LookSmart_to_acquire_WiseNut
| LookSmart to acquire WiseNut
The focus of LookSmart so far, has been to provide it's
directory results to other search sites and portals.
In what could be considered a wise move, LookSmart will now
compete with Inktomi, Fast and Google in providing search engine
results as well , to large portals like AOL and MSN, who have in
the past used the LookSmart directory listings, combined with
search engine results from Inktomi.
The former CTO and co-founder of mySimon, Yeogirl Yun, launched
WiseNut in September, 2001, and have already expanded their
reach through a joint venture in Korea — Korea WiseNut — already
one of Korea's top ten sites.
With this new takeover, it will be interesting to see the
eventual effect on Google, who have had tremendous success so
far, especially after Yahoo began using the Google search engine
results in preference to the Inktomi results.
WiseNut has been labled as a strong rival to the Google search
engine, and with this acquisition by LookSmart in a stock
transaction valued at $9.25 million, Evan Thornley, chairman and
CEO of LookSmart says that "By acquiring WiseNut, LookSmart
becomes the first company to have both high quality scalable
search technology and strong listings revenue generation. We
believe this will position us to compete with companies that
have only one of these capabilities."
With this new move, LookSmart's partners will now benifit with a
more relevant search experience, as well as the benifit to
LookSmart's directory customers, who in turn should benefit from
a higher return on marketing investment, as more relevant search
results drive more qualified leads. So far, LookSmart is the
only company that provides both pay-for-placement and paid
inclusion search listing platforms, aimed towards the bigger
advertisers.
About the author:
Cyrus currently manages a few web sites, the most recent of
which is PromotionData.com a community center for site promotion
and web development, located at http://www.promotiondata.com/
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