LookSmart
| LookSmart Group, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | US54344C1053 |
| founding | 1995 |
| Seat | San Francisco , United States |
| management | Michael Onghai |
| Number of employees | 10 |
| sales | 4,548,000 USD |
| Branch | advertising |
| Website | www.looksmart.com |
| As of December 31, 2015 | |
LookSmart Ltd. is an American technology company based in San Francisco , California, specializing in online advertising .
In the years 2001 up to and including 2003 the company traded on the NASDAQ produced the search technology for MSN .
historical development
Homebase, the original name of LookSmart, was founded in 1995 in Melbourne, Australia by the couple Evan Thornley and Tracey Ellery. Reader's Digest as the main shareholder gave a brief interlude . The core competence of the company was the highly topical web directories at the time.
In 1998 the company was renamed LookSmart and the company headquarters relocated to San Francisco. In the same year, Microsoft licensed LookSmart technologies. In August 1999, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange . The capital thus gained was invested in technologies for online advertising, but also the original core competence through the purchase of the Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project, the world's third largest web directory, Zeal .
The company suffered an economic setback when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and most customers went bankrupt.
After restructuring measures, further contracts with Microsoft provided new impetus in 2001. Among other things, LookSmart provided the search technology for MSN . During this time, the company also developed its own pay per click technology, which was also used on the company's own website.
In 2003 Microsoft canceled all contracts, which made it necessary to reposition LookSmart. Acquisitions such as the well-known social bookmark service Furl should strengthen your own position. The strategy failed.
In March 2006 the web directory Zeal was closed. LookSmart finally said goodbye to its roots as a web catalog service.
In 2007, introduced services such as the web filter Net Nanny, the article search engine FindArticles.com or the search service Grub were sold, and the Wisenut search engine was closed. The domains Zeal.com and Wisenut.com were sold.
Current business model
LookSmart currently offers technologies and services for online advertising. In addition to its own PPC program for publishers and advertisers, the company also offers the services as a white label . Major clients include CNET and the New York Times.
MySpace has been a subtenant of LookSmart since the end of 2007 , which only uses a small part of the building itself.
Web links
- LookSmart (company homepage)
- Financial information (NASDAQ)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b LookSmart 2015 Form 10-K Report , accessed November 25, 2016
- ↑ CNet buys FindArticles.com
- ↑ Wikia takes over Webspider Grub
- ↑ MySpace and LookSmart kick out the startups ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
