In the mid-fifteenth century, with the invention of the printing press, Johann Gutenberg delivered the written word into the hands of the masses, and at the same time, the means for artists to share the fruits of their creativity with the greatest numbers.

These days when we risk being drowned in a sea of information on the net, the task becomes to sort through it all to get to what is crucial and relevant in the shortest amount of time. In the tradition of Gutenberg, the developers of the powerful new freeware program, Xoop, are out to revolutionize the way we receive our Internet content.

Xoop was founded in 1999 by five twenty-somethings who work out of a house whose living room, dining room, and bedrooms are lined with Dell Computers, eighteen in all, and where work goes on around the clock.

While you work, play or surf, the Xoop software operates in the background, sending out tentacles to the far corners of the web, sifting through billions of gigabytes of information; WebPages, books, magazines, music, and brings back content tailored specifically to you.

Its most innovative feature is the "Xooplet", a kind of virtual postcard sent to you by a website. Perhaps the defining snapshot in a three-hour sporting event, or the two line thesis of a long magazine article, the Xooplet distills each site down to its essence, and if the user»s interest is piqued, a click takes one straight to the source.

Content providers benefit because Xoop offers a way to drive up incremental web traffic with low acquisition cost. And for marketers, Xoop provides highly targeted distribution of context-based advertising and promotions.

Founders

Mike Kelly, 25 - CEO
Tran Nguyen, 26 - President/CFO
Jeff Solomon, 25 - VP Product Development
Charles Chase, 26 - VP Technology
Tim Meighen, 26 - Lead Programmer
Jean-Pierre Roy, 25 - Art Director