Excite Acquires Worldprints

Acquires

Excite@Home's Webshots Ranked #1 Online Photo Destination

Excite@Home Further Strengthens Photo Initiative with Acquisition of Worldprints.com

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- April 20, 2000 -- Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM), the leader in broadband, announced that its Internet property, Webshots, is the #1 photo destination online, according to Nielson/NetRatings during the month of February. With more than twice as many registered members as its closest competitor, Webshots has established itself as the leading online photo community. In addition, CNET has rated the Webshots Desktop the second most popular overall download on the Web. The explosive growth of Webshots and the recent acquisition of Worldprints.com solidifies Excite@Home's position as a leader in online photos.

Continuing its photo initiative momentum, Excite@Home also announced today that it has acquired Worldprints.com. Providing consumers with a comprehensive photo destination, Excite@Home's photo offering enables expert and novice computer users to learn about digital photography, gather personal and commercial images from a variety of sources and share digital photos with others via the Internet.

"Our goal with Webshots and Worldprints.com is dual: to bring consumers more photo images online, and to extend the Excite@Home consumer experience beyond the portal and onto the desktop," said Eric Jorgensen, Vice President and General Manager of Communities and Photos for Excite@Home. "Excite@Home will continue to grow its photo offerings so Excite@Home users can browse and share stock and their own photography images both on and offline."

According to a recent InfoTrends Research Group study, members of online photo album sites will share photos with nearly 100 million viewers this year. Excite@Home intends to capitalize on this trend and market demand for digital photography applications by providing the best online tools to store and share digital photos and host one of the largest libraries for screen saver images. Webshots and Worldprints.com will play a central role in Excite@Home's photo offerings for both its narrowband and broadband services.

"The online photo opportunity is huge and is a perfectly suited application for high-speed, media-rich, service via @Home's broadband connection," continued Jorgensen. "Consumers are using digital cameras and imaging applications more than ever. Excite@Home is responding to their needs by providing a central location equipped with all the online tools to share and easily display photos. With broadband our users of our photo offering can easily enjoy faster download times for images as well as richer media content that is always on and ready to be viewed."

About Excite@Home
About Excite@Home Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM), the leading broadband media company, offers media services through Excite (www.excite.com) and Blue Mountain Arts (www.bluemountain.com), and broadband subscription services through @Home (www.home.com) and @Work (www.work.home.net). The company has a worldwide footprint of 72 million cable homes under long-term contract to accelerate its position as the leading broadband media company. Excite@Home's MatchLogic division (www.matchlogic.com) offers marketers industry-leading digital advertising capabilities, including rich media production, ad and email services, and database analysis - all integrated into a complete solutions package.

Excite@Home Acquires Boulder, Colo., Online Art Prints Company

By Christine L. Romero, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 15--Worldprints.com snagged about $80 million in a cash-and-stock

buyout by Excite@Home, according to a statement filed with the U.S.

Securities Exchange Commission this week.

The 2-year-old company sells posters and offers free images for

screensavers and desktops from scenic landscapes to photos of John Lennon to

photographs of skiers.

This is not the first time Excite@Home has bought a Boulder County

Internet-based firm with few sales. Late last year, the Redwood City, Calif.

Internet mammoth bought Boulder-based BlueMountain.com, a provider of

free electronic greeting cards, for nearly $1 billion.

"People love this," said Excite spokeswoman Leigh Dally, from her

California office. "It's a great way to build community. It's a great way

for people to personalize their desktops."

Worldprints.com's executives declined comment Friday.

The company offers about 15,000 free images that can be downloaded and

displayed in a screen saver or as a desktop decoration. Late last year,

Worldprints.com had 3 million unique visitors each month and about 30

million page views. The company also has a service that gives users free regular

updates of new images in exchange for some personal information and an

e-mail address.

The company got its start when two brothers started selling posters

from a garage. However, now they aren't the only ones who will benefit from the

Excite buyout. Venture firm Barrett Capital Ltd., with 35.3 percent ownership, and a

handful of other investors will reap the profits.

Worldprints.com hasn't been shy about making public comparisons of

itself to Bluemountain.com. Executives have said they were building a

following of regular users.

For Excite, the Worldprints.com buyout will help round out its

offerings digital photography and consumer images, Dally said.

Worldprints.com will piggyback onto Excite's other Web site with free

images, Webshots.com, which Excite also acquired. Dally said Webshots.com is

the Web's most popular photo site.

"We are very aggressive in pulling the best of the Web together," Dally

said. "We are trying to pull together the best to enable us to build our

digital photo experience for our users."

Dally said Excite is still deciding how Worldprints.com's e-commerce

offerings will fit in with her company's plan.

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