Lycos is launching Planet, a “social interaction platform” with which users can create a mini-site – their own “planet” – and add blogs, upload photos and create slide shows with animated special effects and music. The U.S. version is being launched on Lycos’s Angelfire community of some 10 million teens and young adults. Planet will also be offered to Lycos’s 12 million Tripod users.
Plans for the near term do not include advertising on the planets, but in the future there may be sponsored planets or ads placed in planets with the owner’s permission.
Planet also has a “buddy map” feature to show users a visual representation of their network, with the people they interact with most often arranged closest to them on the page.
