I’ll update this in the morning, but as I predicted (or rather, intonated, here and here), Furl has been sold, to Looksmart. There were other bidders, but founder Mike Giles went with Looksmart for a number of reasons, he tells me. One, they did not force him to move to California. And two, they seemed comfortable with allowing him to continue the company on the path he wants to take it. Congratulations, Mike!
This of course is yet another paving stone in the path toward clickstream-based search, a path A9, Ask, and Yahoo are all busy blazing. More soon.
Update: Release in extended entry.
]]>< ![CDATA[
LookSmart Acquires Furl.net
Innovative Technology Helps Consumers to Save, Search and
Share Online Information
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK,
ASX: LOK), an Internet search company, today announced the acquisition of
Furl.net, an innovative service that enables users to save a full-text copy of
any page on the Web, then search and share that data. Terms of the acquisition
were not disclosed. Furl allows members to simply and securely save copies of
online articles, product information, electronic receipts, favorite Web sites
and other interesting or important pages. Members can instantly find what they
need by searching their personal archive and the entire Web, through the Furl
toolbar or directly at Furl.net, from any computer. Furl also provides many
options to share and discover compelling information via email subscriptions,
RSS feeds, blog integration and personalized recommendations.
“Furl’s technology and desktop toolbar are a perfect fit with LookSmart’s
search strategy,” said Kevin Krim, vice president of Web properties for
LookSmart. “Similar to our parental control software product Net Nanny
(www.netnanny.com) and our FindArticles (www.findarticles.com) service,
Furl.net helps people search and interact with high-quality sets of data
specific to their needs.” LookSmart plans to maintain Furl.net as a free
service, generating revenue from relevant sponsored listings on search and
content pages. The company will leverage its advertising and search resources
to build on Furl.net’s already compelling features. “To that end, we’re
pleased to announce that we’re providing 5 gigabytes (GB) of storage for each
user’s public archive, enough for tens of thousands of archived and searchable
items.”
Furl.net solves a major problem for Web users. “Until now, the only way
you could save a permanent copy of a Web page was to print it out, save it to
your desktop or email a copy of it to yourself,” said Mike Giles, founder of
Furl.net. “With Furl, you can easily save any page and then find it again
instantly by searching the full text of your personal archive. This way, even
though the Web site changes or the page you want is deleted, you still have a
copy that you can find when you need it. It’s a personal search engine for
every user.” Early Furl.net users are seeing immediate benefits. “Furl.net
creates what I’ll call a ‘PersonalWeb,’ and having your own PersonalWeb is a
very cool thing,” says John Battelle, founder of Wired Magazine and The
Industry Standard. “Every page you care about is now saved, and is searchable.
How I wish I had Furl while I was researching my book for the past year.”
It’s simple to begin “Furling” and requires no software to download. After
registering for free at Furl.net, the user can install the Furl toolbar, or
simply add a “Furl It” button to their browser’s toolbar. Furl is currently
compatible with a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla and
Firefox on both Windows and Mac operating systems. As a trusted and essential
utility for its users, Furl.net has been engineered for a high degree of
security, stability and privacy.
For more information, or to get started using Furl, please visit
www.furl.net.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements based on our
current expectations about our industry and our management’s beliefs and
assumptions. Any statements that refer to expectations, plans or other
characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying
assumptions, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not
guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties.
Our actual results could differ from those expressed in these forward-looking
statements for various reasons, such as the possibility that Furl’s features
may not work as anticipated, that we may change, introduce or terminate the
various features of the Furl service, that planned monetization for the
service will not be sufficient to cover its costs; that we will have technical
problems which prevent Furl from being useful or effective, and other risks
outlined in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q
filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
About LookSmart
LookSmart is a leader in commercial search services and a developer of
innovative web search solutions. The Company provides consumers with relevant
search results through a distribution network that includes Lycos, CNET,
InfoSpace (Excite, MetaCrawler, Webcrawler), Cox Interactive, Apple’s
Sherlock, U.C. Berkeley and LookSmart.com, while delivering high performance
sales leads at a reasonable price to online businesses. LookSmart is based in
San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com.
About Furl
Furl.net is a free online service that enables users to save an archived
copy of any page on the Web, and quickly find it again by searching their
personal archive. Furl.net provides personalized recommendations of
interesting new Web pages, guided by the sites members save, and offers
convenient tools for sharing online content. Furl.net is a Web property of
LookSmart. For more information or to get started using Furl, please visit
www.furl.net.
CONTACT:
Michele Large
KML Communications
+1-206-441-0500
+1-206-372-2893
press0904@looksmart.net
SOURCE LookSmart, Ltd.
-0- 09/23/2004
/CONTACT: Michele Large of KML Communications, +1-206-441-0500, or
+1-206-372-2893, or press0904@looksmart.net, for LookSmart/
/FCMN Contact: kmlcommunications@cablespeed.com /
/Web site: http://www.furl.net/
/Web site: http://www.looksmart.com/
(LOOK)
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