LookSmart and blinkx.com Announce Partnership in Video Content and Search

April 4, 2007; 06:40 AM
LookSmart, an online advertising and technology company, has signed a strategic agreement with blinkx.com, the world’s largest video search engine, to power video search results on LookSmart’s largest consumer site, findarticles.com. FindArticles is part of LookSmart’s proprietary network of sites that delivered 17.6 million uniques in November 2006; the network has grown almost fourfold in two years.

FindArticles’ rich video content will include news clips, short documentaries, TV content, movies and other appropriate video served to the consumer based on their search terms. The site will offer categorically relevant videos under its Arts & Entertainment and Business & Finance sections first, moving to other categories throughout the spring and early summer.

The additional video content is designed to increase visitor frequency and time spent with FindArticles. In addition to growing the audience, the video enhancements will provide new opportunities for advertisers.

“After looking at many options for a video partner who could help grow FindArticles’ audience, blinkx’s content, publisher relationships and technology made them a hands-down winner,” said Dave Hills, President and CEO of LookSmart. “We look forward to this first phase of a growing relationship with the blinkx team.”

“blinkx is the largest video search engine and our popularity derives from our technology which delivers highly relevant video results,” said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CTO of blinkx.com. “We are pleased to be providing LookSmart with the ability to better serve and grow their audience. And it’s a win-win – FindArticles is a great distribution channel for our video content provider partners.”

The video content will augment the more than 11 million articles from 3,000 sources on FindArticles, a resource consumers have come to value as a search tool with high-value vertical content. Throughout 2006, LookSmart focused on enhancing its consumer products user experience and content relevance to increase visitors and ad revenue.

blinkx’s dynamic search engine crawls the web for audio/video content derived from more than 100 leading content and media companies. blinkx uses visual analysis and speech recognition to better understand rich media content which helps return a more refined set of video content results for consumers searching for what they need.

As a pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation as the smartest way to search new forms of online content such as video. With more than seven million hours of indexed video and audio content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech recognition technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than standard metadata-based keyword searches.

About blinkx

blinkx is the world's most comprehensive video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 7,000,000 hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge – as TV and Garage Video on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies listen to – and even see – the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx is a privately-held company based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

About LookSmart

LookSmart is an online advertising and technology company that provides relevant solutions for advertisers, publishers and consumers. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising and banners via its consumer Web properties and a monitored ad distribution network; a customizable set of private-label solutions for publishers, and vertical search sites and web tools for consumers. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com or call 415-348-7000.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, such as references to growing our audience, the implementation and expansion of our relationship with blinkx.com and our business outlook. These statements, including their underlying assumptions, are subject to risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. Results may differ due to various factors such as the possibility that we may be unable to increase growth in our owned-and- operated sites, that we may be unable to license compelling content at reasonable costs or that our relationship with blinkx.com may terminate. In addition, you should read the risk factors detailed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The statements presented in this press release speak only as of the date of the release. Also, please note that except as required by applicable law we undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.

LookSmart is a registered trademark of LookSmart, Ltd.