TRIVIDA
<p class=default>
For more press information contact:
<br/>
Abigail Johnson/Paul Michelson
<br/>
Roeder-Johnson Corporation
<br/>
(650) 802-1850 abigail@roederj.com/paul@roederj.com
</p><p>
TRIVIDA INTRODUCES NEXT GENERATION PERSONALIZATION
</p><p>
"Networked Personalization" will help companies competing in Internet Time.
</p><p>
Culver City, CA, August 16, 1999 - TriVida Corporation today introduced a new
class of personalization
<br/>
technology, called "networked personalization." For the first time, companies
will be able to personalize Web
<br/>
sites simply by subscribing to an Internet-based service, rather than
installing specialized personalization
<br/>
software. A key feature of TriVida's new technology is its unique ability to
generate personalization
<br/>
recommendations for extended groups of Web sites, based upon a shared view of
customer preferences
<br/>
and behavior. TriVida plans to announce a personalization service based upon
its networked
<br/>
personalization technology later in the year.
</p><p>
"Business has evolved far from its original face-to-face experience where
selling and support was an
<br/>
active, personal process involving both buyer and seller," says Alex D.
Jacobson, chairman, CEO and
<br/>
co-founder of TriVida. "But the industrial revolution - and the Sears catalog
for that matter - sparked the
<br/>
slow disintegration of such relationships."
</p><p>
But, according to Jacobson, the Internet has once again put companies in
real-time, direct contact with their
<br/>
customers. Moreover, the pace of business has accelerated so quickly that a
new metric - "Internet time" -
<br/>
has become the gold standard for responsiveness. "And therein lies the
problem, " says Jacobson. "'Direct'
<br/>
contact - especially through an electronic Web site - is not 'personal'
contact. Companies which have
<br/>
organized themselves to deal with markets rather than individuals suddenly
have to find ways of
<br/>
instantaneously making the customer experience unique and personal."
</p><p>
Such a need has given rise to what is now called "personalization software."
Personalization software
<br/>
customizes sales and marketing information to specific visitors at retail Web
sites, in hopes of increasing
<br/>
sales; The now-familiar "Here are some additional books you might enjoy..."
pitch by Web-based
<br/>
booksellers represents an attempt by first-generation personalization
software to predict your interests by
<br/>
comparing your selections to those made by others before you. Such technology
is limited in practice to
<br/>
modeling very few significant features of any customer. It also requires
local access to increasingly vast
<br/>
stores of collected customer data.
</p><p>
TriVida's networked personalization, by contrast, takes an entirely different
approach. For starters, it is the
<br/>
first personalization technology that personalizes Web sites remotely, in
real time, over the Internet.
<br/>
Additionally, it uniquely allows groups of affiliated Web sites to
collaborate on personalization, for the
<br/>
common good. Finally, it scales without practical limit; any useful range of
customer behaviors or interests,
<br/>
total number of customers modeled, and total sites served are easily
accommodated.
</p><p>
Personalization Over the Network
<br/>
First-generation personalization applications are typically integrated with
the Web sites they serve, and
<br/>
require locally-available corporate customer databases. Both the software and
the integration effort are
<br/>
expensive, requiring significant time and expertise. TriVida's networked
personalization model greatly
<br/>
simplifies this task, making personalization available virtually to anyone.
</p><p>
TriVida maintains in essence one centralized, "total customer model." In
response to personalization
<br/>
"requests" sent to it over the Internet by participating Web sites, a TriVida
personalization server instantly
<br/>
responds with customer-specific recommendations or content. Companies that
wish to begin personalizing
<br/>
their Web sites immediately need only to determine what features about their
customers are relevant,
<br/>
subscribe to the personalization service, and make minor additions to their
Web site.
</p><p>
Personalizing Web Sites in a Group
<br/>
Because TriVida's technology utilizes a centralized customer model, TriVida
can uniquely personalize Web
<br/>
sites as a group, rather than individually. Such groups might include all Web
sites for a large corporation, or
<br/>
widely-dispersed Web sites operated by unrelated organizations which simply
happen to serve a common
<br/>
customer base.
</p><p>
For example, several hundred different for-profit and not-for-profit sites
may be focused on retired persons,
<br/>
or on weekend bicycle enthusiasts. TriVida's technology permits any or all of
these sites to share a unified
<br/>
customer model, which will reflect the aggregate behavior and interests of
visitors at all the Web sites. This
<br/>
results in highly customer-specific recommendations far more relevant than
could be attained by any site in
<br/>
isolation. In addition, the technology will "unearth" unanticipated
affiliations and when permitted, will generate
<br/>
off-site recommendations, for example recommending to buyers of high-end
kitchen appliances a gourmet
<br/>
food site.
