Techtalk/12″/mike1st/mark2nd
Fall Internet World ’98, held in New York last week, spawned the usual array of new product announcements. One of the more interesting ones came out of home-grown company MicroCap1000.com Ltd.
Based in Santa Monica, the wholly-owned subsidiary of financial services firm Capital Growth Holdings Ltd. launched what it claims is the first Web site dedicated to microcap investors. Obviously, company executives hope that investors haven’t grown completely disgusted with the wildly vacillating stock market.
“This is a segment of the market that doesn’t get a lot of attention paid to it,” said Lisa Taylor, MicroCap’s director of new business development. “With the market changing so radically, some great companies have moved into our index and investors are paying closer attention.”
The Web site will offer profiles, data and analysis of 1,000 public companies with market capitalizations between $25 million and $400 million. Companies such as Playboy Enterprises, Trans World Airlines, Ethan Allen Interiors and La-Z-Boy Inc. fit in this bracket.
“We want to be the leading source of this information for new and experienced investors alike,” Taylor said.
Since the site is free, the company relies on advertisements for revenue, as well as on providing investor relations services to companies.
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The Oct. 15 issue of Rolling Stone magazine named Santa Monica College as one of the nation’s top 10 community colleges citing the school’s year-old Academy of Entertainment and Technology. The academy, whose name really explains it all, offers classes in new-media-related technology, art and business. The academy has forged partnerships with a wealth of high-profile companies, including Walt Disney Co., DreamWorks SKG, Microsoft Corp. and Lucas Digital. Partnership companies either serve as advisory board members or as program participants.
With the November elections drawing near, the Democracy Network has kicked into high gear. Last week, the West-L.A. based non-profit, non-partisan Web-based project kicked off election coverage for all 50 states. For each gubernatorial and U.S. Senate election, DNet (www.dnet.org) offers candidates an open forum to write about their stances.
Project organizers eventually hope to add state and possibly even municipal candidates.
“Our goal is to cover every race, from presidential down to regional, by 2000,” said project manager Mark Taylor. “We hope to become the national model for a non-partisan public affairs forum.”
The 2-year-old DNet now gets an average of 200,000 hits every day, thanks largely to being featured in AmericaOnline’s Digital Cities.
DNet boasts a 90 percent participation rate from the candidates in races it covers. (California has a 100 percent participation rate.) In addition to the candidates’ forum, DNet provides transcriptions and video clips of debates.
A public-policy research group, the Center for Governmental Studies, hosts the DNet project.
Sara Fisher can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] Talk
