ManyOne Opens Door to Fulfilling Internet's Original Potential

New Organization Launches with Socially Responsible Business Model; Platform for the Digital Universe—a "PBS of the Web"—and Syndicated Internet Service for Organizations

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. – January 16, 2006 – ManyOne Networks (http://ManyOne.net) today released the pilot version of a next-generation multimedia Internet medium called the Digital Universe (http://DigitalUniverse.net), which over the next several months and years will become a zone of high-quality, advertising-free content for the public. Powering the Digital Universe, the ManyOne platform will provide reusable—or syndicated—Web content and Internet services to partner organizations of all kinds, ultimately equipping them to serve their constituencies with superior information services at lower costs. Revenue from subscribers is shared around the partner network, enabling a new democratic financial model for content and services based upon syndication.

"Today's Web is working very well for advertising-driven media and commerce, but it can do so much more than it does now to serve the public at large and the thousands of non-profit organizations that are working for positive social and environmental change," said Christy Carpenter, former vice chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, currently a senior executive at The Museum of Television & Radio, and also serving on the ManyOne Board of Directors. "In the late 1960's, PBS was established to harness the power of television to educate, enlighten and inspire Americans of all ages. Through the Web, which is a dramatically more powerful medium, ManyOne and its partners are pioneering new ways for people to learn about our world and the universe as well as to communicate and collaborate with each other. The potential impact of this new socially responsible network is immense."

Organized within a socially responsible financial and ownership model, ManyOne's vision is to realize the original potential of the Internet as an open, democratic medium that inspires creativity, communication, collaboration and education. It will accomplish this mission by providing a next-generation Web content and Internet services platform, and then syndicate it through other organizations to constituencies around the world. It can become a wholly new kind of Internet medium—a genuinely Public Internet Media System.

"ManyOne takes on today's Internet experience and proposes something completely innovative," said Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of DEMO 2003, where an early prototype of ManyOne was demonstrated. "ManyOne is pioneering a transformation of the Internet by starting over and taking a fresh view of Web technology, architecture and business models, and in doing so has created a fresh, exciting and significantly better Web experience."

ManyOne Attracting High-Level Attention

A world-class team of executives and staff from USWeb, Microsoft, UTStarcom, HP, Sony, AOL/Netscape, Nokia and Lockheed have joined forces over the past three years to build this unique enterprise. Further, ManyOne has been carefully designed with a socially- responsible ownership, governance and advisory architecture to ensure that it can play a pivotal role in the ethical evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

ManyOne Networks is led by experienced and creative executives with proven track records in their fields, including Chairman and CEO Joseph P. Firmage. Mr. Firmage was the founder and CEO of USWeb, which under his leadership became the world's largest Internet consulting company, serving half the Fortune 100. Joseph Lapolito, formerly an executive at UTStarcom, heads operations for the company. Over the past 10 years he has built numerous wired and wireless ISP networks across the Americas, and is a recognized leader in the field.

The company's Board of Directors of includes Christy Carpenter, former Vice Chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; Paul Irwin, former President of the Humane Society of the United States; and Robert Richards, a member of the team that founded the telecommunications giant Sprint.

Advisors to the company include General Wesley Clark, former candidate for U.S. president; James Lee Witt, former head of FEMA under President Clinton; David Phillips, President of the Peer Consulting Group, founder of CIO Round Tables (in northern and southern CA) and former CIO at Fluor Daniel; Dr. Robert Corell, world-renowned scientist, Chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and Senior Fellow, American Meteorological Society; Dr. Tim Foresman, former Director of Environmental Science for the United Nations Environment Programme; and William A. Nitze, former official at the U.S. EPA and the U.S. State Department.

Technology and Business Model

Underlying the Digital Universe, ManyOne offers a portal service that may be syndicated—or "private-labeled"—by socially responsible organizations, companies and even individuals. In the first half of 2006, partners will be able to quickly create specialized portals for their members, complete with all the multimedia capabilities of the Digital Universe, Internet access, world class e-mail, Universal Instant Messaging and 24/7 customer and technical support. They can also add specialized multimedia or ordinary website content, if they choose. Future services built into the platform will include IPTV and online game capabilities. Partners as a group then receive 50 percent of the net received from subscribers they bring into the network. The result is a breakthrough collaborative business model that offers a new source of revenue to cash-starved partner organizations and reduces their R&D, operating and marketing costs. The model is so effective that it may allow MSN-class portals to become financially self- sustaining with as few as 1,000 subscribers.

"Today, the Web is a playground of commercial interests, yielding a medium lacking depth, devoid of privacy and filled with ads, pop-up offers and transaction fees," said Joseph P. Firmage, CEO of ManyOne Networks. "The ManyOne team has thrown out the preconceptions and expectations of today's Web and developed a next-generation technology architecture to benefit users, and an ethical financial model in which subscription revenue is shared by all partners who get involved."

ManyOne is a company with an ethical compass. An integral facet of its unique business plan is that it will become wholly owned by the international nonprofit ManyOne Foundation as of 2006. The Foundation's Board of Directors, which will include Jane Goodall, Paul Hawken, Maurice Strong and other social leaders and scientists worldwide, will ensure that the assets and activities of ManyOne Networks, along with profits paid out to the Foundation, go to advancing the greater public good.

About The ManyOne Foundation

The ManyOne Foundation will become the owner of ManyOne Networks in 2006, and is guided by the Earth Charter, a roadmap of principles for realizing a just and sustainable world. Its Board of Directors, which is currently in formation, will eventually comprise 30-40 prominent social leaders and scientists from around the world. Among others, individuals presently committed to join the Board include:

• Mahnaz Afkhami, Founder and President of Women's Learning Partnership (WLP), former Minister of State for Women's Affairs in Iran, and a leading advocate of women's rights for more than three decades
• Jane Goodall, anthropologist, conservationist and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute
• Khadija Haq, President of Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre and a leader on issues of economic and social development and women's empowerment
• Paul Hawken, environmentalist, educator, entrepreneur, journalist and best-selling author
• Hazel Henderson, world-renowned authority on sustainable economics
• Ashok Khosla, social entrepreneur, environmental visionary, and 2002 winner of the prestigious UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize
• Richard Perl, a founder of the Social Venture Network and the Threshold Foundation
• Hans Schoepflin, entrepreneur and philanthropist
• Maurice Strong, former Senior Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to the President of the World Bank
• Jonah Wittkamper, biologist, technologist and organizer of the world's youth community
• Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which launched the worldwide micro-credit movement

About ManyOne Networks

ManyOne is a vehicle for people and organizations to collaborate in the creation of a new, socially responsible information medium. ManyOne and its partners are pioneering new ways for people to learn about our world and universe, communicate, work and trade with each other and experience each others' talents. ManyOne's vision is to fulfill the original potential of the Internet as an open, democratic medium that inspires creativity, communication, collaboration and education. The organization is working with a growing alliance of partners worldwide to evolve a dazzling new kind of Web experience.

ManyOne embodies a new standard of social responsibility in governance, objectives and conduct for for-profit companies. For more information about ManyOne Networks, visit www.manyone.net.

Press Contact:
Gary Byrd
FortyThree, Inc.
ManyOne@fortythreepr.com
831.621.3773