July 3, 1998

(WINTER PARK, FLORIDA) - The Rover Search Service announced today that it would again be accepting subscriptions to its unique, online research service at <http://www.roverbot.com/>. The relaunch also features an expanded research service (offered in conjunction with Reach Offline) that allows users to build super-targeted postal mailing lists of companies online (as an alternative to email spamming for direct marketers.)

"When we first launched Rover in 1996, we took exhaustive steps to help ensure that it wasn't a useful tool for those online marketers who insist on spamming," says GMD Studios founder Brian Clark. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have stopped them at all -- a flurry of tools are available for just such unethical approaches (many coming with a few million email addresses 'to get you started')."

Rover is a custom email list researcher that has helped to define the ethical use of direct email contact since 1996. While tools abound on the Web to generate "millions of email addresses", Rover has consistently argued that some uses of highly-targeted, unsolicited email are clearly not spam. Their list of "ethical unsolicited uses" includes notification of URL changes, requests to exchange lists, and generation of lists of potential vendors for bidding requests.

"Targeting companies who are online, but reaching them via a postcard or personal letter, is clearly the alternative to the distressing quantity of spam mail," says Clark. "We're excited to be able to provide this expanded service to Rover subscribers as an added encouragement to treat email in an ethical manner, while still producing marketing results."

Rover has made headlines and garnered attention from the online community since its launch. The Web Marketer wrote, "Rover goes to great lengths to urge users to conform to Net etiquette." The Microsoft Network picked Rover as a "Business & Finance Site of the Week". In the book "Bots: The Origin of New Species" (1997, HotWired), author Andrew Leonard describes Roverbot as "a giant leap forward in the laborious trek from prehistoric daemon to near-future intelligent agent."

Free "test spins" of Roverbot are available online (limited to 250 results), and Roverbot subscriptions work as "pre-paid credit" in $100 increments. Rover results are priced as low as $0.01/address for subscribers. The new expanded format (which includes company contact person, mailing address, telephone and other contact information) is available only to subscribers (priced at $0.10/entry -- $100/CPM). More information about the postal mailing list options are available at the Roverbot site at < http://www.roverbot.com/reachoffline.html>.