By Nick Patience
Acme Software Inc will announce plans to become some sort of portal within the next 30 days. It is expected to base the portal around its frequently asked questions or FAQ-generating software, bringing together a variety of communities based on shared interests.
The Acme’s FAQtory service is a way of creating dynamic FAQs on web sites that can act as a community-building tool – or be the basis of a web site in itself, which sounds like what Acme has in store, though details about the site are currently sketchy. Company founder and president Louise Kirkbride believes FAQs are one of those great unexploited terrains on the net that are just stuck up on a site and forgotten about and rarely updated. But nevertheless FAQ is a universal term understood across most languages, she says and reckons there are about 10 million of them on the web at any one time.
FAQtory is a hosted application that sits on Acme’s Santa Clara, California-based servers and provides a forum for web site visitors to pose questions and get answers. The answers and questions can be controlled by the owner of the web site and can be posted publicly or dealt with privately. It incorporates banner advertising and Acme offers the service for free providing web site owners are willing to carry the advertising and split the ad revenues with Acme. It also sells the service for $5,000 a year with no advertising. Companies are able to change the look and feel to suit their web site.
It is suitable for anybody that thinks they have answers to people’s questions, says Kirkbride. The idea is that by offering the ability to have FAQs, it will attract a highly targeted audience as they would be the only ones interested in asking questions and having them answered. The company aims to be the nexus between those who ask the questions and those who answer them, she says. Kirkbride says the system will be moved to a large data center soon to cope with expected demand. The software is written in Java and runs atop SQL Server on Windows NT. It will eventually be ported to Unix for better scalability.
Acme has so far secured about $4m in VC money from sources that include Compaq Computer Corp chairman and founder Ben Rosen, Asia tech Ventures, Everest Fund, WongFratis Co, Hallador Ventures and Caran Establishment. Kirkbride’s previous company, Answer Systems Inc was acquired in spring 1995 by Platinum Technology Inc for $38m. Its Apriori problem resolution software is still sold by Platinum, soon to become part of Computer Associates International Inc. http://www.faqs.com
