Looksmart Gets New CEO

Well they needed to make some moves...

What would you think about Looksmart picking up IXquick?

They can continue to build zeal ,with IX they offer one of the better meta searches (bring in mainstream to the US market)and have plenty of ad space for revenues

Why would Looksmart buy IXquick?

Surely if they wanted the could but an equally good Meta together. But I don't understand why they would want to, surely its in their interests to develop their own index.

BIAS I guess..I really like IXquick ..

It would make for an interesting aquisition.. Looksmart..as in dont look in just one place.. look in all places at once through IXQuick

IXquick already has traffic and advertisers (and a good reputation as a meta)..so why start from scratch if you could start on a solid foundation is the way I look at it.

Yes, I understand it's a long shot..but I do see someone eventually lifting IX out of obscurity ..it's such a solid meta

and with Mr Hills extensive advertising background wouldnt it make sense to instead of creating from the ground up (and then trying to bring in advertisers)

.. aquire a solid foundation complete with big advertisers (revenues) Looksmart can bring IXquick out of obscurity and quadruple it's current traffic by bringing it to the US market .

New Looksmart CEO David B. Hills is indeed an advertising sales guy and certainly has a history of making a success of these kinds of businesses; from his time at About.com - "While at CIM [1999-2001], he re-engineered the company's sales efforts and tripled the company's sales in two years."
[primedia.com...]

His previous turnaround work at CIM must have been in his favour given the substantial ownership of Looksmart by CIM (Cox Interactive Media owns 14% of stock): [forbes.com...]

Back in 2003 Web Rank's Kalena Jordan interviewed LookSmart VP Dakota Sullivan on tough questions about "...what is next for this second-tier player in the wake of Yahoo's acquisition of Inktomi, Overture's acquisition of AltaVista and Google's acquisition of Blogger. Poor old LookSmart's looking more and more like the kid no one wants to pick for their kickball team.":
[high-search-engine-ranking.com...]

In a Mar 04 interview, "Searching for the next Google," (Red Herring, March 9 2004) Looksmart's then interim CEO Damian Smith talked about rolling out Niche Directories for Looksmart:
[redherring.com...]

Wisenut (the search directory owned by Looksmart) has a good reputation for relevant results if you're after something from one year ago or earlier, kind of a web index wayback machine.

There have also been reports this year that Wisenut is crawling more heavily than before which is probably a good sign:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Looksmart's Grub project is particularly interesting: [grub.org...]

Why would they want IXquick?

Wisenut is perfectly good, or do you know something we don't dauction?