Terra has a new name

NEWS Internet giant Terra Lycos has named a new US head following the resignation of its stateside president Stephen Killeen. Killeen, who joined the company less than two years ago has been replaced by Mark Stoever, former general manager of Terra Lycos' worldwide media-products unit. Stoever, a six-year veteran of Lycos, will become executive vice president of Terra Lycos US - as the 'president' title is retired. The company will be hoping Killeen's departure brings to a close a sorry chapter in the short history of Lycos. Like other Internet darlings, the Lycos unit had a steep fall from grace when the dot-com bubble burst, taking the online advertising market with it and turning once enormous valuations inside-out. Terra Lycos' US online media operations has seen revenue fall seven per cent sequentially in the latest quarter, while rivals Yahoo! and MSN were showing sequential growth, said Jeffrey Fieler, a Bear Stearns analyst. Stoever, however, laid out plans to bring growth to the unit. "We have the right properties, the right assets and the right brand recognition," said Stoever. "We're going to focus on where advertising dollars are spent, and on growing our subscriptions every month." To achieve his goal of profitability and growth, Stoever said, new products are being developed for the company's website categories that have the higher profit margins, such as online match-making site Matchmaker.com, finance site Quote.com and home-page building site Tripod.com. Confirming the growing trend towards paid-for content, Stoever said: "We'll still offer many things for free, but there are many opportunities to also offer premium services."