Durand Purchases Electric Minds Web Site

Electric Minds, the innovative community-building World Wide Web site that was on the brink of financial collapse, has been sold to Durand Communications, an Internet software firm based in Santa Barbara. The Electric Minds site (https://www.minds.com) was launched amid great fanfare eight months ago by Howard Rheingold, who wrote the 1993 book “The Virtual Community.� Andre Durand, president and chief executive of Durand Communications, said Rheingold will continue running Electric Minds. The site will be linked to Durand’s new CommunityWare site (https://www.communityware.com), which hosts public online communities and private groups for a monthly fee.