Lycos, Inc. today
announced the acquisition of targeted-content provider WiseWire Corp. for around $39.75 million in Lycos shares.
Under the acquisition, the three-year old, Pittsburgh-based WiseWire’s automated directory will be incorporated into Lycos’ search page. Lycos said it will be the first online service using the technology which is based on user input and an intelligent agent product.
The deal will be followed by hundred-day launch that the company is billing as “a better alternative to Yahoo!”
The WiseWire system is designed to produce hierarchical directories of site links as ranked by users, in addition to sites emanating from the Lycos Web spider.
The results search pages will also list matching sites from Lycos-owned Tripod home pages. The search results feature not only text and graphics, but licensed pictures and sounds from a new gallery segmented into popular areas, such as models, sports, and movies.
“WiseWire clearly has both extremely valuable technology and remarkable
talent across many areas,” said Robert J. Davis, CEO of Lycos, in a statement. “The combination of Lycos and WiseWire brings the interactive and collaborative underpinnings of the Web to users and we expect this new paradigm to raise the bar for our competitors.”
“The marriage of machine and end-user helps shape, define and classify the Internet, ultimately delivering users the most relevant up-to-date search results that are virtually free of dead links.”
