Lycos and Net Perceptions Launch Unbiased Cross-Merchant

Product Recommendation Service

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Net Perceptions Inc. (Nasdaq: NETP), the leader in realtime personalization solutions, and Lycos Inc. (Nasdaq: LCOS), the fastest-growing Internet portal and the world's largest online community, today announced the launch of the first online shopping cart that makes cross-merchant product recommendations to online shoppers. The new service, LYCOShop Recommends, is a feature of every shopping cart in LYCOShop and is powered by the Net Perceptions for E-Commerce personalization engine.

Lycos is the first major portal to integrate personalization technology into its shopping service, making it faster and easier for Lycos' community of consumers to find the items they want to buy. The service was announced at the inaugural Personalization Summit, a gathering of over 30 of the Internet's top personalization service providers taking place in San Francisco, Nov. 15 and 16.

"By harnessing Net Perceptions' unique personalization technology in LYCOShop, we're helping our users save time and make smart purchases," said Jeff Bennett, vice president and general manager of electronic commerce for Lycos. "Personalization technology differentiates us from other online shopping destinations by getting us closer to our customers' needs."

The Net Perceptions technology will enhance LYCOShop's ability to establish one-to-one relationships with its customers by helping to identify and even anticipate customer needs. In addition, LYCOShop's thousands of merchants will increase their visibility among Lycos' nearly 30 million customers as product recommendations are automatically derived from all LYCOShop merchants.

"Matching 30 million customers with the ideal product from among thousands of merchants and hundreds of thousands of items is a perfect job for the Net Perceptions recommendation technology," said Steven Snyder, president and CEO of Net Perceptions.

LYCOShop Recommends correlates the items in a shopper's shopping cart with historical purchasing data from the entire community of LYCOShop users. It looks for popular combinations and suggests products that complement the items already in the shopper's cart. The anonymous profiling capabilities of the engine provide valid recommendations without using cookies to track user activity. For instance, if a shopping cart includes a pair of pants, a LYCOShop Recommends icon may appear with a suggestion of a coordinating belt or shirt from one or more LYCOShop merchants. Multiple transactions are managed within LYCOShop, eliminating the process of entering personal information repeatedly from one storefront to another.

"With this collaboration, we're creating unique shopping experiences for the nearly 30 million Lycos customers," said Snyder. "Our solution will provide a richer experience for all LYCOShop visitors. We're excited to be teaming up with Lycos to bring personalization to LYCOShop."

Net Perceptions for E-commerce dynamically creates segments of individuals rather than static predefined groups, helping online retailers speak directly to each customer's unique wants, needs and tastes. It automatically predicts affinities between individual customers and products based on past and current behavior to make realtime suggestive selling recommendations that are relevant to each customer.

About Lycos Inc.

Founded in 1995, Lycos Inc. is a leading Web media company and owner of the Lycos Network, one of the most visited hubs on the Internet reaching one out of every two Web users. The Lycos Network is a unified set of Web sites that attracts a diverse audience by offering a variety of services, including leading Web navigation resources, homepage building and other Web community services and a comprehensive shopping center. The Lycos Network is composed of premium sites: Lycos.com, Tripod, WhoWhere, Angelfire, MailCity, HotBot, HotWired, Wired News, Webmonkey, Suck.com, MyTime, Sonique and Quote.com. Lycos.com (http://www.lycos.com), "Your Personal Internet Guide," is dedicated to helping each individual user locate, retrieve and manage information tailored to his or her personal interests. Headquartered near Boston in Waltham, Mass., Lycos Inc. is a global Internet leader with a major presence throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

About Net Perceptions

Net Perceptions is the leading supplier of realtime personalization solutions that enable businesses to market to customers on a true one-to-one basis across multiple customer touchpoints. Net Perceptions solutions increase new and repeat business by learning more about each customer's individual needs, tastes and preferences with every interaction, and then making increasingly personalized product and service recommendations. Net Perceptions, based in Minneapolis, is a publicly held company which operates additional offices in New York, San Francisco and London and a joint venture office in Japan. Customers include many of the world's best-known brands including Art.com, Bertelsmann, Billboard TalentNet, CDnow, E!Online, Micron, SkyMall, Tower Records and Ticketmaster Online. For more information about Net Perceptions products, visit http://www.netperceptions.com or call 800-466-0711.

SOURCE Net Perceptions