PeopleLink Delivers Chat in E-Mail Envelope
PeopleLink Inc., the first spinoff from the Pasadena-based Internet business incubator known as Idealab, launched its flagship “interactive messaging” service last week.
The service, also called PeopleLink, combines the best attributes of e-mail and online chat to allow users to communicate with family, friends and colleagues, said Steve Glenn, chief executive of the year-old Santa Monica company. PeopleLink connects two or more Internet users in private communications channels, where they can send instant messages using a technology licensed from Ubique.
PeopleLink is free to users, who can download the necessary software at https://www.peoplelink.com. The service will be supported by targeted banner ads that appear under a user’s PeopleLink address book.
Long-distance giant AT&T; Corp. signed on to be PeopleLink’s first major advertiser. (Terms of the contract were not disclosed.) PeopleLink is negotiating with about half a dozen agencies that handle online ads, and Glenn said he expects to sign deals with several more advertisers in the coming weeks.
The company is also close to announcing deals with “three or four of the top 10 Web sites and ISPs [Internet service providers]” that will distribute a co-branded version of PeopleLink, Glenn said. Those deals--which call for PeopleLink to share its ad revenue with the partners--should be completed in the next few weeks.
When a user logs on to the Internet, PeopleLink will find out whether any of the people in that user’s address book are also online. A user who wants to talk to any of them can click on the appropriate name and get a dialogue box for composing and sending an instant message.
“It gives you the immediacy and interactivity of a phone call but the ease of use and low cost of an e-mail,” Glenn said. Groups can use it as a chat room facility. Privacy is enhanced by allowing users to block messages from people they don’t want to hear from.
“This is the first ‘buddy system’ we’ve seen on the Web that has a lot of potential,” said Sharon Katz, associate media director for Modem Media, the interactive ad agency in Westport, Conn., that linked PeopleLink and AT&T.;
Advertisements on Web pages and in chat rooms have the drawback that they require people to interrupt what they’re doing in order to view them, which helps account for their low click-through rate.
In contrast, PeopleLink users can call up advertisements without interrupting their online conversations, because they occur in separate windows, Glenn said.
