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PointCast sends its final push broadcast



It was March of 1997. Wired Magazine, the voice of the heavy digital dudes
at the time, dedicated the better part of an issue to "push" technology
and in particular PointCast. The idea was that you would have everything
you needed delivered to you without having to seek. "Kiss Your Browser
Goodbye" we were told. What would we get in place of Internet Exploiter or
Netscrape would be PointCast, a screensaver that showed you all the
information that you need as long as you weren't using your computer at
that moment. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.03/

Now it's three years later and...

PointCast sends its final push broadcast
By Sandeep Junnarkar
February 17, 2000, 12:45 p.m. PT
http://home.cnet.com/category/0-1005-200-1552644.html

        Once a promising start-up, PointCast has finally laid to rest its
flagship technology with little fanfare.

  The company that created a buzz over "push" technology sent an email
this past week to subscribers announcing the final broadcast of news and
information over the PointCast Network.

  The announcement brings PointCast's turbulent history to a somewhat
anticlimactic end. The firm went from being considered the next big thing
to nearly bust before it was acquired and its flagship product
discontinued.

  Push technology was seen as one of the first "killer applications" on
the Internet. PointCast delivered information automatically to a PC
according to programmed preferences, eliminating the need to surf several
Web sites to gather specific news or material.

   PointCast opened its doors as a news delivery service nearly five years
ago.  Yet the company may have been doomed from the start. In a market
where many Net consumers surfed over dial-up connections, the
bandwidth-intensive service was seen as too slow. Corporations also cut
ties with PointCast as the automatic broadcasts often congested local area
networks.

  Push technology, however, has found new life in the corporate market in
a different format. Companies such as Marimba have founded successful
businesses pushing software updates directly to users' desktops.

  Marimba hit Wall Street last year with a blockbuster public offering.
The stock now trades in the mid-40s.

  After a canceled IPO and a series of failed merger and partnership
attempts, PointCast was picked up by venture capital firm Idealab last
May.  The firm integrated PointCast with another of its acquired firms,
Launchpad Technologies. Launchpad sells e-commerce software for online
shopping called eWallet.

  While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, sources at the time
estimated the price tag was about $10 million in cash and stock--far less
than earlier valuations for the privately held company.

   "We had numerous offers on board. But this was the best deal for all
the shareholders and employees regarding long-term value-creation
potential,"  PointCast chief executive Phil Koen said at the time of the
deal. "At the end of the day, we felt this was a superior offer."

  The merged firm is now called EntryPoint and is based in San Diego.  
PointCast's push technology has been slowly integrated into an EntryPoint
toolbar product, which allows Net users to receive targeted portfolio
information and personalized news online.

  "We believe that EntryPoint 2.0 represents such a vast improvement over
PointCast, that we have decided to completely phase out the PointCast
service in favor of this new product," the company said in an email
message to users.

  EntryPoint is hoping to retain the remaining PointCast users, and it has
said it is committed to providing even better service than its
predecessor, according to Francis Costello, the company's president.

   But EntryPoint may have a difficult task.

   "Unfortunately, I think the replacement is frustrating compared to the
simplicity of PointCast," one user wrote in an email to CNET News.com.