XOOM

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

XOOM originated in September 1996 as a download website offering free clipart and a productivity suite including a word-processing application, centering aroud a word processor based on Wordstar. In March 1997, XOOM became a web hosting and an e-mail hosting website. The company went public (ticker symbol: XMCM) in late 1998. Around that time, it was ranked as the 13th most popular site on the web by Media Metrix. In 2000, XOOM merged with Snap.com and NBC.com to form NBCi. NBCi later discontinued website hosting in late 2001, and the NBCi website was acquired by Infospace and turned into a portal for content from other NBC Universal websites. The domain "xoom.com" is now held by a money transfer website.

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, XOOM.it, still in operation and owned by Virgilio.