In an bid to challenge established Australian portal players such as Yahoo!, OzEmail, Big Pond and ninemsn, Excite has re-launched its Australian site with a host of new content partners and personalisation features.
The re-launch of the site is the first major move from the LibertyOne, Excite Incorporated joint venture, Excite Asia Pacific that was announced in August last year. In time for the launch Excite Australia unveiled a long list of local content partners including EquityWorld, ABIX, Seek, iMovie, AAP SofCom, The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and ZDNet Australia.
According to Excite Asia Pacific's Vice President for Operations, Tim Burgess the site has received strong support from its content partners and from advertisers. Burgess said that the personalisation features of the site are likely to drive a considerable amount of traffic, giving it more appeal than many other Australian portals.
"Our product allows users to tailor the Internet to meet their information needs," Burgess said. "As such, we are confident of building a loyal base of users who return to Excite every time they access the Net."
On hand for the opening of the revamped site, Exite's Vice President for International Partnerships, Rick Redding noted that the launch was the first step in the deployment of the site throughout the Asia Pacific region.
"In some ways Australia is the cornerstone to rolling out the site to the Asia Pacific region. Once we have focused on the Australian site and have that on firm footing we'll be examining expansion to the rest of the region," Redding said.
According to Ramin Marzbani, the principal of Internet research firm www.consult, Excite has its work cut out for it in the coming months in order to take audience away from the established players.
"Excite is going to have to work closely with advertisers to give them extra value since they don't have the traffic yet. They will also have to work out what to do about traffic that is going to the US site and how to redirect that back to Australia."
Excite Australia can be found at www.excite.com.au
(Disclaimer: ZDNet Australia is a content partner of Excite Australia)
