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Background information SBN.COM and The Online Yellow Pages™From a business perspective, the On-Line Yellow Pages has taken its place as one of the most useful informational tools on the Internet -- both as a quick and easy way of locating specific businesses anywhere in the United States and as a valuable marketing resource for promoting businesses. Published by SBN.com in Irvine, Calif., the company's Online Yellow Pages, has fast become the largest such directory on the Internet, with 1.5-million pages including or linked to an estimated 50 million business listings worldwide. A Spanish version is also available. In addition to the Online Yellow Pages, the SBN.com site is also host to several niche and specialty directories: the Internet's first classified, Business-to-Business Directory, a National Toll-Free Directory, an International Directory, a "Cyber Directory" of the top websites on the Internet, a number of specialty directories and a network of online shopping sites. The SBN Directory SBN's Online Yellow Pages is the natural extension of the printed yellow pages. It contains the listings of every yellow pages directory in the country -- some 6,700 of them -- grouped by the same yellow pages headings and separated by city and area code. And all available at the click of a mouse button. What distinguishes the directory is its ease of use and the speed with which it can be accessed, requiring but a few mouse clicks to complete a search - first by area and then by classification. Full-color display ads are hyperlinked to each advertiser's own web site, giving the directory a vital, added dimension as a marketing tool. This is in contrast to the typical on-line yellow pages web site which involves a slow and tedious navigational search: first by state, then by city, and finally by type of business -- in the latter case with success depending entirely on the skill (or luck) of the user in selecting the best keyword descriptors. A mapping feature has also been incorporated. When you first arrive at SBN.com's Online Yellow Pages web site you see a map of the United States on the right hand side of the screen with each state highlighted in a different color and a list of state names on the left hand side of the screen. To navigate through the web site, you merely click on a state name or the picture of the state in the map. After you click on a state, the site shows you a picture of the state and displays the various area codes in the state. You then click on the area code where you want to locate a business, and then on the heading (listed alphabetically) for the type of business that you want. SBN.COM's Marketing Strategy To increase the number of users of its Online Yellow Pages, and thus increase the advertising value to businesses, SBN.com is establishing profit-sharing alliances with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and special categories of Internet hosts that will benefit by having such an informational resource available at their sites -- such as independent telephone companies, newspapers, national trade associations and magazines, to name a few. Currently, the directory is found on the web sites of more than 3500 hosts, including numerous Internet service providers accounting for millions of visitors. Additional focus is placed on maintaining high visibility with the most popular Internet search engines. SBN.com now appears first or high on the first page of most search engine responses to the search for "on-line yellow pages". The result of that has been an explosion in the number of Internet users that view SBN.com's site. The Market The printed yellow pages industry is currently a $15 billion dollar a year industry in the United States alone. Internet-based yellow pages directories, on the other hand, are just now coming of age. Even so, it is projected they will rival the printed yellow pages in terms of gross advertising revenues within the next five to ten years. Obviously, as computers become even more omnipresent than they are now and as Internet speeds become ever faster, on-line directories will increasingly be relied upon for locating businesses in any location -- especially those outside the users local area. And as Internet surfers utilize on-line yellow pages directories more and more, the promotional value of placing customized advertisements within those directories will continue to grow as well. Currently, total on-line yellow pages advertising revenue is estimated to be approximately 100 million dollars a year.
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PRINCIPAL CORPORATE OFFICERS Dennis D'Alessio |