Yahoo! Now Offers Movie Fans One-Click Access To Videos

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Dec. 15, 1997 -- Yahoo! Inc. today announced that it has teamed up with VideoServe.com and Reel.com to offer users quick access to movies through the popular Entertainment categories within the Yahoo!® directory (www.yahoo.com), Netscape Guide by Yahoo! (netscape.yahoo.com) and the VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo! (shopguide.yahoo.com). By working with leading online movie merchants offering a vast inventory of titles, Yahoo! is providing a comprehensive resource for a growing number of people interested in building their home video collections.

"Yahoo! continues to expand its merchant services in targeted areas that are useful for our users," said Ellen Siminoff, vice president of Business Development at Yahoo!. "By offering commerce-related services within popular areas of Yahoo!, we are able to provide merchants with a vast audience of self-qualified individuals and offer individuals additional value-added features and services relevant to their interests."

Home Video Libraries Growing Recent research shows that the home video market is continuing to grow as more and more consumers are buying movies to expand their personal video libraries. According to Paul Kagan & Associates, the home video market represents a $16 billion industry that has grown 34 percent over the last five years. By providing one-click access to Reel.com and VideoServe.com, Yahoo! opens up a new avenue for Yahoo! users interested in home entertainment to quickly and conveniently build up their video collections.

"U.S. consumers are purchasing more pre-recorded videos than ever before, and online video stores stand to reap the benefits because of their vast selection," said Larry Gerbrandt, senior analyst of Paul Kagan & Associates, Inc. "Like the online book business, the value proposition of Web-based video stores is discounted pricing, virtually limitless inventories and the convenience of shopping from home or the office."

The movie merchant links provide a new way for people to access a broad selection of movies and conveniently place orders online. Through Yahoo!, individuals can now browse movie titles from the comfort of their computers, order the films they want and have them shipped. For users surfing through Yahoo!'s Movies category, the new links make finding relevant movies even easier by matching subcategories and topics within yahoo.com with the corresponding genre or area within the movie selections of each merchant. For example, someone in the Science Fiction and Fantasy movie subcategory within Yahoo! can click on the VideoServe.com and Reel.com link and be sent directly to the areas on the merchants' sites that feature sci-fi/fantasy films. The new service offers a vast inventory of videos in several different formats - VHS, Laserdisc and DVD - including feature, foreign, classic, specialty and hard-to-find films not available in the local video store. Both Reel.com and VideoServe.com have a selection of 85,000 new and used video titles for sale, and Reel.com also provides 35,000 videos for rent.

"This agreement provides us with the ideal opportunity to expand Reel.com's reach and visibility through Yahoo!'s millions of users," said Stuart Skorman, founder and CEO of Reel LLC. "It also furthers our strategy to serve as one of the preferred online video stores for the Web's top entertainment sites and services. Now, millions of new users will have access to our selection of video titles for sale and for rent, as well as our proprietary content, including movie matches, reviews, movie anatomies, daily film features, and our online film school."

"We're pleased to be a preferred partner of Yahoo! and believe this initiative will help to make prerecoreded video one of the hottest product categories available on the Web," stated Michael Mason, co-principal of SpeedServe, VideoServe.com's parent company. "We've created an ideal shopping environment, featuring real-time updates on order status and product delivery to virtually all U.S. addresses in 48 hours or less, to satisfy Yahoo! visitors who click through to our VideoServe.com site."

Users can reach the movie selections through VideoServe.com and Reel.com links directly on pages within the Entertainment category in Yahoo!. Both services are also featured sites in the Entertainment channel of Netscape Guide by Yahoo! and in the Movies and Video category on the VISA Shopping Guide by Yahoo!.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is a global Internet media company that offers a network of branded Web programming that serves millions of users daily. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the single largest guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach, and is one of the most recognized brands associated with the Internet. Yahoo! Inc. provides targeted Internet resources and communications services for a broad range of audiences, based on demographic, key-subject and geographic interests. Yahoo! is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif.

# # #

Press Contacts:

Jennifer Hwang
Yahoo!
jenhwang@yahoo-inc.com
(408) 731-3362

Lindsay Walsh
NRG PR
415-827-7026
lindsay@nrgpr.com