</p><p>
According to Allen Bonde, director of advisory services at Boston-based
Extraprise, this latter capability
<br/>
alone will revolutionize personalization. "Serving groups of web sites with a
common customer model is an
<br/>
important, next step," he stated. "Such a capability will have immediate
application in large corporations with
<br/>
divisional Web sites, the Web portals, and in building distributed online
communities."
</p><p>
100 Customers or 100 Million
<br/>
In first-generation personalization, the requirement for on-line access to
increasingly vast databases of
<br/>
customer information - as well as the need for carefully-engineered
interfaces between the personalization
<br/>
application and such databases - prevents the practical scaling of
personalization to serve multiple Web sites
<br/>
or exponentially growing customer bases. There simply becomes too much data
to pass around. And some
<br/>
critics have voiced privacy concerns.
</p><p>
By contrast, TriVida's networked personalization does not require any local
database of stored customer
<br/>
information. Instead, its core technology includes a mathematical model of
the consolidated, anonymous
<br/>
behavior of all customers, which is continuously updated in real time with
every new personalization
<br/>
request. The model is identical in size whether or not recommendations are
being generated for 100
<br/>
customers or 100 million, freeing networked personalization from scaleability
constraints. TriVida calls its
<br/>
scaleable, adaptive, real-time core technology "adaptive relationship
modeling."
</p><p>
"We believe we have made a true breakthrough in real-time, adaptive modeling
of customer behavior,"
<br/>
says TriVida's Jacobson. "Our technology is the first to permit highly
accurate, personalized
<br/>
recommendations to be made which are not only highly customer-specific, but
reflective of the latest market
<br/>
trends as of this very instant."
</p><p>
The "Personalization Service Provider"
<br/>
TriVida plans to offer networked personalization as a subscriber-based
service over the Internet, in
<br/>
essence becoming the world's first "Personalization Service Provider."
Specific announcements will be
<br/>
made later in the year. Participating companies will simply subscribe to the
service, decide what customer
<br/>
behavior is relevant to their personalization strategy, and make simple,
quick modifications to their Web site.
<br/>
Commented Bonde: "This is a great model; it moves the acquiring and
implementing of personalization from
<br/>
an enterprise software play - costing potentially hundreds of thousands of
dollars in time, effort, and software
<br/>
- to a hosted, on-line subscription with the benefits of rapid deployment,
lower cost and managed risk."
</p><p>
The Aberdeen Group, a leading market research firm, estimates the market for
personalization software
<br/>
technology will exceed $400 million in year 2000 and $1.5 billion in 2001.
</p><p>
TriVida is "Third Life"
<br/>
The members of TriVida's founding team have spent decades working together on
the practical business
<br/>
application of advanced software techniques, such as computational learning
theory, intelligent Internet
<br/>
agents and game theory. This collaboration - in varying combinations -- has
already produced several
<br/>
successful high-technology software ventures, including Limbex and Inference
(NASDAQ: INFR).
</p><p>
"Adaptive relationship modeling," the enabling technology for networked
personalization, weaves together
<br/>
the threads of their earlier work. The result is a capability to develop not
only a relevant and
<br/>
continuously-updated global customer model based upon individual behaviors
and interests, but one which
<br/>
both has predictive capabilities, and can recommend or implement courses of
action that will yield the
<br/>
maximum economic or strategic benefit for the company or its customer.
Recognizing the next-generation
<br/>
personalization needs for e-business, TriVida invented the concept of a
"Personalization Service Provider,"
<br/>
and is in the final stages of bringing the world's first networked
personalization service to market.
</p><p>
About TriVida
<br/>
TriVida is the world leader in networked personalization technology and
services. Networked
<br/>
personalization makes it possible, for the first time, for multiple Web sites
to personalize content for visitors or
<br/>
customers in real time, based upon a "total customer model." TriVida's
next-generation personalization
<br/>
technology is made possible by the company's unique "adaptive relationship
modeling" which combines
<br/>
game theory and new computational learning algorithms in an Internet-based,
e-business environment.
<br/>
TriVida will offer its networked personalization capability as an
Internet-based service.
</p><p>
TriVida is located in Culver City, CA. The company is privately held.
Investors include idealab! Capital
<br/>
Partners, Woodside Fund, InnoCal, and others. TriVida's Web address is
www.trivida.com
</p><p>
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</p><p>
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holders.
</p><p>
This release, as well as additional background information may be downloaded
from our web site at
<br/>
www.roederj.com.
<br/>
</p>