It started in the morning when an online business-information service called Company Sleuth issued a statement that MCI WorldCom Inc., the giant telecommunications company, had registered the domain name skytelworldcom.com.

Trading volume in SkyTel stock surged to 7.4 million shares -- more than triple its average daily tally. "It looks like investors have reacted to the announcement of an Internet domain name," says Thomas Lee, a wireless analyst at Salomon Smith Barney.

By 1:30 p.m., besieged MCI WorldCom executives were forced to respond. They blamed the domain registration on an over-zealous employee trying to protect the company from "domain-name squatters." These are online speculators who rapidly register names of combinations of famous companies in hopes that they will be paidhandsomely later to surrender the Internet addresses.

That immediately stoked the embers of an old rumor, namely that MCI WorldCom was in talks to acquire SkyTel Communications Inc., one of the country's largest wireless-messaging services. By 1 p.m., SkyTel's stock jumped 16%.

"From time to time, MCI WorldCom employees, sometimes acting on their own initiative, register domain names they believe may be potential targets of domain-name squatters," said the company in a release. "The action is not an indication of any official company intention."

As the stock ran up, so did the visibility of Josh Kopelman, executive vice president of Company Sleuth, a free online information service. It generates revenue by selling ads. Every day, Company Sleuth, a unit of Infonautics Inc., rummages through reams of the Internet's most obscure information -- lists of domain names, patent and trademark applications, job postings and insider trading on publicly traded companies.

"Company Sleuth scours the Web and findsclues," says Mr. Kopelman, co-founder of the Wayne, Pa., company. "It's up to the individuals to interpret those clues."

Usually, Company Sleuth sends e-mail messages on its findings to subscribers. But when they get a truly tantalizing lead -- a potential scoop -- the company dispatches an online news release. It did so Tuesday on MCI WorldCom, based in Jackson, Miss. Deal mania aside, Internet addresses and other crumbs of data scattered around the Web are becoming important -- and often unintentional -- indicators of companies' business plans.

In Febrary, Company Sleuth found that bookseller Amazon.com Inc. had registered "amazongreetings.com" and "amazoncard.com.," according to Mr. Kopelman. This served as an early tip-off to Amazon's plans to offer greeting cards online -- a full two months before the bookseller announcedits entry into the business.

The same month, nosy Net surfers also divined that the launch of Coca-Cola Co.'s bottled water was imminent, by noticing that the Web address"dasani.com" had become active. Coke previously indicated its water would be marketed under the name Dasani.

"What's happening is that companies are leaving a paper trail on the Internet," Mr. Kopelman says. "The Internet is making available all kinds of information that wasn't available before."

In Nasdaq Stock Market, MCI WorldCom shares rose 25 cents to $83.25, while SkyTel shares rose $1.3125 cents, to $20.1875, up 7%. MCI WorldCom declined to identify the wayward worker responsible for the incident. But records at Network Solutions Inc., the Herndon, Va., company that currently oversees all dot-com addresses, show that "skytelworldcom.com" was registered by Al Anderson, an employee who works at MCI WorldCom's headquarters in Internet operations. Mr. Anderson didn't return telephone calls seeking comment.

The abundance of Internet information -- combined with the intense hunger for advance signals about the next big deal -- is increasingly putting companies in a bind. If businesses want to protecttheir options and register for domain names, they can inadvertently tip their hand. But if they fail to register until after a deal is consummated, they can be out-maneuvered by domain squatters.

It's happened before. Citicorp and Travelers Group failed to lock up the name of their new combination, Citigroup Inc., as an Internet address. On the same day the deal was announced in April 1998, a person in Princeton, N.J. swooped in and registered the Internet address, www.citigroup.com.

Though companies can appeal the assignment of Internet addresses when they feel their trademarks have been infringed, many big companies have found it easier to simply buy up blocks of addresses containing variations on their names to prevent others from using them. Network Solutions charges $70 a year per address though the domain-name system is in the midst of a government-led overhaul designed to increase competition and drive down prices. SkyTel, of Jackson, Miss., has been at the center of takeover rumors since itannounced in April that it had hired an investment banker. Although John Stupka, SkyTel's chief executive, declined to say whether the company is for sale, the disclosure prompted analysts to believe that the paging firm could be sold within a few months.

A SkyTel spokesman wasn't pleased with Tuesday's activities. "We have all the Internet domain names that we want," he says. "Obviously we don't like anything that affects the volatility of our stock. We don't like speculation about what we're doing."

As for MCI WorldCom, Tuesday afternoon it said it put in a request to Network Solutions, to delete the notorious address, skytelworldcom.com.Then, Tuesday night, it turned tail.

"We have decided to keep the name since we have an ongoing marketing agreement with SkyTel," MCI WorldCom said in a statement, "and we may choose to use it in the future."

(The Asian Wall Street Journal)