Tripod tries home page feeds
In a move to drive traffic to its pages, the free home page community launches a news and information feed for builders.
The feed, dubbed Info Flashes, lets users add customizable, dynamically updated content to their home pages. Info Flashes launched with feeds of news, stock quotes, sports scores, weather, and horoscopes.
Tripod isn't alone among free home page sites in offering dynamic content features to its builders. GeoCities lets users add an ESPN.com News Wire feed to their pages.
But Tripod boasted that today's move offers users an unprecedented amount of variety and flexibility in adding dynamic content.
"This is a first," said Timothy Breen, senior product manager at Tripod. "With sports, for example, what we do is completely customize for what sports you're interested in, what teams, etc. This is much more flexible."
Info Flashes also could be a means to drive traffic to Tripod, Breen said.
"We wanted to launch this because it gives visitors a reason to visit a home page time and time again," he noted.
And those repeat visits translate into advertising revenue for Tripod and its parent, Lycos. Lycos acquired Tripod in February 1998. USA Networks moved to acquire Lycos last month.
Yahoo agreed to buy GeoCities in January.
Tripod will supply the feeds using information already purchased by Lycos for its Personal Guide, which lets users create personalized start pages.
The feed will receive news headlines from Reuters, stock quotes from Standard and Poors, sports scores from the Sports Network, daily horoscopes from InfoSpace, and weather forecasts from Weather Services.