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Lycos Europe Attempting More Comebacks than Rocky Balboa

posted on March 19, 2007


Over the past few months, we’ve reported on Lycos’ many attempts to reinvent itself and make a comeback. It’s been almost as pitiful as watching Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky Balboa” comeback movie – btw, how can you make a Rocky movie in which he loses!!!

The New York Times reports that Lycos Europe is betting big on a new brand in the U.S. – it no longer owns the rights to the U.S. trademark, which is confusingly owned by Lycos, Inc. – and is launching Jubii.

Lycos Europe is hoping to ride the wave of Web 2.0 with Jubii, which combines search, e-mail, chat, photo and file storage, phone texting, blogging, Internet phoning and other services that are increasingly popular with young Internet users. The company expects to introduce Jubii officially this month.

The company is so excited about the launch, they honestly believe the new brand will help them reverse the trend of 27 money-losing quarters out of the past 28 reported!

Here’s some free advice for them.

  1. Don’t make me sign-up to use your service. I have no clue if I want to go thru that hassle. Let me use it first and then decide.
  2. Hire an SEO to help you understand why a meta-refresh on you homepage is about as lame as the old Lycos search technology.


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  • http://www.search-engine-feng-shui.com François Houste

    I’m not supposed to say bad things about Lycos Europe… as I spent 6 years their… (oh my god, 6 years)…
    but Jubii.com is nothing else than a free mail platform replacing the very old french Caramail one…

  • http://www.wpromote.com/blog/ Mike Mothner

    This is just a personal pet peeve, but I cannot stand new brands that I am unsure if I am even pronouncing correctly; I mean how can I recommend even a great product or service to a friend if I really don’t even know for sure if I am saying it right.

    Jubee? jube-eye? Give me a break…

  • http://www.mateosquared.com/isearch Mateosquared

    I found it to be interesting at first. I then tried to sign-up, and was not able to enter the security code. None was provided.

    Did you notice that there is not a contact us button anywhere on the site? It seems the only way to contact them is via a blog comment.

    Did you also notice, that the blog is hard to get to? Only two words are linked, and they are the same color as the text that is not linked. They might as well throw in the towel, and get out of the Internet business.

  • http://www.mateosquared.com/isearch Mateosquared

    Received this when trying to submit a comment at Jubiiiiiii: Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter running on this blog: this might be an error, in which case all apologies. Your comment will be presented to the blog admin who will be able to restore it immediately.
    You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.

  • http://www.lycos.com Kathy O’Reilly

    Andy,

    Please note. Today’s New York Times article pertains to Lycos Europe, and has nothing to do with Lycos, Inc. Lycos, Inc. and Lycos Europe are two entirely separate companies. It is Lycos Europe who is making an attempt to emerge in the U.S.under a new brand name.

  • Pingback: Jubii Overview - Terms of Service and "The Invisible Captcha" Andy Beard

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    Thanks Kathy. I updated the post to make it a little more clear.

  • http://andybeard.eu/ Andy Beard

    I am hitting some of the same security code problems when trying to sign up, and just ripped apart the terms of service which are not to promising. Just pinged this post but that will probably have to wait moderation.

    The signup process is a nightmare

  • Lycosian

    Just to clarify again. Lycos Europe didn’t lose the U.S. trademark, they NEVER owned the trademark to Lycos. They are (and have been) the European licensee. Originally, they were a joint venture between Lycos, Inc. and Bertelsmann, but Lycos no longer owns any stake. Lycos, Inc is the original Lycos that has been operating in the U.S. for over a decade. The NYT is woefully incorrect on this point.

  • Rocky

    Thanks for giving away the end of a movie. And as an SEO, you should avoid the word “thru” and ending questions when exclamation points.

  • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

    My life has hit a new low – receiving grammar lessons from Rocky.

  • http://www.search-engine-feng-shui.com François Houste

    To complete what Lycosian is actually saying… Jubii is the orignal Lycos Europe portal brand in Danemark where it represents something like 80% of reach. Jubii brand, as an only european one had already been used for a pan-european blogging plateform by Lycos (www.jubiiblog.fr for the French one) and Lycos Europe using this brand opportunity to take share of US market is not a so big surprise after all… business-ly speaking of course.

    And, as an answer for Mike, pronounciation is “Jubee”. And as Jubii is an original Danish word, pronounciation problem had come in several european countries :)

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