Become.com

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Become, Inc.
Type Private
Industry Shopping Search, Discovery Shopping
Founded 2004
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, USA
Key people Michael Yang, founder and CEO
Website www.become.com

Become.com is a product price comparison service and discovery shopping search engine. Become.com targets popular products such as electronics, home, garden, computers, cameras, clothing, health, beauty and more.[1]

History

Become, Inc., was founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun who also founded mySimon.[2] By Early February, 2005, the original founders added Jon Glick, past Senior Manager of Search at Yahoo.[3] Two other executives, Greg Haslam of NexTag, and Tony Pecora of eBay, were also brought on board at Become.com.[4]

Become.com is a privately held company in Sunnyvale, California who received an undisclosed amount of funding during their series A round and an additional $7.2 million in the second round of funding, led by Transcosmos venture capital group, while angel investors Rob Conway and Bob Bozeman were also named.[5] On March 14, 2008 Become.com raised $17.5MM in additional funding from TPG Growth Fund. In October 2009, Become.com acquired the German e-commerce technology firm Pangora. Pangora’s Karlsruhe offices will now be the base for Become’s European operations.[6] In September 2009, Become.com moved into the education lead generation market with its Simply Degrees service. In October 2009 Become.com released a Black Friday site that organized deals by category so that users could compare the savings of Black Friday deals from different merchants, and also contained the ability to compare each individual deal to existing prices for the product from online merchants, so consumers could tell if there were real savings availably for a given product.[7]

In August 2010, Become released a comparison shopping application for the iPad, with features like side-by-side product comparison and the ability to view objects like furniture in sample rooms to see how they work as decor.[8]

Technology

Become.com makes use of product feeds which it acquires from retailers in order to aggregate retailer's product prices into product groups. Become.com operate a syndication system where other websites like PriceSpin.com[9] and BuyCentral[10] make use of Become.com's data using an XML webservice. Like most price comparison services Become.com's data is shared using a revenue share business model.[11]

Become.com adopt a product matching system which they call "M@ch".[12] This enables the matching of offers to from one merchant/retailer to another. Previously, matching merchant offer could be challenging. In the more modern world however, matching merchant offers has become far easier with more and more merchants using EAN13 or UPC barcodes.

Industry Recognition & Awards

Become.com was voted the Best of the Web by Forbes Magazine and Business Week during 2005 [13] and 2006. In addition, Become.com has been mentioned several times on authoritative industry news or press sites including SearchEngineWatch, Forbes, MarketWatch and more. Many of their founders and executives have conducted interviews or QandA's with industry professionals including Marketing Shift,[14] Organized Shopping,[15] ClickZ,[16][17] InternetNews[18] and eCommerceOptimization.com.[19]"Starting Up, Post Bubble.". Technology Review. May 2005. 

Become.com was named the top deal tracking site by PC Magazine (December, 2008) out of ten best deal tracking sites [20]

Become.com was named an AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 Winner (January 22, 2009) [21]

Become.com's AIR technology was published in the August 2009 issue of Communications of the ACM. The article, Ranking Billions of Web Pages Using Diodes, was written by Rohit Kaul, Yeogirl Yun, and Dr. Seong-Gon Kim and discusses the practical significance of the technology behind AIR ranking compared to other link-based ranking algorithms against search engine spamming techniques. [22]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Become.com Launches Shopping Search Engine.". SearchEngineWatch. 2005-04-11. 
  2. ↑ "MySimon Founders Launch New Engine.". MarketWatch. 2005-02-23. 
  3. ↑ "Glick Clicks Over to Become.". StepForth. 2005-04-01. 
  4. ↑ "Former eBay exec to head up marketing at Become.com.". InternetRetailer. 2006-04-03. 
  5. ↑ "Become.com Gets More Funding.". SearchEngineWatch. 2005-05-31. 
  6. ↑ "Become.com Acquires European Comparison Shopping Leader Pangora GmbH.". Become,Inc. 2009-10-12. 
  7. ↑ What is Become's Black Friday?. Black Friday Deals
  8. ↑ Shopping engine Become.com chooses iPad for mobile debut. Mobile Commerce Daily
  9. ↑ PriceSpin use Pangora's XML webservices
  10. ↑ The Pangora technology is made available to you by Become Europe GmbH
  11. ↑ Price comparison service - Technology
  12. ↑ M@ch matching system
  13. ↑ "Forbes.com Best of the Web.". Forbes.com. 2005-12-01. 
  14. ↑ "Q & A With Become CTO Yeogirl Yun.". Marketing Shift. 2005-03-21. 
  15. ↑ "Email Q&A With Michael Yang of Become.com.". Organized Shopping. 2005-03-28. 
  16. ↑ "Q and A With New Shopping Search Engine Become.com, Part 1.". ClickZ. 2005-08-01. 
  17. ↑ "Q and A With New Shopping Search Engine Become.com, Part 2.". ClickZ. 2005-08-15. 
  18. ↑ "Michael Yang, CEO, Founder, Become.com.". InternetNews. 2006-10-13. 
  19. ↑ "Interview: Jon Glick Talks About Become.com.". eCommerceOptimization. 2007-11-05. 
  20. ↑ Become.com Names Comparison Shopping Veteran, Brandon Huff, as President
  21. ↑ Become.com Named AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 Winner
  22. ↑ Ranking billions of web pages using diodes. The ACM Digital Library

External links

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