Five analysts lowered their ratings on the stock, including Henry Blodget, Merrill Lynch's Internet guru who said in a report that investors would soon become "as tired as we are of endless postponement of gratification."

At a lunch at Harvard University, Mr. Florio sought advice from Internet gurus about how Wired is perceived and whom the magazine's audience ought to be.

What concerns many traders is that some of the hottest Internet gurus have little to no investing background.

"When Bob Frankenberg left, we said they needed either an Internet guru or a marketing guru; they just got the Internet guru," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Even people who were not Internet gurus tried to do this.

Talking like an Internet guru, Mr. Arnault argued the benefits of being local.

A running quip around the hospital predicted that if the Internet gurus ever did manage to do away with paper charts and finally compact all this information into microchips, the resulting space would solve Manhattan's parking problems.

Today, Mr. Salgano said, his 28 units are filled with "groovy, fabulous people: mad scientists, Web techies, fashion models, designers of Web pages and assorted Internet gurus."

Especially people who consider themselves Internet gurus I think will get a kick out of looking at it and going, hey, I didn't know that was reserved for that, or that's reserved for something else.

Mr. Gore, the Clinton Administration's Internet guru, who has often spoken about the need to insure the privacy of electronic information, laid out his four-point proposal, which had already been widely reported yesterday.