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Terra Lycos Acquires Raging Bull Finance Site

According to a press release today announcing the deal, the companies said that Raging Bull provides investors with more than 13,000 discussion boards, and attracts more than 2 million unique users and nearly 200 million page views a month.

Terra Lycos is the general-purpose portal formed during the takeover of Waltham, Mass.-based Lycos Inc. last year by Terra Networks, the Internet arm of Telefonica, a Spanish telecom concern.

"This acquisition is a strong illustration of how we can leverage our sizable cash position to fulfill our mission to be the most visited online destination in the world," Terra Lycos CEO Bob Davis said in a written statement.

"By integrating Raging Bull with our current financial sites, Quote.com and Invertia.com, we will have one of the most comprehensive and compelling financial offerings for both users and advertisers."

David Card, a Jupiter Research e-media analyst, said the move is not likely to cause much of a stir. "I like Raging Bull, it's a good site," Card told Newsbytes. "And they do a nice job of pulling together message boards and financial information. So it sort of adds to the Terra Lycos portfolio of services that they're trying to offer to people. But it doesn't sound like a huge deal."

He said the acquisition could help Terra Lycos attract more advertising dollars from the advertising sector, which is among the most stable of dot-com marketing sectors. But he questioned whether it was necessary to make the purchase at all.

"The question is, do you need to acquire these assets or can you just sort of rent them (through content partnerships)," Card said. "I'm not quite sure there is advantage to acquiring content assets as opposed to renting them."

As to Terra Lycos' desire to compete with the three major portals - AOL, Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo - Card doesn't see much movement in that direction. He said Terra Lycos deserves some credit for pulling away from the competition among what he called the "second tier" of Web portals. But he said he hasn't seen Terra Lycos gain much ground on its targeted rivals.

"It's questionable whether there's room for four general-purpose portals," Card said. "They should be gaining some ground, but they haven't convinced me that they've gained that much ground."

What might be better, the analyst said, could be for Terra Lycos to pursue a course similar to the one that Disney's GO.com network said it would attempt prior to Disney pulling the plug on the site earlier this week. Before it was dismantled, GO.com had said it would cease trying to be an all-purpose media portal and focus on specific areas like travel, entertainment and leisure.

"Lycos doesn't do that," Card said. "Lycos says, 'Look, we know we are general purpose, we really are competing with Yahoo.' So flushing out their offerings that they can add to their customer base is a good thing."

But the analyst said he wished the portal would change tack. "I always thought there was a role for a portal that did not imitate AOL," he joked. "AOL is for the lowest common denominator, and Yahoo is for everybody that doesn't like AOL. So, how does anybody else differentiate themselves?"

In addition to today's purchase of Raging Bull, Terra Lycos also said today that it has acquired Iberwap, a Spanish provider of digital mapping services and Web content.

The deals seem to have stimulated some activity on Wall Street. As of about 1 p.m. EST, shares of Terra Lycos were trading at $16.25, an increase of 62 cents, or 4 percent on the day.

Terra Lycos in online at www.lycos.com. Raging Bull still goes by its Alta Vista Web address, www.ragingbull.altavista.com. Reported by Newsbytes, www.newsbytes.com.

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