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Headquarters | Henderson, Nevada, United States |
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URL | looksmart |
LookSmart is an American search advertising, content management, [2] online media, and technology company. It provides search, machine learning and chatbot technologies [3] as well as pay-per-click and contextual advertising services.
LookSmart also licenses and manages search ad networks as white-label products. It abides by the click measurement guidelines of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. [4]
LookSmart also owns several subsidiaries, including Clickable Inc., LookSmart AdCenter, Novatech.io, ShopWiki [5] and Syncapse. [6]
The current CEO of LookSmart is Michael Onghai [7] and the company is headquartered in Henderson, Nevada. [8]
The name "LookSmart" is a double entendre, referring to both its selective, editorially compiled directory and as a compliment to users whom the company thinks "look smart". [9]
LookSmart was founded as Homebase in 1995 in Melbourne, Australia by husband and wife Evan Thornley and Tracy Ellery, executives of McKinsey & Company. [2] Reader's Digest invested $5 million in the company for an 80% stake. [2] The original concept of Homebase was to build a female and family-friendly web portal to supplement the Reader's Digest magazine. [2] After leadership and strategy changes at Reader's Digest, which reduced RD's focus on its online business, RD wanted to shut down Homebase, which would have cost $4 million in payouts and other termination costs. [2] The founders and former McKinsey's employee Martin Hosking instead proposed a cheaper leveraged buyout of Homebase. [2]
On 28 October 1996, the company launched its LookSmart search engine. [10] At launch, the search engine listed more than 85,000 sites and had a "Java-enhanced" interface. [10] In June 1997, the search engine underwent a major redesign, dropping its original Java-based browsing system. [11]
LookSmart was sold back to the founders as well as Martin Hosking through a leveraged buyout in 1998, with Reader's Digest providing a $1.5 million loan and retaining about a 10% equity stake. [2] [12] Also in 1998, a search box was added to the LookSmart search engine along with People Search, Yellow pages, Discussions and shopping search. [13] In May 1998, the company raised $2.3 million from Amwin and $6.0 million from Cox Media Group and Macquarie Bank and was valued at $23.3 million. [2] On 21 December 1998, LookSmart stopped accepting pornographic advertisements. [14]
By 1999, the company had 500 employees and LookSmart was the twelfth most visited website worldwide with 10 million users, behind AltaVista and ahead of Snap. [2] In early-1999, the company reached an agreement to provide directory and listing services for Microsoft for 5 years. The deal provided the company with $30 million upfront and guaranteed payments of $5 million per year. [2] [15] In late-March 1999, the company raised $59.6 million based on a post-money valuation of $430 million from Amerindo Investment Advisors, Citicorp Equity Capital, Cox Interactive Media, Hambrecht & Quist and others. [2] [16] In May 1999, LookSmart formed a strategic partnership with direct-response marketing company Guthy-Renker and acquired some of their assets from their e-commerce division for $3 million. [17] [18]
On 20 August 1999, during the dot-com bubble, the company became a public company via an initial public offering on the NASDAQ, debuting at $12 per share and raising $92.4 million based on a $1 billion valuation for the company. [2] [19] LookSmart used the money it made from its IPO to open offices in Denmark, Canada and the Netherlands. [20] By October 1999, the stock price reached $30 per share, giving the company a market capitalization of $2.5 billion. [20] The founders' 15% stake was worth $375 million. [21] On 10 November 1999, LookSmart and BT Group founded joint venture BT LookSmart. [22] [23] In December 1999, LookSmart purchased FutureCorp and its free email service Start for more than $5 million from its co-founders Michael Mak and Bardia Housman. [24] Also in December, LookSmart acquired 14.5% of the voting stock of Dstore Pty Ltd. for $300,000. [25]
In 2000, FindArticles, a website which provided access to articles previously published in magazines, journals, and other sources, was founded [26] [27] [28] as a partnership between LookSmart, which authored the search technology, and the Gale Group, which provided the articles for a fee. [29] [30] [31]
In March 2000, LookSmart's stock price briefly peaked at $72 per share. [12] [32] On 28 March 2000, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) signed a sponsorship deal with LookSmart by adding a custom-built LookSmart directory to the Olympic Games' website. [33] On 30 May 2000, Juno Online Services reached an agreement with LookSmart to provide Juno's subscribers access to LookSmart's directory and LookSmart's stock jumped 8%. [34] On 26 July 2000, AltaVista reached an agreement with LookSmart for it to be their exclusive directory provider. [35] In October 2000, the company acquired Zeal for $20 million. [36] [37]
As a result of the dot-com bubble bursting in late 2000, the company fired 172 employees or 31% of its staff in January 2001 to cut costs. [38] Also in January, LookSmart shut down Inside The Web and LookSmart Live! due to them being unrelated to their core business model. [18] On 17 January 2001, the company reached a deal to provide product categories from its directory to Amazon. [39]
Also after the dot-com bubble burst, LookSmart paid $90,000 to transfer 52.8% of its ownership of FutureCorp back to its founders. [24] [25]
On 12 March 2002, LookSmart announced that they would be acquiring WiseNut for about $9.25 million in stock. [40] LookSmart completed their acquisition of WiseNut in April. [41] In June 2002, Thornley resigned as CEO but stayed on as chairman [42] and three of the seven members of the board of directors resigned in response, including Robert Ryan, Myriann Byerwalter and James Tananbaum. [42] [43] In July 2002, BT LookSmart acquired UK Plus from Associated New Media (ANM) for an undisclosed amount. [44] [45] On 1 October 2002, Jason Kellerman became the CEO of LookSmart, having previously served as COO of the company. [46] In early-December 2002, LookSmart paid US$3.5 million in cash and 1 million in LookSmart shares to purchase BT LookSmart from BT Group and subsequently shut down the joint venture. [47] LookSmart also returned US$1.5 million in restricted cash that was to be used for the funding of the joint venture. [47]
