Names Malcolm Lewis SVP and GM, Social Buying
Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading local search site and network, today announced that the company has created a new Social Buying business unit. Local.com also announced the appointment of Malcolm Lewis as senior vice president and general manager of the company's Social Buying business unit, effective immediately.
Lewis will be responsible for leading the development and expansion of the company's social buying initiatives, which started with the company's recently announced acquisition of the iTwango group-buying technology platform.
Lewis has more than 20 years of experience building businesses for public and private companies in the consumer Internet and enterprise software industries. Most recently, Lewis founded Fablistic, a personalized social recommendations service, which helps users find new things to do and places to go based on recommendations from other users with similar tastes and interests.
Prior to Fablistic, Lewis served as Local.com's senior vice president and general manager of private label following the 2007 acquisition of Lewis' company and leading private label local search platform, PremierGuide. Lewis built PremierGuide into the leading private label local search solution for local media companies. Over the next two years he transformed the business into a highly profitable entity, growing revenues over 800 percent to approximately $8 million. Prior to joining Local.com in 2007, Lewis held senior management positions at various technology companies including Vayusphere, Vitria Technology and Oracle Corporation.
"We believe social buying represents an important entry point for small businesses to participate in online advertising. We plan to grow our presence in social buying in partnership with our expanding regional media network," said Bruce Crair, Local.com president and COO. "We are pleased to welcome Malcolm back to the team. He brings a wealth of valuable knowledge and experience and we look forward to his contributions to the company and our future growth."
Lewis will report to Crair and be responsible for managing and growing Local.com's Social Buying business unit. The company anticipates rolling out its first social buying related products around mid-2011.
Small business advertisers have shown strong interest and satisfaction with social buying as an advertising medium. The iTwango platform enables advertisers to set minimum and maximum deal participation (known as tipping points), thereby enabling tighter control of their exposure than other daily-deal sites.
iTwango will undergo rebranding and is expected to be distributed widely across the flagship Local.com site and network of over 1,000 local and regional media sites, as well as over 100,000 hyperlocal sites under Local.com management. The iTwango platform is also expected to be made available to Local.com's regional media network on a private label basis.
About Local.com®
Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM) owns and operates a leading local search site and network in the United States. The company uses patented and proprietary technologies to provide over 20 million consumers each month with relevant search results for local businesses, products and services on Local.com and over 1,000 partner sites. Local.com powers over 100,000 local websites, and tens of thousands of small businesses use Local.com products and services to reach consumers using a variety of subscription, performance and display advertising and website products. To advertise, or for more information visit: www.local.com.
Forward Looking Statements
All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this document regarding our anticipated financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of our management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, words such as 'anticipate,' 'believe,' 'estimate,' 'plans,' 'expect,' 'intend,' 'projects,' 'feel' and similar expressions and phrases, as they relate to Local.com or our management, identify forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of our management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to our management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including, but not limited to, Yahoo!-Bing paying less RPC and revenues to us for our search results, our ability to adapt our business following the Yahoo!-Bing integration or to improve our RPCs and revenues following that integration, our ability to monetize the Local.com domain, including at a profit, our ability to retain a monetization partner for the Local.com domain and other web properties under our management that allows us to operate profitably, our ability to incorporate our local-search technologies, our ability to market the Local.com domain as a destination for consumers seeking local-search results, our ability to grow our business by enhancing our local-search services, including through businesses we acquire, the future performance of our OCTANE360 business, the integration and future performance of the iTwango business, the possibility that the information and estimates used to predict anticipated revenues and expenses associated with the businesses we acquire are not accurate, difficulties executing integration strategies or achieving planned synergies, the possibility that integration costs and go-forward costs associated with the businesses we acquire will be higher than anticipated, our ability to successfully expand our sales channels for new and existing products and services, our ability to increase the number of businesses that purchase our subscription advertising and other business products, our ability to expand our advertiser and distribution networks, our ability to integrate and effectively utilize our acquisitions' technologies, our ability to develop our products and sales, marketing, finance and administrative functions and successfully integrate our expanded infrastructure, as well as our dependence on major advertisers, competitive factors and pricing pressures, changes in legal and regulatory requirements, and general economic conditions. Any forward-looking statements reflect our current views with respect to future events and are subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this paragraph. Unless otherwise stated, all site traffic and usage statistics are from third-party service providers engaged by the company.
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K/A, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Form 10-Q/A, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K and Form 8-K/A, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Contacts:
Investor Relations Contact:
The Blueshirt Group
Brinlea
C. Johnson, 212-551-1453
brinlea@blueshirtgroup.com
or
Media
Relations Contact:
Local.com
Cameron Triebwasser,
949-789-5223
ctriebwasser@local.com
