Business.com

Business.com is an Internet search engine and web directory targeted primarily to an executive and corporate management audience. The company of the same name also operates a pay per click advertising network focused on the business-to-business market.

History

Business.com, Inc. was founded in 1999 by Jake Winebaum, previously chairman of the Walt Disney Internet Group; and Sky Dayton, founder of Earthlink, Boingo Wireless, and Helio, among others. Around that time, the Business.com domain name was purchased from Marc Ostrofsky by Winebaum's eCompanies Ventures for a then record $7.5 million.. This represented a tidy profit over the $150,000 price tag of the domain in 1997, also a record in its own time. In addition to investment by eCompanies, early funding in the amount of $61 million was provided in 2000 by Pearson PLC, Reed Business Information, McGraw Hill, and others. In its initial form, Business.com aimed to be the Internet's leading search engine for small business and corporate information.

As with much of the nascent and well-hyped Internet industry, Business.com struggled through the Dot-com bubble years. The company retooled beginning in 2002 after massive layoffs and a new focus on developing a pay for performance ad network model. In April 2003, the company achieved profitability, and on November 8, 2004, having survived the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the company secured an additional $10 million in venture capital funding from Benchmark Capital.

On October 9, 2006, Business.com launched Work.com, a site with business how-to guides contributed by the small business community.

Then on July 26, 2007, after beating out Dow Jones & Company, the New York Times Company, IAC/InterActiveCorp, and News Corp, telephone directory publisher R.H. Donnelley Corporation announced plans to acquire Business.com in a deal valued at $345 million. The deal closed on August 23, 2007.

Business Model

Business.com compiles search results from a combination of sources and applies a proprietary categorization scheme to organize the information gathered. Results to user queries may include suggested categories, sponsored links from the Business.com directory, and relevant web sites as provided in partnership with Google. The Business.com directory organization was developed by industry experts and library scientists and contains more than 400,000 listings within about 65,000 industry, product, and service categories.

The search results page also includes relevant content from the Work.com web site when available.

The pay for performance Business.com Advertising Network distributes paid advertiser listings across a number of business-focused web sites. Some key partners within the ad network have at times included (non-exhaustive list):

• The Wall Street Journal
• Forbes
• BusinessWeek
• Hoover's
• The Financial Times
• AllBusiness.com

External links

• Business.com web site
• Work.com web site
• Business.com, Inc. company profile from BusinessWeek
• Business.com's winding road, CNN's Money.com article based on an interview with Jake Winebaum.
• Interview with Jake Winebaum, CEO of Business.com via socaltech.com
• eCompanies venture capital site

References