In January 2003, LookSmart acquired Intellectual property rights from Grub for $1.3 million in cash and stock. [48] On 6 March 2003, LookSmart announced that they had renewed an agreement with Time Warner Cable's Road Runner division to continue providing directory listings for Road Runner subscribers. [49] On 9 July 2003, LookSmart announced that they had reached an agreement to provide listing services in the United States for web portal Terra Lycos. [50]
In August 2003, LookSmart stated in a financial report that Microsoft, which accounted for 64% of the company's listing revenues in the last 6 months and 70% of the company's overall revenue, started testing its own search technology without LookSmart's listings on some of its websites in the United Kingdom and LookSmart's stock dropped more than 20% on 15 August and continued dropping on 18 August. [51] [52] Also in August, William Lonergan became the new CFO of LookSmart. [53] In October 2003, LookSmart reintroduced its bid-for-placement ads in order to compete with Google and Yahoo!, which were previously offered through LookSmart's UK division. [54] On 6 October 2003, Microsoft announced that it would not renew its agreement with LookSmart and the company's stock price plunged 52.3% in a day and its stock fell to $1.44 per share. [51] [55] [56] In response to this, LookSmart fired half of its employees in December 2003. [57]
In September 2003, the company settled a lawsuit filed in May 2002 by Legal Staffing Partners after the company converted thousands of websites that originally had paid a onetime submission fee into a cost-per-click payment model. [2] [58]
In 2003, LookSmart had a net income of $5.8 million and made $140.9 million in revenue. [59]
In January 2004, LookSmart sold its Australian operations to Telstra's online division Sensis and most of LookSmart's 30 employees in Australia started working for Sensis. [21] Also in January, Jason Kellerman resigned as CEO of LookSmart and was temporarily replaced as CEO by Damian Smith. [60] Starting on 15 January 2004, LookSmart's directory listings were no longer shown on MSN Search. [55] In April 2004, LookSmart acquired Net Nanny from BioNet Systems, LLC for $5.3 million in stock and cash. [61] On 1 July 2004, Teresa Dial replaced Thornley as chairman of the company. [62]
In 2005, LookSmart was forced to consolidate its shares after facing suspension from the NASDAQ. [32] On 15 March 2005, LookSmart had a market cap of $96.21 million and its stock price was at $0.85 per share. [63] In May 2005, LookSmart started providing Ask.com with its sponsored listings. [64] On 28 March 2006, LookSmart closed the Zeal directory. [65]
In January 2007, ContentWatch Inc. acquired Net Nanny from LookSmart. [66] John Simonelli, the CFO and COO of LookSmart, resigned in June 2007. [67] [68] On 17 July 2007, the company sold Grub to Wikia [69] for $50,000. [37] On 1 August 2007, David Hills resigned as CEO of LookSmart and Edward West was appointed CEO the same day. [70] Also in August, LookSmart's management made the decision to exit consumer products and sell or dispose of their websites and assets associating with their consumer properties revenue stream. [37] Further developments in 2007 included Michael Grubb resigning as CTO of LookSmart on 7 September 2007, [71] LookSmart closing WiseNut in late-September, [72] [73] the company delisting from the Australian Securities Exchange on 1 October, [74] the company selling Zeal on 15 October for $50,000, [37] the company selling FindArticles to CNET Networks on 9 November for $20.5 million, [37] [75] [76] and William Bush being appointed CFO of LookSmart on 20 December. [77]
On 14 January 2009, LookSmart had a market cap of US$28 million and its stock price was at $0.14 per share. [32] In March 2009, the company sold Furl to Diigo. [78] In May 2009, Ask.com, which accounted for 89% of LookSmart's company publisher solutions revenue in the first quarter of 2009, announced that it would not renew its contract with LookSmart for sponsored listings. [64] In December 2009, Jean-Yves Dexmier became the CEO of LookSmart. [79] On 31 December 2009, Ask.com ended its contract with LookSmart for sponsored listings. [64]
In February 2013, Michael Onghai became the CEO of LookSmart. [80] On 2 September 2013, LookSmart's Canadian subsidiary, LookSmart Canada Ltd., acquired assets of Syncapse Corp. upon court approval for $3 million. [81] On 22 September 2014, LookSmart announced the launch of its Information Technology services offering Novatech.io. [82]
On 16 July 2015, the company had a market cap of around $3.6 million and its stock price was at $0.63 per share. [83] In October 2015, the company transferred all of its assets to its subsidiary, LookSmart Group Inc. and spun off the ownership of LookSmart Group to its shareholders. [84] LookSmart, Ltd., the company's former entity, completed a merger with Maritime Technologies Corp., a subsidiary of Pyxis Tankers Inc., on 28 October. [84]
On 24 March 2017, LookSmart Group completed a merger with its subsidiary, LookSmart Capital Inc. and LookSmart Group announced that it would de-register its common stock and suspend its public reporting obligations. [85] The company changed its trading symbol to LKSTD for 20 business days and changed its trading symbol back to LKST afterwards. [85]
On 3 April 2017, LookSmart Group announced the launch of its new data center building located in Central Phoenix, Arizona as a technology center, Silicon Canyon. [86] On 13 April 2017, LookSmart Group announced partnerships with the Clickable Institute of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Digital marketing and Richie Bello West to help veterans, minorities and immigrants at Silicon Canyon. [3]
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