Tripod.com

Infobox_Website
name = Tripod


url = http://www.tripod.com
commercial = Mixed
type = Free web hosting service
registration = Yes
owner = Lycos
author = Bo Peabody, Brett Hershey, and Dick Sabot

Tripod.com is a web hosting service now owned by Lycos. Originally a company aimed at offering services to college students and young adults, it was one of several sites trying to build online communities during the dot-com bubble. As such, Tripod formed part of the first wave of user-generated content.

ervices

Tripod offers a variety of free and paid web hosting services including 20 megabytes of webspace and the ability to run Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts in Perl. In addition to basic hosting, Tripod also offers a blogging tool, a photo album manager, and the Trellix site builder for WYSIWYG page editing. In addition to its free service, Tripod also offers a variety of for-pay services including additional disk space, a shopping cart, domain names, web and POP/IMAP email.

History

Tripod originated in 1992 with two Williams College classmates, Bo Peabody and Brett Hershey, along with Dick Sabot, an economics professor at the school. The company was headquartered in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with Peabody as CEO. Although it would eventually focus on the internet, Tripod also published a magazine, "Tools for Life", that was distributed with textbooks, and offered a discount card for students.Elliott, Stuart. "Interpublic invests in an Internet provider aimed at 'the transition generation' of young adults". "New York Times", May 28, 1997, p. D5.]

Website launch

Tripod.com officially launched in 1995 after operating in "sneak-preview mode" for a period. Billed as a "hip web site and pay service for and by college students", it offered how-to advice on practical issues young people might deal with when first living away from home. It planned to charge a minimal fee and make money primarily on commissions from partners who would sell products on the site. [Shannon, Victoria. "Board Bulletin". "Washington Post", May 31, 1995, p. R22.] Other services available included résumé writing features and a simple homepage builder.

Although the feature was an afterthought originally, Tripod soon became known as a place where people could create free web pages, competing with the likes of GeoCities and Angelfire. [Akst, Daniel. "So You're Ready for a Web Page". "Los Angeles Times", June 24, 1996, p. 3.] Criticizing AOL, the existing leader in this space, for its walled-garden approach, Peabody described the company's aims: "Our idea is to build a community through user-created and user-based content." [Sreenivasan, Sreenath. "New Neighborhood, No Money Down". "New York Times", March 17, 1997, p. D5.] A "Washington Post" reviewer recommended Tripod over GeoCities for giving users an easier URL to remember, and because GeoCities sites had a tendency to crash computers. [Hertzman, Monica Neal. "It didn't take a miracle to share their trip. Just the Web". "Washington Post", July 11, 1999, p. E1.]

Investment and buyout

After receiving an initial investment of $4 million in venture capital, led by New Enterprises Associates, in May 1997 Tripod took an additional round of investment totaling $10 million. By this time the company had grown to 40 employees and was hoping to reach profitability by the 1st quarter of 1998. The second group of investors included Interpublic, which paid $2.5 million for a stake in Tripod estimated at 10 percent, thus implying a valuation of $25 million for the company overall. As it turned out, Tripod would be sold in February 1998 to Lycos for a reported $58 million in stock. [Technology Brief. "Lycos Inc.: Acquisition of Tripod Inc. Expected to Be Announced". "Wall Street Journal", February 3, 1998, p. 1.]

Lycos also ended up owning Tripod's former competitor Angelfire, picked up as part of the acquisition of WhoWhere. The two properties were run concurrently, with Tripod continuing to focus on its college-age audience while Angelfire tended to attract high school users. In early 2001, Tripod reached 6 million registered users (up from nearly 1 million at the time it was acquired) and was expanding at an estimated 250,000 new sites per month. However, generating profits remained difficult, with an analyst opining that they needed better user profiling so the sites could generate the results expected by advertisers. They also had the challenge of not alienating users while trying to make money. [Musgrove, Mike. "A Home Page Of One's Own: Free, Easy Site-Hosting Services Tap Into the Urge to Post". "Washington Post", January 28, 2001, p. H1.] By the end of the year, Tripod and Angelfire also introduced account options allowing users to pay in order to keep their sites ad-free. GeoCities, itself now acquired by Yahoo!, would follow suit not long afterward. [Walker, Leslie. "Many 'Free' Home-Page Sites Putting the Squeeze on Users". "Washington Post", March 10, 2002, p. H7.]

Domain name

Web sites generally have a .tripod.com affix. But users can pay a monthly charge and have just a .com

ee Also

* Angelfire
* Geocities

References

External links

* [http://www.tripod.com Tripod Homepage]