This phone briefing with LookSmart CEO Dave Hills is continued from page one.
LookSmart Corporate Information
LookSmart is one of five companies (Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN Search) that crawl and index the Web at any scale. Because we're ten years old and started by being a Web directory, we've got that directory structure together with our "find, save, share" philosophy.LookSmart licenses its' technology as well; for instance, the New York Times utilizes Furl in its paid subscription services. Ask Jeeves licenses LookSmart's ad center. It's a triple threat: LookSmart's vertical search sites, their external ad network, and licensing of Looksmart technology.
LookSmart: Find, Save, Share
LookSmart's article tool, FindArticles.com allows the user to browse over ten million articles. That's the "find".LookSmart's Furl tool allows the searcher to save whatever they've found in the context of actually searching (rather than two separate activities, finding and saving). Hills believes that bookmarking makes sense in the context of actually searching, rather than making finding and saving two separate and divided activities like other bookmarking services such as del.icio.us..
The "share" part of LookSmart's philosophy is this: all Furled results are stacked in a searchable database. You can see different pages that other people have Furled - this amounts to user generated content that updates itself. Obviously, this is a huge draw for searchers, as they can find, save, and share globally throughout the LookSmart network.
