Company Overview of Wize Commerce, Inc.

Wize Commerce, Inc. announced the launch of its proprietary Social Analytics System, a new tool that measures customer interest in products based on consumer discussions on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, product views, and actual purchases. Nextag and Wize Commerce developed this system to benefit shoppers by enhancing the consumer shopping experience, and merchants, by increasing their monetization. At the heart of the Wize Commerce Social Analytics System is the ‘Buzz Score’, which rates a product on its ‘buzzworthiness’ across a number of dimensions. The main components of the ‘Buzz Score’ are the social score, the want score and the need score, representing the different phases of consumer engagement with a product. The social score measures consumer interest based on how many consumers are discussing and sharing the product on Twitter, Facebook and Wize Commerce's own shopping sites Nextag and Thingbuzz. The want score measures purchase intent based on metrics, such as the number of shoppers visiting the product information pages on Nextag. The need score measures actual consumer demand based on sales data such as Nextag purchase rate and Amazon sales rank.

Nextag, Inc. announced that Derek Yung has been appointed senior vice president of Finance and Corporate Development. In his new role, Yung will lead the company's finance team and report directly to its CEO, Jeffrey Katz. Yung joined the company with almost two decades of experience in strategy & corporate development, financial planning & analysis, and business planning. He has held senior-level positions at Accenture, Alvarez & Marsal and LeapFrog Enterprises.

LendingTree is suing Zillow, Inc. for patent infringement, alleging that the Seattle online real estate upstart violated patents related to how borrowers shop for home loans on the Internet. The suit alleges that Zillow is infringing on one or more claims related to the patents and asks that the court institute a permanent injunction against the company. The primary patent in question -- granted in 2002 -- is titled "Method and Computer Network for Co-Ordinating a Loan over the Internet." According to the suit, LendingTree founder and CEO Doug Lebda approached Zillow, Inc. CEO Rich Barton in November 2008 about licensing the patent. "Instead of taking a license to the '594 patent, Zillow opted to continue its willful, deliberate, and intentional infringement of one or more claims of the '594 patent. both Lebda and Barton previously worked at portfolio companies of the Internet conglomerate IAC. LendingTree spun off from IAC in 2008, while Barton previously served as CEO of the IAC-owned Expedia. LendingTree first filed for the patents in 1998, two years after the company was founded. Bohutinsky noted that the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace does not limit the number of quotes that borrowers receive from lenders. In addition to Zillow, the LendingTree suit names NexTag, Foster City, QuinStreet and Foster City and Adchemy as defendants.