Excite is back in the black

Top Web portal Excite has made a profit in Q1 after reporting that its turnover had increased by 123 per cent for the first three months of the year. With revenues of $54.1 million for Q1 -- up from $24.3 million for the same period last year -- Excite will have pleased investors by announcing a net profit of $2.5 million compared with a loss of $6.6 million for the corresponding period last year. The Web portal also increased traffic to its site with 77 million page views each day in March—an increase of a third compared with December. And the number of registered Excite users is also up, bringing the total to 28 million, up 40 per cent during the quarter. "It was gratifying to see the key metrics of our business…remain solidly on track this quarter, in spite of the wholly expected diversionary pressures of our pending merger with @home,"said Excite CEO George Bell. Last week Excite announced it was teaming up with chipmaker Intel to create a new e-commerce service designed to simplify buying and selling on the Internet.