beenz get Excited as Ellison turns up the heat

NEWS Excite UK has signed up to become the first Internet portal to offer beenz as an incentive for its users. It's the biggest deal yet for the six-month-old Web currency, according to Evan Rudowski, Excite UK's general manager. "This is the first time a portal has offered a reward - and beenz is certainly the best rewards programme out there," he said. According to beenz CEO, Phillip Letz, users are becoming genuinely passionate about the currency. "It goes beyond the normal loyalty scheme. It's easy to do, there are multiple locations across the Web, making it very accessible. And users can get instant gratification on spends." If the scheme is successful, Excite will extend it across Europe. "We are always looking for ways to personalise our service. We need to evolve our relationship with our active users," said Excite's Rudowski. beenz can now be used to buy almost 2,000 different products and the company is adding a further 50 products a day to the list. "Customers have gathered 130 million beenz over the last six months - and half of those have been spent already," Letz claimed. The company has just completed a third round of private funding - raising $20m from several partners. One of the most notable is Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. "beenz and Oracle have a very strong relationship," said Letz. "Oracle has been our leading technology partner from day one." As a testimony to that close relationship, Phillip Crawford, Oracle's UK MD is joining the board of beenz.com as a non-executive director. Letz added that Oracle, along with the company's other technology partners Sun Microsystems and Exodus, will soon be offering beenz on its corporate Web sites. "We'll soon be seeing business beenz," he said.