GeoCities Licenses Parable Technology

GeoCities signed an agreement to license Parable’s multimedia technology for use by GeoCities members, allowing GeoCities Homesteaders and GeoShops merchants a way to create multimedia content that they can lock to a specific site or domain.

The Parable tool can be used to create animated logos, scenes, interactive puzzles and games.

In addition, the deal will allow for intellectual properties such as copyrighted materials, trademarks, logos, video and audio clips to be used on GeoCities without risk of alteration or illegal use, allowing marketers to reach a target audience while protecting their brands on the Net.

GeoCities will integrate a GeoCities-branded version of Parable’s multimedia authoring tool, ThingMaker Personal Edition (TMPE) with a special “publish Things” feature, to its members. No coding is required. Financial arrangements were not disclosed.

As part of the agreement, GeoCities will also integrate ThingSearch, Parable’s searchable database of general and branded multimedia “Things.” Members will have access to the hundreds of “Things” available in the “Thing” database that they will be able to easily publish to their personal homepages.

“Our model assumes that commerce, as well as content, can be powered by “Things” and “Thing” technology and that the supply and demand of content is what is pushing membership and commerce in the community/portal space,” said Steve Barlow, CTO and co-founder of Parable. “Our multi-year relationship with GeoCities validates this.”

The agreement between the companies also provides for cooperative marketing and promotions, including banner advertising.