Underwriters are pushing ahead with road shows for theglobe.com and Healtheon Corp., and have tentatively scheduled their initial public offerings for early in the week of October 19.

With no significant IPOs expected this week, these two Internet-related deals, along with mega-offerings from DuPont Co's Conoco Inc unit and News Corp Ltd's Fox Entertainment, are seen by analysts as the best prospects for the month.

"We're still in a tough market, but the very good companies do have a shot," said Kathleen Smith, portfolio manager of the Renaissance IPO Fund.

Of course, Internet IPOs are judged by somewhat different standards when investors evaluate whether they are, indeed, "good companies."

With very few of these new businesses turning a profit, Internet companies rely on angles other than theircurrent financial picture -- a unique niche in cyberspace, say, or a creative idea for generating revenue -- to sell their story to investors.

For both theglobe.com and Healtheon, their roots may be apart of the story that appeals to investors, analysts said.

Theglobe.com, a service that creates online communities by building World Wide Web sites and chat rooms, was founded in 1995 by two Cornell University students.

A few years later, the company attracted the attention of former Alamo Rent-a-Car owner Michael Egan, an alumnus of the school, who invested $20 million in the business -- which at the time was one of the largest investments ever for a company based in Manhattan's Silicon Valley, a loft zone that is home to many new media start-ups.

West Coast-based Healtheon, an online medical network, has attracted attention mainly because it was started by Netscape Communications Corp co-founder James Clark, who is considered a celebrity of sorts in Silicon Valley. Local newspapers, for example, havereferred to Clark as the "Midas-touch founder."

"For a lot of these kind of companies, the story is always something paramount, and they (the people selling the IPOs) try to put it above and beyond the earnings," said Randall Roth, an analyst at Renaissance Capital Corp. "For something like Healtheon, I think Jim Clark is a big part of the story."

Certainly, both companies have more than just interesting tales to help lure IPO investors.

Analysts praised theglobe.com for using advertising as a key revenue source, and noted that Healtheon is the kind of unusual Internet business that could draw investors who believe it is a concept that will be around for the long haul.

But all this may not be enough to turn these deals into hot performers, analysts said -- at least not in this dreary market.

With IPOs for 1998 down 30 per cent and only 47 of the year's 332 deals trading above their issue price, investors are expected to be particularly selective on the new issues they buy going forward, said JohnFitzgibbon, editor of the IPO Reporter Newsletter.

And with neither company predicting that they'll be profitable any time soon, analysts said an interesting history can easily be overshadowed by a lukewarm future.

"You're really gambling if you buy into some of these Internet companies," said Mark Basham, investment officer at Standard & Poor's.