecom in 1987, which was acquired by Kao. Realize’s founder Michael Ginn becomes chairman and chief technology officer and will concentrate on developing the company’s core technology. Realize offers a subset of the Usenet newsgroups, ranked by users, who receive incentives in return for their rankings. The messages are rated either very appropriate somewhat appropriate or not appropriate, and users earn what the company calls Qy (short for quality) points, redeemable against airmiles and other rewards. Messages are filtered out if enough users judge them to be not appropriate for the newsgroup. The system is supported by advertising revenues. Brush says Realize currently hosts about 100 newsgroups in its site and more on the site it hosts for Stockmaster Inc, with whom it signed a deal last year. Brush says there are other deals in the pipeline, but he couldn’t name names just yet.
