Wisenut Deactivated

LookSmart Kills Wisenut

[GameMasterM]

They also redesigned the LookSmart homepage.

In addition they removed the 180 vertical search sites and folded them into Findarticles.

CEO Hills quit in august and the new CEO (interim) is the Board President Ted West.

Any doubts LookSmart is being shopped? For more proof check the sEC filings and figure out why they gave shares to a Sand Hill Road VC law firm earlier this summer.

Guess from here (pure speculation)is General Atlantic (owners of Net sol) will be the suitor.

[Marcia]

Wow, it's really gone.

[wisenut.com...]

And findarticles.com runs Adsense.

[Maxnpaddy]

Another one bites the dust.. Thought it was quite cool, obviously not making much.

[martinibuster]

What a difference good management makes. ASK benefited from a clear vision focused on a longterm strategy; Looksmart floundered by focusing on the short term.

Long reviled by SEM professionals for a perception of poor value, they never seemed to cultivate a dialogue with the SEM constituents (us) that paid their bills, and ended up perpetuating their negative image as the complaints piled up over the years.

They overlooked potential ranking and traffic monsters like ZEAL and failed to optimize and profit from it, taking the short term choice and shutting it down (destroying a healthy volunteer community in the process).

Looksmart seems to move from one bad decision to another. If ASK is the model of competent and successful corporate leadership, Looksmart appears to be it's complete opposite.

[jimbeetle]

Any doubts LookSmart is being shopped?

But does it have anything viable anybody would actually want? It's lurched around so much the past few years it's hard to believe it was once the company it was.

[JS_Harris]

It was a good site/service but far too top heavy imho.

Sometimes a site/service doesn't need a SEO team, management team, advertising team, sales team, financial advisers, technical team, design team or even a listing on wall street to be successfull, I think LookSmart became one of those over time. A few others are in the same position, united online comes to mind.

John Doe from nowheresville can come up with a competitive website that has none of those these days making him impossible to beat from a cost perspective.

[Rugles]

I remember when they were supposed to be the next Google.

[randle]

Well they made it 8 years; not as good as some but better than a lot;

Created on..............: 1999-Aug-05.
Expires on..............: 2008-Aug-04.

You would think they could have done a better job of transitioning visitors to Looksmart, just looks kind of sad they way they did it, basically an abandoned web site. I’ve been to funerals that were more upbeat; find something to toast to.

[maximillianos]

Gee I feel out of the loop... I have never heard of WiseNut before this...?

[mack]

Anyone ever use Wisenut? I only looked periodicaly to check listings, never really saw then as a first teir SE.

I guess it all comes down to good old marketing. The more companies you run, the more you have to market. Consolodation seams to be the key here.

Mack.

[iThink]

Looksmart looks like an opportunity for Ebay to add to their impressive list of dud acquisitions like skype :}

Looksmart is fighting a loosing battle since last 4 years and they should have been smart enough to know that. I believe that they sell their domain before that too becomes worthless.

[BillyS]

Seems like a cold way to close up shop.

[Compworld]

The market cap of the company is only 61 million. Maybe Yahoo will buy them. They like purchasing overpriced companies.

[Habtom]

What is up with thier search results though, it keeps on giving empty results.

[skibum]

They were really early to the game, they had ample opportunities to be a real player. They never had a clue, they screwed their customers multiple times, went for the quick buck, wasted some great assets, some great relationships, had some decent technology at various times.

Feel sorry for the folks that worked there and all the times I had to say no, we're not interested in junk traffic to the reps. You burned us multiple times and we son't be putting our reputation ont he line by using LookSmart again. Isn't the Ask.com ad platform operated by LookSmart? Maybe IAC will buy them and do something with what is left?

[jecasc]

Never heard of wisenut before - probably like many other people. Could be the reason they had to close down...

[justgowithit]

I used to use Wisenut every now and then and about a month ago I started getting server load errors.

I think they gave up on it a while ago and started pulling resources.

[ecmedia]

I can't wait to see the day the other bad search engines like Yahoo, Live, Ask, etc. close shop. Until these bad ones disappear we will never have a good alternative to Google, which we badly need - no one likes monopolies.

[kaz]

Flashback to the wisenut white paper circa 2001

[web.archive.org...]

rip

[texas4qld]

Wisenut is just being relabled imho.
It was previously used as backfill for furl.net and also for white labeling web results for other websites that didn't want to pay Google or Yahoo for traffic.

But as you can see Looksmarts verticles are not dead, they are still idoling in the backround and feeding results to a group of websites currently being built (see below these a just 3 of looksmarts verticals)

www.looksmartcities.com/
www.looksmartauto.com/
www.looksmarthealth.com/

Now ask yourself this,............why are these verticals still running if they have been shut down along with wisenut.com?

The answer IMHO is that they are building another vertical based search engine with the assistant of a larger player.

<snip>

These sites are currently under construction and as yet have no web results (my guess is wisenut.com will supply the feed) also note at the very bottom the words "Looksolutions" but the site is owned by "vortal interatcive" whom is owned by "network solutions"

<snip>

You can see they all have a feed from Looksmarts verticals, but currently results are being blocked. I suggest that Wisenut.com will supply web results for these vertical engines.
Take a look at the advertisers on the how 2 search websites, they are big.
So is wisenut dead, or just being used in a new role, I guess we'll see soon enough ;-)

[edited by: engine at 8:45 am (utc) on Oct. 8, 2007]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[GameMasterM]

Tex4, I see what you are saying. Interesting. Today I read where MySpace is set to occupy up to one full floor of the LookSmart building at 625 Second St.
Since the building is full as reported by LookSmart, where are the new residents going to find desk space.

I suggest Gen Atlantic Partners will facilitate a move of the LookSmart people to wherever the Network Solutions headquarters are.
It's terribly obvious the end of the company as it is currently know is at hand.
Only an educated guess of course.