Ask Jeeves purchases Bloglines

Ask JeevesI heart Bloglines

Ask Jeeves officially purchased Bloglines. Mark Fletcher and his team will move to the Ask Jeeves remote office in Los Gatos where Mark will be GM of Bloglines. Teoma will power Bloglines search. Bloglines will gather and monetize users’ attention data for contextual advertising. Bloglines launched 18 months ago in June 2003

Official Announcements

  • Ask Jeeves. “Ask Jeeves plans to leverage these technologies across its search and portal brands, and as of today, Bloglines’ Web search capability will be powered by Ask Jeeves’ search technology.”
  • Ask Jeeves Weblog. “There will be no short-term changes to Bloglines that weren’t already on their roadmap”
  • Bloglines acquisition FAQ. “Terms of Service and Privacy Policies remain unchanged.”
  • Mark Fletcher’s Weblog. “We don’t think that world-class blog search exists yet; with Teoma and Bloglines that will happen.”

Commentary from journalists granted interviews

  • CNET News.com. “The average user of Bloglines visits the site four times a day.”
  • John Battelle. “I’d be surprised if the deal was less than $25 million.”
  • Marc Hedlund. “Bloglines builds the profile, Teoma runs the ads, and both sides win.”

Others of note

  • Susan Mernit. [D]oesn’t the valuations of the other aggregators suddenly seem higher?

Ongoing resources