VerticalNet Africa operational, sans Metropolis portals

Johannesburg, 06 Jul 2001

American portal-company-turned-software-vendor VerticalNet says its South African division is now up and running after a local company was established in January.

Eleven of its 16 employees have been drawn from the Metropolis business, but the company says things will be quite different this time around. While Metropolis set up vertical portals and tried to drive traffic through them in the hope of generating revenue from facilitating transactions within the community, VerticalNet is to be a software vendor.

"There is money in portals because people want to participate in marketplaces, but most of the revenue is in the technology," says director of field operations Wayne Levine. "Our whole focus is enterprise solution orientated."

We don`t want to compete with other marketplaces.
Wayne Levine, director of field operations, VerticalNet

The eight former Metropolis portals, including techafrica.com and commsafrica.com, are to remain on ice as pointers to other VerticalNet US sites. "We don`t want to compete with other marketplaces," says Levine.

Instead, the company is to sell Marketplace Manager, an XML cataloguing product that allows companies to list their wares in multiple online marketplaces without duplicating information for each, and C-Hub, a community software package.

Levine says C-Hub is not even necessarily connected with transactions, as it is simply meant to facilitate communication between individuals.

Metropolis, on the other hand, relied on a "transactive content" strategy, where a community would be gathered around information resources and then given the opportunity to do business.

VeticalNet was not directly involved in the Metropolis business but simply licensed its software platform for local use. The deal was the first VerticalNet venture outside American borders.

When the Metropolis portals were closed last year, Robin Nicholson, chief financial officer of parent company Primedia, said the adoption of the VerticalNet model had led to the failure of the business.

The new local company is wholly owned by the parent, reports directly to VerticalNet International and is run by Angus Robinson, former strategic development manager at Metropolis. The company is to be responsible for the entire African continent, where VerticalNet has not other presence.