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Unique Features Enhance Utility

Portal B™ offers features not found in any other portal, including:

• A single point of access to internal and external information sources-configurable to each company's individual needs-with no distracting banner ads or solicitations.
• A comprehensive, custom collection of more than 8,500 content-rich Internet sites, hand-selected, hand-indexed and personally reviewed by business information professionals.
• Detailed abstracts for each Web site, noting subject matter, identifying the publisher and cataloging the sites' industry and geographic coverage, make it easy for users to locate precisely the information they're seeking.
• The ability to turn Portal B™'s database of Web sites into customized directories that can be searched-by the user.
• Access to more than 20 proprietary site directories, including the names and URLs of the top 100 business schools, 500 law firms, 2,000 trade publications (indexed by industry), 500 trade associations and 300 venture capital and private equity firms.
• A unique URL "finder" for more than 30,000 public and thousands of private companies, as well as a screening facility that allows the identification of public companies meeting specific criteria (e.g., industry, SIC Code, market cap, revenue and P/E).
• The option of subscribing to and accessing more than 70 premium databases, from such notable information publishers as Thomson Financial, Primark, McGraw-Hill, Nikkei, BARRA and The Economist Intelligence Unit.
• The ability to index, search and download the user's corporate proprietary content.

"The value of Portal B™ in time saved and quality of information is immeasurable," said Douglas Laird, Library and Information Services manager for the Welsh Development Agency, a global economic development entity that will use the service throughout 20 locations worldwide among more than 300 business managers. "Portal B™ is the first Internet search tool we've seen that is truly business-focused in terms of content, accuracy and flexible application -- and it's advertising-free. That you cannot 'stray' into non-business material is greatly appreciated, as is its simplicity of use."

"Portal B™ provides just what our clients have told us they wanted: seamless, focused, distraction-free access to the information they need and use every day ... simply and cost-effectively integrated into their Intranet and/or Extranet," said Goldstein.

"You won't find sports scores, classified ads, auction bids or other irrelevancies on Portal B™-just business-focused, industrial-strength answers and solutions," said Michael Angle, Data Downlink

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president and chief operating officer. "The results of a Portal B™ web search come from sites that have been recently and carefully vetted by expert information professionals."

"Only a handful of search engines even claim to focus on business information," said Goldstein. "All of those-with the exception of Portal B™-rely on advertising and e-commerce support, unnecessary and unwanted distractions for serious business users."

A New Business Model: Subscription-based and Free of Ads

A radical, previously untried subscription-based business model and access to high value content sets Portal B™ apart from other business search tools, noted Goldstein. "Advertising cannot support the level of depth and functionality Portal B™ provides," says Goldstein. "And it is clear business customers do not want the distraction of ads and e-commerce solicitations on their Intranets and Extranets." Thus, Portal B™ is the Internet's only business information search service that is free of advertising and solicitations.

Portal B™ is subscription-based and configurable for site license customers. The service, commercially available as of May 1, 2000, at www.portalb.com, has been tested, in beta, at 30 companies throughout the United States and England.

Portal B™ will be priced on an annual site license basis, with fees ranging from $6,000 to $200,000 per year, depending on the size of the organization. Companies will be charged additionally for accessing other premium services from Data Downlink, such as privatesuite™ and compbook™, and premium databases accessed via Portal B™.

About Data Downlink Corporation

Founded in 1996 by Steven Goldstein and Michael Angle, former executives of Knight-Ridder's Business Information Services division, Data Downlink Corporation is a leading provider of Internet-based online information services. The privately owned company is headquartered in New York and London.

In April 1997, Data Downlink introduced .xls(www.xls.com), a service which aggregates and cross-indexes over 70 premier business databases, delivering information directly to Microsoft Excel, HTML, Microsoft Word or PDF formats at the desktop. Other products subsequently introduced by the company include privatesuite™-a fast, easy, cost-effective way to identify and retrieve profiles of privately held companies around the world-and compbook™, a tool for company peer analysis. In April 2000, Data Downlink received $11 million in venture capital from several prominent investment groups to finance the launch of Portal B™ and other product development and marketing programs.

NOTE TO EDITORS: To try Data Downlink's Portal B™ service, please contact Jay Winuk at (914) 277-1160 or [email protected] to obtain a user ID and password. For more background information on the launch of Portal B™, access Data Downlink's electronic press kit at www.datadownlink.com.