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Community Connect Selects Eurekster to Power Community Search for Its Ethnically Diverse Audiences

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 February 2006, 09:00 CST

Eurekster, Inc., a pioneer in community-powered, social search and monetization for Web publishers, today announced that Community Connect, the leader in online community destinations for US ethnic groups, will integrate Eurekster's SearchPublisher(TM) as the social search solution for visitors to its Community Connect sites: AsianAvenue.com, BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com.

"Eurekster's community search platform provides a search experience that builds upon the diversity of each of our 16 million community members, enabling them to benefit from each other's interests through search," said Court Cunningham, COO of Community Connect. "As our community members have specialized interests, the ability to explore, find and share more relevant results dynamically will be of great interest to our members."

Community Connect creates and maintains online communities for US ethnic audiences. The publisher's proprietary technology provides members with the tools that enable them to form and engage in culturally-oriented communities, express themselves and meet new friends. Their sites offer more than content, members can take advantage of instant communication and networking opportunities, resulting in a highly personalized and meaningful community experience. Each one of their Web sites provides free personal pages, email access, discussion forums, news, chat, instant messaging, games, promotions and online events.

The sites are AsianAvenue.com, BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com.

-- AsianAvenue.com was launched on July 21, 1997. Since then, the site has received numerous accolades. Yahoo! Internet Life named AsianAvenue.com one of the "Top 100 Sites in 2000", calling it the "Top Asian-American Network" on the Web. AsianAvenue.com appeals to all Asian Americans, especially second and third generations who have started developing pan-Asian identities.

-- BlackPlanet.com, launched on September 1, 1999, has been heralded as the number one online destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. Within its first year, BlackPlanet.com experienced exponential growth, hitting the one million member mark. The site continues to expand at the rate of over 8,000 members daily. In April, 2000, Media Metrix named BlackPlanet.com as the eighth stickiest site on the Internet. (Ebay was rated seventh stickiest.)

-- MiGente.com, launched on October 2, 2000, targets second and third generation Latinos, who either are bilingual or English-dominant. The 2000 US Census reports that approximately one in eight people in the US are of Latino origin. With the success of AsianAvenue.com and BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com is positioned for a brilliant future.

"While Eurekster's community search platform and services were built to provide the Web's vertically oriented and community Web publishers with unique and specialized value as well as high-performance revenue opportunities, our platform was also designed specifically to serve sites that are focused on social interaction like Community Connect," said Steven E. Marder, CEO of Eurekster, Inc. "As Community Connect has created a place for their members to connect and share information and experiences, our platform leverages this passion and connectivity to provide these highly specialized communities with a social search experience automatically and dynamically customized by and for their users."

How Eurekster SearchPublisher Works

Leveraging extensive intellectual property and years of product development, Eurekster SearchPublisher provides contextual refinement of search queries originating from publisher websites, and improves the relevancy of results through continuous and automatic behavioral analysis of the search results that users click on and actually find useful. Users participate passively and anonymously, and are not required to provide a login or personal preferences, tag bookmarks, invite their friends to participate, or perform any tasks other than use the publisher's site or toolbar and search from it.

Eurekster SearchPublisher makes all the connections and does all the work. It refines the search queries and re-ranks results drawn from general search indexes such as web, site, news, image and shopping to present information that meets the demonstrated interest of the user and other like-minded users of the publisher's website. In addition to providing tailored search results for specific queries, Eurekster SearchPublisher provides a "What's Hot" BuzzCloud feature that automatically shares the most popular and recommended searches for a site's users. Eurekster SearchPublisher also has an optional branded toolbar that publishers can use to extend their site experience and revenue-generating search offering to other destinations their users visit on the Web.

About Community Connect Inc.

Community Connect, the leader in online community destinations for U.S. ethnic groups and the 18th largest U.S. web property, measured in page views. With more than 16 million registered members across our three sites -- AsianAvenue.com, BlackPlanet.com and MiGente.com -- and more than eight years of experience in building online destinations for U.S. ethnic groups, Community Connect is the definitive source for reaching these audiences. Our members return to our sites every day in order to interact with people of similar backgrounds and interests, to establish meaningful relationships, to find jobs and to read about the latest news in politics, culture, music, entertainment. To find out more about Community Connect, go to www.communityconnect.com.

About Eurekster, Inc.

Eurekster, Inc. is a leader in community search technologies that harness the knowledge and behavior of online communities to increase search relevance and value for site visitors, site publishers and advertisers. Eurekster SwickiBuilder and Eurekster SearchPublisher leverage the company's patented technology and patent-pending processes that link search algorithms to social networks and communities of interest. Eurekster SwickiBuilder gives small or individual site publishers the ability to create their own search engines, while Eurekster SearchPublisher is an enterprise-level platform for delivering a highly customized, branded search feature on large websites. Eurekster, Inc. is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco, California (www.eurekster.com).

Source: Business Wire

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