Lycos appoints UK chief to lead ‘community’ revamp

Lycos has appointed Jeffrey Lee as its UK managing director, as the portal tries to regain its previous high profile in the face of stiff competition from industry giants Yahoo!, MSN and Google.

He replaces John van Vroenhoven who left earlier this year (MW March 23) to return to his home country, the Netherlands.

Lee will be responsible for the strategic direction of the European company’s UK business, as well as managing business development and forging new partnerships. He will also oversee the production and editorial direction of the UK portal.

Lee says that Lycos aims to return to its roots in community. He says: “Community is at the heart of what Lycos has to offer, and we aim to build on our current offering. There is huge demand for user-generated content and community sites, and we must respond to that.” He adds that Lycos is talking to companies about online partnerships but declines to offer any details. As part of its emphasis on offering users opportunities to post their own content online, Lycos Europe has just added audio and video blogging to its community-based JubiiBlogs service. Bloggers can record and upload MP3-format audio files and video clips as well as writing posts for their blogs. Once posted, the clips are hosted and streamed by Lycos.

Lee joins Lycos from content production company Cat Games, where he was business development director. Prior to joining Cat Games, he launched and ran business- to-business portal Produxion.com, and before that was foreign editor of Channel 4 News.