Life goes on for smaller Internet companies. Even as market apathy has many key players -- profitable ones included -- flapping around in the single digits, it's business as usual for the Web-wise upstarts.
Since a lot of the headlines may not warrant full-blown articles, I figured that I would gather a few of yesterday's stories that I find interesting as an Internet stock watcher.
Let's go dutch
Flush with cash after selling its FindArticles website to CNET (Nasdaq: CNET) two months ago, LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK) commenced a previously announced Dutch auction yesterday. Investors will be able to tender as many shares as they want at a price per share between $3.40 and $4.15. LookSmart will then buy as many as 4.8 million shares of the lowest-priced shares tendered.
It may not sound like much, but it would retire more than a fifth of the company's outstanding shares. The company has enough cash on its balance sheet to do it again if it's successful, though it may want to be careful with its greenbacks, as analysts expect the search provider's losses to widen in 2008.
Bring on the virtual awards
The Writers Guild of America strike brought you a yawner of a Golden Globes ceremony over the weekend. The strike rendered it little more than a glorified press conference sans many of the winners.
It seems as if many of the Web's corporate citizens sense the consumer's hunger for awards, so they're delivering the goods.
Expedia's (Nasdaq: EXPE) TripAdvisor announced the winners of its 2008 Travelers' Choice Awards. Be grateful that there were no acceptance speeches or lavish after-parties, since TripAdvisor tapped 325 different winners.
Not to be outdone, The Knot (Nasdaq: KNOT) introduced The Knot Real Wedding Awards. In what the matrimonial planning site hopes will be the first of several annual installments, the site will dish out honors in categories like the best wedding of 2007, top Web page designs, and the funniest wedding-day bloopers. The Knot will declare the winners, fittingly enough, on Valentine's Day next month.
QuePasa says goooooooooaaaaaaal!
Hispanic portal QuePasa is getting into the game, literally. It is finalizing a partnership with BRC Group to set up a social networking hub for BRC's La Alianza de Futbol Hispano, an organization that promotes soccer to Latino communities in the United States.
With its recently hired CEO, QuePasa is hoping to cash in on the fast-growing market of stateside Hispanics going online for news and communication. Soccer is obviously a sport that the Latino community relishes, given its huge popularity in South America.
Eight-minute apps
Wireless broadband provider Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR) is giving Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) cloud computing initiative a major push by promoting Google Apps to its subscribers.
The WiMax specialist may only have a user base in the hundreds of thousands, but it's another win for Google, as it looks to position itself as a market leader in Web-based productivity software.
