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MAY 14, 2001

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Get Yourself a Dot-Com Mansion

 Table: Big Blue (Collar, That Is) Online

 Billboard Battles

Get Yourself a Dot-Com Mansion

 Like New Yorkers who comb obituaries for apartment leads, real estate agents are reading between the tech-slump headlines to hunt for hungry sellers. Consider Austin (Tex.) realtor Roxann Coffman. Last year, she had a client--Dell Computer Co-President (DELL ) James T. Vanderslice, an IBM transplant from New York--but no house fit for a tech titan. She did, however, have a newspaper.

So Coffman called Donald Hackett, then the CEO of drkoop.com Inc., and asked if he would sell his posh digs. The beleaguered dot-commer had wanted to sell for a while. Hackett says the home, which sold for $4.5 million, was an investment anyway. Since its appraised value was $2.8 million, Hackett made money. And he is starting up MyDNA.com Corp. to boot. Too bad drkoop stock didn't do as well.
By Andrew Park

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Big Blue (Collar, That Is) Online 
The Internet is still making inroads into the masses. The biggest gain in
home Web access in the past year has been the 52% jump among blue-collar
workers--twice the rate the home Web audience in the U.S. has grown since
Web stocks began wobbling in March, 2000.



                             Online 3/2000    Online Now
                              (millions)      (millions)      % Change



Factory Operator/Laborer          6.2            9.5             52%
Homemaker                         1.6            2.4             49%
Retired                           6.6            8.5             28%
Self-Employed                     7.4            9.2             24%
Executive/Management             11.9           14.4             21%






Data: Nielsen/Net Ratings survey


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Billboard Battles

 Oracle Corp. (ORCL ) is shocked, shocked. Oracle marketing chief Mark Jarvis is driving to work in March, and right next to Oracle's Silicon Valley campus he discovers...this! IBM (IBM ) has put up a billboard with pseudo-astronauts announcing, "They Have Come in Search of Better Software: IBM." Oracle CEO Lawrence J. Ellison has been down this road before, and within 48 hours, Oracle's freeway-side riposte is right next to IBM's jab: "If you've come in search of better software, you've come to the right place...Oracle."

IBM's $500,000-a-year ad is part of a campaign to close the one-percentage-point market-share gap between Big Blue and Big Larry in database software. Surprise, the billboard trick is true IBM: not quite original enough to be hip. In 1997, rival Informix Corp. put a now-legendary sign outside Oracle featuring a samurai sword--a sly reference to Informix' "datablade" technology and Ellison's love of Japanese culture. Within a year, Oracle poached Informix' key programmers, making the company an also-ran until Apr. 24, when IBM paid $1 billion to buy its database unit.

IBM spokesman Joe Stunkard isn't scared. "We're a rather confident bunch," he says. But Eastern wisdom says: Be careful when you tick off Silicon Valley's richest man.
By Jim Kerstetter


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