Joins forces with Internet pioneer to transform the email list market

San Francisco, Calif. – April 6, 1999 – Topica Inc. today announced it has acquired Liszt (www.liszt.com), the biggest and best-known email list directory on the Web. Named one of the "Top 10 Essential Web Sites" by Yahoo! Internet Life, Liszt's "ginormous" directory will be joined with Topica's free email list services to form the Internet's premier location for finding, managing, and participating in email lists.

An indispensable Internet resource
Featured in numerous publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Liszt is known as the definitive source for finding email-based discussions. Since its founding in 1995, Liszt has been pivotal in the development of the existing email list community, compiling and indexing over 90,000 lists. Today, Liszt serves as a vital hub where millions of users find email lists on every topic imaginable.

"With Topica, I finally found a company that shared my passion for email lists and wanted to make them as accessible to Internet users as any other form of content on the Web," Scott Southwick, founder of Liszt.com. "By working directly with key list owners, Topica developed a service that far surpassed my expectations and has the strength as a company to transform the email list market in the way I had envisioned. I am confident that Topica will continue to develop and deliver the right kind of services for the community."

Building a bridge to the email list community
Liszt will serve as a primary building block in Topica's free email list services, and uniquely positions Topica to serve the market of over 15 million email list users contained in some 200,000 existing email lists. Combined with Topica's powerful but easy-to-use tools for subscribing to and running email lists, Liszt will be used to build out Topica's comprehensive email list directory to provide a single, central location for users to find and join email lists.

"Liszt has created a powerful resource for email list users and administrators," said Guy Kawasaki, founder of Fog City Software, the company that created LetterRip, the leading Macintosh mail list server. "With this acquisition, Topica will make the use of email lists possible for mere mortals."

Transforming an untapped market
Up until now, the market for email lists has remained privy to mostly technically savvy users because email lists have been traditionally very difficult to set up and maintain. Together, Topica and Liszt are poised to invigorate the email list market with a consolidated, comprehensive directory, and powerful, easy-to-use tools that bring the content, discussions and people contained in email lists to a much larger audience of users.

"The Liszt acquisition for Topica is a smart move; they get all the brand value, plus exclusive access to the largest data source for existing email lists," said Juliana Nelson, senior analyst, Internet and eCommerce Strategies, IDC.

"Liszt's incredible directory is an amazing resource that is relied upon by millions of users," said Ariel Poler, CEO and co-founder of Topica Inc. "We are thrilled to be working with the pioneer in email list directories. Combining our services with Liszt's brings us all one step closer to providing world-class services to help everyone get more out of email lists."

About Liszt
Liszt contains the largest collection of publicly available email lists on the Internet. Liszt was designed and built by Scott Southwick, a veteran Netizen, staunch spam fighter and author of the original news.admin.net-abuse FAQ. See also an open letter from Scotty, also available on Liszt.

Liszt is recognized by Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek and CNET Search.com as one of the most useful resources for finding email lists on the Net. Liszt is also featured in the Internet Scout Report Toolkit, recommended by "Internet for Dummies" and has been written up in USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit News, and the Wall Street Journal.

About Topica Inc.
Founded in January 1998, Topica Inc. makes it easier for people to find, manage and participate in email lists. Topica provides easy access to people, discussions and information contained in over tens of thousands of existing email-based groups. Privately held, Topica is based in San Francisco, California. Investors include August Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Draper Richards, L.P. and Stanford University. Additional information can be found at www.topica.com.