EarthWeb is uniquely positioned by:

• Focusing on the needs of 15 million IT professionals worldwide who spend more than $750 billion per year on hardware, software and services.
• Serving as a central business-to-business intermediary between IT professionals and vendors of IT products and services.
• Providing the largest online technical knowledge bases for IT professionals.
• Offering a vast range of proprietary online technical data, reference, training, community and resource directory content for IT professionals.

EarthWeb Inc. is the leading provider of Internet-based online services to the Information Technology (IT) community worldwide. Through its flagship service, developer.com, and its other integrated business-to-business online services including Datamation and ITKnowledge, EarthWeb addresses the needs of IT professionals for content, community and commerce. EarthWeb was founded in 1994 with headquarters in New York City.

EarthWeb's revenues come from advertising, online subscriptions and online commerce.

EarthWeb's History

The unparalleled technical breadth and depth of EarthWeb's online services have earned it a reputation as the foremost provider of online services for the professional IT community and cemented EarthWeb's position as one of the most respected Internet companies in the world.

During the initial phase of the company's growth, which focused on creating high-end solutions for Internet commerce and entertainment clients, the EarthWeb staff discovered a frustrating lack of resources for developers on the Internet. This prompted the creation of Gamelan, the Official Directory for Java, which was launched just two weeks after the introduction of the ground-breaking programming language in October 1995. The site launched with a listing of twenty Java applets, a full-time staff of two and a mission to become an indispensable resource for Java developers.

Gamelan was endorsed by Sun Microsystems as the "Official Directory for Java" in October 1996. This period saw an explosive growth in the number and kinds of Java applets available on the Web. At the same time, there was a steady rise in the number of resources for technologies other than Java. In response to the demand for access to and information about these resources, the creators of Gamelan added a Related Technologies section to the site. This was the first step towards creating what would eventually become the all-encompassing site, developer.com.

Warburg Funding

EarthWeb rounded out its second major growth phase with a significant investment from Warburg Pincus Ventures, L.P., one the world's largest venture capital funds. Warburg Pincus Ventures' long-term investment in EarthWeb was its first in the Internet sector and one of the largest at that time for any New York Internet focused software and services company.

The developer.com Launch

In 1997, EarthWeb made significant progress toward its mission of serving the complete needs of worldwide professional developers by launching developer.com, the Professional Developer's Resource. To further extend its developer offerings, EarthWeb purchased the JARS (Java Applet Rating Service) site in October 1997. This acquisition was followed by several others including the award-winning sites HTMLGoodies, JavaGoodies, JavaScripts, IntranetJournal and RoadCoders.

EarthWeb increased its offerings to IT professionals with the acquisition of PlugIn Datamation, a unique information source for senior IT managers and executives, in April of 1998.

EarthWeb Today

Today, EarthWeb is one of the most respected Internet companies in the world. More than 150,000 technical resources can now be found on EarthWeb's online services, including:

• the full text of hundreds of technical books
• 375 proprietary tutorials
• daily updated news and information
• in-depth explorations of the newest technologies
• thriving community areas
• a retail store of development software and much more

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of pages of content and resources on the site, EarthWeb is publishing a book series in conjunction with Macmillan Computer Publishing under the EarthWeb Press imprint.

To speak to the extensive International development audience, EarthWeb launched Japanese, French, German and Spanish guides to the developer.com site.

EarthWeb also launched its first subscriber-only service, ITKnowledge. ITKnowledge provides one of the Internet's most extensive knowledge bases of technical information through access to the full text of hundreds of books, tutorials and source code from leading technical publishers. This fast-growing subscription service currently includes books from Coriolis/Ventana, Hayden, New Riders, Que, Sams, and Ziff-Davis Press with more to come.

EarthWeb has proudly established itself as the leading business-to-business online service provider for IT professionals. The coming months see the formation of additional strategic partnerships to further deliver the EarthWeb brand to the rapidly expanding professional IT community. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of books will be added to ITKnowledge. Gamelan and the developer.com directories, which provided EarthWeb with its initial fame within the Java community, will continue to expand to cover even more technologies.

These plans will expand EarthWeb's offerings even further and enable the company to continue to meet the needs of IT professionals worldwide.