PointCast (dotcom)

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For the company that deals with pay per click technology, see PointCast Media.

PointCast was a company founded in 1992 by Christopher R. Hassett in Sunnyvale, California, at the start of the Dot-com era.

1 PointCast Network
2 EntryPoint
3 Infogate
4 References
5 External links

[edit] PointCast Network

The company's initial product amounted to a screensaver that displayed news and other information, delivered live over the Internet. The PointCast Network used push technology, which was a hot concept at the time, and received enormous press coverage when it launched in Beta form on February 13, 1996. The product did not perform as well as expected, in part because its traffic burdened corporate networks with excessive bandwidth use, and was banned in many places. It demanded more bandwidth than the home dial-up Internet connections of the day could provide, and people objected to the large number of advertisements that were pushed over the service as well.^[1] The client was eventually bundled with Microsoft Windows. At its height in 1997, the directors of PointCast reportedly spurned an offer of $450 million from News Corp for the company. They hoped to go public for a larger amount, but never did.

Instead, they sold out for about $7 million in 1999 to Launchpad Technologies, Inc., a San Diego company founded and backed by Idealab, and the PointCast network was shut down the next year.^[1]

In April 1999, former CEO Christopher R. Hassett made two offers to buy back the company, both of which were spurned.

[edit] EntryPoint

Launchpad's eWallet product was combined with the existing PointCast technology to create EntryPoint, which had a free desktop toolbar and offered customized news, stocks and sports feeds. The new client abandoned push technology, resulting in much more economical use of network bandwidth.

[edit] Infogate

EntryPoint merged with Internet Financial Network in 2000 forming Infogate, continuing the same free service until switching to a fee-based co-branded model, partnering with news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. Infogate was sold to AOL Time Warner in March 2003. Infogate's senior executives — Cliff Boro, Vidar Vignisson, and Tom Broadhead – formed CVT Ventures, LLC, a venture-development group dedicated to accelerating technology startups.