LookSmart 4 Quarter

[Brett_Tabke]

[eweek.com...]

The San Francisco-based company warned late Thursday that it would not meet its earlier earnings guidance for year-end 2004 and announced a series of executive moves as it attempts to restructure its business.

Press Release:
[biz.yahoo.com...]

"As previously announced, LookSmart did not properly deploy sufficient sales resources in the fourth quarter and we are obviously not satisfied with this outcome," stated Chief Executive Officer David Hills. "We have identified the underlying causes of these problems and have made the appropriate adjustments, including hiring two industry veterans to lead our paid listings and consumer products divisions.

[pmkpmk]

I think MSN will buy them. MSN would be stupid to keep using Overture results.

I heard they have a few software developers up there in Redmond...

MS has always been good in "getting inspired" by existing solutions. I think if MS is going to have PPC for MSN, then it will look pretty much like AdWords and will be done inhouse.

[GameMasterM]

Probably MSNs intention all along. Drop LookSmart, watch them fumble about and then swoop in for the bargain basement sale.
Think about their properties Furl and FindArticles. LookSmarts has thousands of advertisers and and a fairly decent hand edited directory.
Take away the cash on hand and the assets are roughly valued in the 60 million range. Seems cheap.