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Xoom (web hosting)

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This article is about the dot-com era web hosting company. For the money transfer site, see Xoom Corporation.

Xoom was an early dot-com that primarily provided free unlimited space web hosting, similar to GeoCities.

Xoom

Xoom.com is a money transfer service that lets you send money worldwide from any Internet-enabled computer to individuals and businesses in more than 46 countries. You can use PayPal, major credit cards, or have funds withdrawn directly from your U.S. bank account to fund the money transfer.

The recipient can receive cash in local currency or US dollars. Xoom offers money transfer services to over 46 countries worldwide. These countries include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea (ROK), Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Uruguay.

The recipient can have the money deposited to their bank account, pick it up or have it delivered to their home or business. Xoom.com has relationships with banks and money transfer payout partners to provide a secure and fast means of sending money. Xoom.com customers can send money to over 80,000 cash pickup locations around the world.

Xoom Corporation is based in San Francisco, U.S. The customer service number is 415-395-4225 or 877-815-1531.

History

Prior to it's current incarnation as a money transfer Company, Xoom was founded by Chris Kitze in September 1996 as a download website offering free clipart and a productivity suite including a word-processing application, centering around a word processor based on Wordstar. In March 1997, Xoom became a web hosting (offering 100MB) and an e-mail hosting website. The company acquired several small service providers in 1997 and 1998, including Paralogic, creator of ParaChat which was the largest chat network on the web at the time, and PageCount, a page counter service. The main revenue sources for the company were direct marketing via email to members and banner advertising.

The company was funded by a former Lycos executive who had previously started Creative Multimedia (Portland, OR), Aris Multimedia (Marina del Rey, CA) and Point Communications (New York, NY), and angel investors who invested a total of $10M in common stock. No venture capital was raised and the company went public in December, 1998 (ticker symbol: XMCM). Around that time, it was ranked as the 13th most popular site on the web by Media Metrix. In May 1999, a deal was announced to use Xoom.com as a vehicle for NBC's internet ventures, that combined Snap.com (owned by CNET and NBC), and various NBC internet assets plus $400M of NBC on-air promotion to form NBC Internet (NBCi). At that time, the combined entity was ranked as the 7th most popular site on the web by Media Metrix.

Xoom was both criticized and praised for its strict policies on violations of terms of service.

A short-lived experiment in franchising and licensing the Xoom software platform and business model in 1998 led to an Italian website, www.xoom.it still in operation and owned by Virgilio.

The domain "xoom.com" is now held by the Xoom Corporation, a money transfer website.

References

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