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When Tom Phillips took the reins at Deja.Com it was with great expectations. The company had begun life as a Web based solution for people who wanted to read Usenet postings without a Usenet reader. But Phillips -- co-founder of Spy magazine, co-founder of pioneering Internet services company Starwave, and former head of ESPN Internet Ventures -- saw something more: a chance to build a consumer-driven, comparison shopping engine online built around the kind of user generated content that characterizes Usenet. At the time he called the job one of the Net's last great opportunities.

But, since pulling back from a planned IPO last June, Deja.Com has been in a state of suspended animation. Although Phillips said last spring's makeover produced strong revenue growth, user growth essentially flat-lined, Phillips admitted. Worse, surfers were confused about exactly what the new Deja.Com was -- shopping engine or Usenet reader. But worst of all, it turned out, that user input is not enough information to drive the purchase of items bigger than a book or CD.

"There was a reason why we were not retaining users or growing usership at the level we wanted to," said Phillips. Sales grew to $3.3 million in the fourth quarter, according to Phillips. And the staff has grown from around 125 when the company filed to go public in June to 160 today. But usership has remained flat at around 1.6 or 1.7 million unique users a month, Phillips said.

So it was back to the drawing board for Deja.Com, which is set to launch with shopping engine version 2 -- a "buyers' portal" much more heavily focused on comparison shopping, with data bases of information including product specs and street prices pulled from a variety of sources in areas like computers and technology, consumer electronics, books and music, cars, health remedies, travel, and sports equipment.

But is it too late for Deja.Com? Deja.Com has spent months re-engineering its product and revamping its business model. Now the company will separate its Usenet service almost entirely from its shopping service. Links and constantly updated pricing information inside the shopping portal will come from retailers who pay for placement, not shopping bots. In addition there will be ads and sponsorships all over the site. Product data will come from sources like PCOrder. And content from the likes of ZDNet, CNET, and IDG in the computers section, for example.

But now Deja.Com is entering a marketplace where comparison shopping services built around a mix of expert and user information are increasingly common, with granular sortable product databases -- from local start-ups like eTown and Brandwise in consumer electronics and appliances to CNET, which recently acquired shopping bot MySimon.Com for $700 million.

So even with an elaborate engine in place for comparison shopping, it remains unclear whether Deja.Com can survive as a stand-alone business or if it needs to become a feature of some other e-commerce or content play. "I think this potentially stands alone," Phillips said. But he admitted there were other possibilities. One is selling to a publisher or e-commerce player. Another is becoming a provider of private label comparison shopping services to multiple Websites. And another is working as a service bureau for the business to business portfolio companies of Deja.com's lead investor Internet Capital Group.

"They're a juggernaut of b-to-b e-commerce," said Phillips, who envisions an opportunity for Deja.Com to service as a comparison shopping service bureau for the likes of Commerx.Com, e-Chemical, and CyberCrop.Com.