In an exclusive interview this morning with Fizzylab’s CEO Scott Hudson, seattle.internet.com has learned that the Seattle-based company is currently looking to be acquired.
According to Hudson, he has recently been involved in serious talks with two large companies, however due to the large response he has received from other companies in the past few days – he has decided to implement a formal auction. The terms of the auction will be decided upon in the next few days.
Fizzylab’s technology to automate the targeting of information was a big hit from its inception. After the company secured $9.5 million in VC back in May 2000, the developer of context-driven search technology went full speed ahead with its flagship product the “Relevator”.
FizzyLab’s Relevator is based on a mathematical modeling system that identifies meaningful relationships between web content based on concepts or themes rather than individual keywords. As visitors browse content on a newspaper site, for example, they will see a button or prompt indicating related articles. Without entering search criteria or typing a single word, this link will take them to a page with links to all articles having a contextual or thematic relationship to the original article.
The company currently has 26 live customers, including the Seattle PI, Business Week and the New York Post.
According to Hudson, Fizzylab is currently not persuing new customers and has reduced its staff from 80 to 16.
Hudson believes that the reason his company is capable of going down the acquisition track is because of its valuable technology. The Fizzylab technology, although currently being used to post related articles, can also be used to post other related items such as products to buy or advertising information.
