by Ahn Saemin

Contributing Writer

My web browsing used to start very early in the morning, because I wanted to take my time with web research. And take time I did. But ever since I began using metabrowsing services, my mornings have been a little less harried. I simply enter the URLs of the sites I want to metabrowse into a single web form and hit ``submit.'' Then a very long, scrollable page appears containing the contents from all the URLs entered.

``Metabrowsing'' is a new word coined by pundits and analysts to describe services that reduce many sites to a scrollable collection that can be viewed on a single page.

I was recently given the chance to interview Marc Fest, formerly a journalist and now CEO of Quickbrowse.com.

The start-up is only five months old and has already caught the attention of such competitors as OnePage.com and Octopus.com.

Question: Is your product a ``first-to-market?"

Answer: Yes. We were first. Please go to www.qb.com/company to see the press crediting us with inventing web-based metabrowsing. Being first, we also got metabrowse.com and several similar domains. Please read our company history to see how Qb was started almost accidentally, really out of my career as a journalist.

Q: Who are the competitors in your market?

A: Companies like OnePage.com, Octopus.com, Calltheshots.com. But also personalized portals like MyYahoo, MyCnn, etc.

Q: What are the most significant trends, developments or changes that you anticipate in your market segment over the next several years?

A: Jupiter Communications predicts 90 million users of web content aggregators by 2003, according to a study commissioned by OnePage, as published by the Dallas Morning News. The premise of our service is that there will be more and more information people want to access online, and that they will have less and less time to do it. I call this the ``fundamental problem.'' Quickbrowsing is the logical solution to this fundamental problem. I anticipate more players entering the market, and at some point, consolidation taking place.

Q: In today's high-tech industry landscape, global competition and the ever-shortened life cycle of a product are identified as biggest hurdles tech ventures are facing. Do you think this generality will hold true for your firm?

A: If we confine ourselves to technology for combining web pages, yes. Our vision, however, derives from the ``fundamental problem'' I mentioned earlier. This problem will just become more serious in the forseeable future, and the best thing one can do is to develop a brand that is known for offering the most effective and user-friendly technologies to deal with it. The trick is to build a brand by permanently adapting one's technologies.

Q: How would you characterize your overriding strengths?

A: Ease of use. Ease of use. Ease of use.

Q: In distributing your technology to other language groups _ to Korea, for example _ time-consuming localization efforts must follow. In view of this, do you see your product reaching the point of setting a global standard, or simply grabbing a particular market niche?

A: I imagine quickbrowsing will become an integral part of almost everybody's daily routine. Like brushing your teeth in the morning. Yahoo's localization efforts offer a good model. And they could be seen as a global standard, considering their market share.

Q: What kind of U.S. market and outside-U.S. market share acquisition do you forecast for your company in the next 12 months?

A: Any numerical answer to this question would be completely hypothetical. But based on the very favorable reaction to our brand so far, I expect us to be the market leader.

Q: What are the major concerns or risks that you face now and will be facing in the future that perhaps keep you awake at night?

A: We're currently going after our next round of financing. That will keep me awake at night until it's completed. Then of course, the subsequent round will keep me awake. (laugh) Competitors always keep me awake as well. But this is how it should be. Another obvious concern is keeping up with the changing nature of the Web and staying ahead of the curve in adapting our product. Also, despite the recognition we've been getting, we are still a very small company. The challenges for corporate growth are plenty, and enough to keep me up at night.

Q: What are the greatest opportunities for your company over the next several years? Is there a chain of events that could lead the company to substantially even beat expectations in the near future?

A: The greatest opportunity for Quickbrowse would be to tap into the growing problem of increasing online information and decreasing available time for viewing it. If we stay focused on this fundamental agenda, we'll hit our mark and have a chance to become the predominant tool for dealing with information overload.

The writer is the CEO of RushAsia.com._ED