Consultant and developer USWeb Corp has scored a nonexclusive 4 year deal worth $10 million, to develop content for NBC’s web site. USWeb will provide production and technical services for online accompaniments to such TV shows as Homicide: Second Shift, The Pretender Adventure and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno Online. NBC Interactive Media president Marty Yudkovitz stressed that what NBC was buying was USWeb’s tech smarts. Technical expertise is our air supply, he said. Without it, we can’tr breathe. E- commerce moves are afoot, and the network says it intends to add transaction capabilities to its online offerings. The partnership will not result in mass redundancies within NBC – yet. We will keep on our staff all our key producers, Yudkovitz said. NBC becomes USWeb’s fifth largest customer and its largest single long term contract. NBC now has eighteen months to take up to 3.8% equity in USWeb. A substantial market now exists for internet consulting services, and the field is hotly contested. While USWeb wins new clients, a rival lurks in the wings. CNet reports that top executives from IBM, EDS, Perot Systems and McKinsey & Company have been drawn to a six-month-old San Francisco startup, Scient. The company’s mission – a service delivery approach to developing e-business strategies and solutions, according to www.scient.com – sounds similar to USWeb’s own. Scient itself spurns the comparison, saying it has bigger fish to fry. Its sights are set on the e-commerce arm of Andersen Consulting.
