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Not good news for Ink, I fear!
DaveN
...announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire privately held WiseNut, Inc., in a stock transaction valued at $9.25 million.
[wisenut.com...]
WiseNut in a stock transaction valued at $9.25 million.
Or will the future bring different secondary results on different local Looksmart's?
L$.com - Wisenut
L$.co.uk - Google
L$.fr - Inktomi
Etc..
It would have been nice to see Wisenut go the same route as Google - but I couldn't see it happening. Good though it was, Wisenut was not sending me any traffic.
If Looksmart are able to keep it relevant (I know - unlikely) but promote it enough to get some decent traffic it may still prove to be a valuable extra traffic stream for those sites which are too dependant on Google.
I guess it all depends on how much they want to charge.
Dixon.
>that includes a scalable billion document index...
That seems a tad more than the listings in L$ - no matter what their coming expectations may be!
This will be an interesting development to follow...
curiouser and curiouser..
Seems more like LooksRich To me.
Greektomi
We may well get initial indications and claims to the contrary, but my money is on bait and switch in no time at all.
Unless there was no hope for WiseNut to survive, it's surprising that they took 9 mil in Look$mart stock. It routinely fluctuates between a couple bucks and almost zero. They should have demanded some cash! - $299 per URl and .50 per click.
Skibum, I fear you are right. What a bummer.
Wisenut is a well programmed/established search engine I hope its not another one to goto h3ll. I think these people are buying them out so there isnt any competition, own the little guys before they make it big.
(edited by: EliteWeb at 5:33 pm (utc) on Mar. 12, 2002)
Damn shame to just sell-out like that! I thought they had a real position like Google. I second "Chiyo" post..L$ will just use the brains..
Oh well! Again, thanks Google for keeping to most of your values!
Spinner
[wisenut.com...]
How many of us can honestly say we used LookSmart or Wisenut in the last couple weeks? Maybe we know better, but honestly... We all probably use Google. I know I do, and I do alot of searching of my own.
The reason these smaller engines are dieing is because they are underexposed and underappreciated. It's kinda scary to think about... We're all relying on Google / Yahoo for our traffic. We're playing in their court, and they can take their ball home at any time.
At least they're honest. I'd hate to rely on crappy LookSmart, whose sole intention is profit. Don't get me wrong, that's why we're all here, money, but sometimes people get a little greedy, and lose site of their true representation. I'm rambling...
I love Google, and would love to see some competition to make them run for the money, but the hard truth is, we're not going to see that until we all start using these small, up-and-coming engines.
-meannate
Me, about every day. They have a very good algo. imho. Like Google, it is a touch corporate heavy, but they have done an excellent job for a first build se.
The only reason Wisenut was not delivering traffic was that it was not promoted - similar to most of the excellent resources on the Net.
I've been wondering how long it would take someone to figure out that a company that provides backend search solutions that can offer both human reviewed directory results, AND traditional crawler based results would be an extremely powerful company. When you consider the fact that LS already has working relationships with major portals, It seems quite feasible that some of them may switch to a full LS solution. (Ink should be very worried about this deal. MSN running LS/Wisenut seems highly probable down the road).
Yes, we will need to pay in some way, but this deal combined with Ask's big Teoma push sets the stage for a much more balanced search engine market place in the near future. And that is something I would love to see. As much as I like Google as a search engine, I don't like living in a Google only world.
Both Wisenut and Teoma are good enough to stand toe to toe with Google. I just hope that their new owners have learned enough from Google's success to know that the worse thing they could do is to start making a bunch of chances.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Most Internet search engines do not provide personalized, content-specific search results. WISEwarp2 .... is a search engine middleware tool for customizing search results. It will empower portals to increase revenue by offering Pay-to-Play and Pay-to-Display options. It will also enable portal users to personalize, aggregate and rank search content.
Makes you think...sounds like Looksmart could find that useful.
Has this been in effect on Lycos.Japan?
Ummm... I've said it a before, I get a little traffic -pretty much daily now- from Wisenut.
>Ink should be very worried about this deal.
Ditto.
I know Joe Public hasn't heard of it - but since the great PR0 campaign of Google, I've found Wisenut (and ATW and Teoma) a pretty good (and a little better) deliverer of accurate SERPs.
I've managed to convince a few people to change - the same way I did with Google 2 years ago!
