15% Stake Taken in Linkguard

NewMedia SPARK PLC 23 November 1999 NewMedia SPARK invests £400,000 for a 15% stake in LinkGuard NewMedia SPARK plc ('SPARK') announces that it has agreed to invest £400,000 for a 15% equity stake in LinkGuard Ltd. LinkGuard is an Internet start up company which has developed software and spidering systems aimed at ridding the Internet of broken links. It also aims to produce, an exhaustive, accurate and dynamic map of the linkage of the World Wide Web. Its technology and systems are subject to extensive international patent protection. Commenting on the investment Michael Whitaker, CEO of SPARK, said: 'We are very excited to be investing in LinkGuard. The great bulk of Internet companies concentrate on content, but integrity of links is also critical to the development and acceptance of the web. It is estimated that over 25% of web pages contain broken links, and this is both frustrating to the viewer and costly to the site operator. LinkGuard's systems have the potential to eradicate this problem. Further, we believe that the dynamic linkage map of the Web which LinkGuard is set to produce could be of enormous commercial value. LinkGuard (www.linkguard.com) has recently launched the first of its family of Intelligent Link Management products, and our investment will assist the company in rapidly building up its marketing efforts to achieve widespread adoption of its technology throughout the World Wide Web. We also hope to help introduce this technology to a range of our industry and site partners and contacts. At the same time LinkGuard will be stepping up its investment in server and bandwidth capacity as it builds its map of the connectivity of the Web.' LinkGuard is the third investment by NewMedia Spark since its shares began trading on the Alternative Investment Market on 28th October 1999. Its two previous investments were in Digital Animations Group plc and Bridge4u.com ____________________________________________________________ For further information, please contact NewMedia SPARK Michael Whitaker 0171 887 4510 Buchanan Communications Tim Anderson / Isabel Petre 0171 466 5000 Peel Hunt & Company Limited David Davies 0171 418 8900
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