t has been six years since Pointcast made "push" technology an industry buzzword and only a little more than two years since the company was shut and the concept largely disavowed. But if you thought push was dead and gone, think again. In the last few months, Infogate, the company that acquired the Pointcast technology, has signed up a string of media companies that see push as a way of generating subscription revenue.
This version of push, which automatically displays information on computer screens throughout the day, is also different in other ways.
Unlike Pointcast, the Infogate service does not cause customers' systems to crash repeatedly, said Clifford T. Boro, the chief executive at Infogate. Infogate does not have the same huge bandwidth requirements nor is it as disruptive. In fact, Mr. Boro is trying to distance Infogate from the buzzword: Rather than push, he said, "we're calling it `proactive' " because " `push' was obnoxious."
In June, CNN became the newest Infogate client, offering customers a subscription service that includes CNN material as well as content from 3,000 other sources. The service, CNN Newswatch, which costs $5.95 a month or $59.95 a year, lets subscribers choose only the kind of news and information they want sent to them automatically in a ticker that runs across the top of their screen. Or they can have the desired material sent by e-mail or to a cellphone.
USA Today has signed on as an Infogate partner, offering USA Today NewsTracker service for $4.95 a month or $39.95 a year.
Infogate came to own the Pointcast technology through a circuitous route. In 1999 Pointcast sold its assets to LaunchPad, a San Diego company that soon after changed its name to EntryPoint. Just last year, EntryPoint merged with Internet Financial Networks, or IFN, and took the name Infogate, which is also the name of IFN's own push service for financial news). Infogate offered a free service with 1.5 million customers until it canceled it in March in favor of a subscription-based service.
But like so many media companies, Infogate faces an uphill battle when it comes to charging. "Getting consumers to pay for anything is difficult," Mr. Boro said.
