Aggregate Knowledge and Bazaarvoice Join Forces to Bring the Wisdom of Crowds to Online Shoppers

Discovery Services Platform to be enhanced with user-generated ratings and reviews, providing more ways for shoppers to discover the right products online

San Mateo, CA and Austin, TX – March 5, 2007 –Aggregate Knowledge and Bazaarvoice today announced they will integrate their user-generated product discovery and reviews services and offer them as a turn-key solution to their mutual eCommerce customers.

The planned integration will let online shoppers tap into the wisdom and experience of others as they shop for merchandise online, leading to increased sales conversion and shopping cart volumes for online retailers. Integrating user-generated reviews into the Aggregate Knowledge Discovery Services platform is the first example of a host of complimentary services that add value to customers while shopping for products online.  

“Our mutual clients recognize the tremendous influence community opinion has on users who are shopping for and evaluating products online,” said Paul Martino, Aggregate Knowledge’s founder and chief executive officer.  “Community-based recommendations expose customers to a greater array of client merchandise within a more natural navigation metaphor. By delivering customer-driven Discovery Services from Aggregate Knowledge along with user-generated reviews from Bazaarvoice, we are more closely emulating a natural, offline shopping experience.  We believe the result will be increased sales, improved ROI for both platforms and ultimately greater customer satisfaction.”

Aggregate Knowledge and Bazaarvoice clients will now be able to offer their customers the ability to discover and navigate through a greater number of related items while also considering the reviews their fellow shoppers provide.  For example, a user looking for a digital camera would see a “Discovery Window” displaying a dynamic series of related products identified by others who had also considered that same camera.  Included with the various product recommendations would be reviews and rankings provided by a retailer’s own customers. These two complimentary services will be provided to mutual clients as a turn-key solution. 

“The explosion in user-generated content on the Web is fueling major new opportunities for retailers,” said Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice’s founder and chief executive officer.  “We’re offering online retailers a significant ROI opportunity to tap into user-generated content, delivered through two of the most widely used features on a Web site -- discovery and product reviews.  This is a winning combination for both retailers and consumers and will set an important precedent for the industry.”

Bazaarvoice offers a hosted and fully managed customer ratings and review service that allows businesses to enable, encourage and analyze customer ratings and reviews on their website.   Aggregate Knowledge’s Discovery for Retail™ Web service goes far beyond keyword search by observing the anonymous behavior of prior customers to anticipate each new user’s intent and to surface relevant options. Over 20% of all products purchases during the holiday season at Overstock.com were discovered by customers using Aggregate Knowledge’s Discovery Window on the Overstock site.

About Aggregate Knowledge
Aggregate Knowledge offers the industry’s first online Collective Discovery Services that emulate the way people naturally discover and shop for products and information offline. Built on top of a sophisticated, super computing architecture, Aggregate Knowledge harnesses the behavior of users to fundamentally change the way people navigate and engage online. Aggregate Knowledge delivers significant revenue enhancement to site owners by providing real-time, collective merchandising and navigation capabilities.  Funded by premier venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the company’s management team includes veterans from IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Sun and Tribe.net. More information can be found at www.aggregateknowledge.com.

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice’s Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce solutions have served more than 50 billion pieces of customer-generated content on more than 525 brand web sites like Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy’s, Overstock, P&G, Panasonic, QVC and USAA in 36 countries. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Through syndication, analytics, partnerships, and consulting, Bazaarvoice brings the voice of the customer to the center of their clients’ business strategy, proving “social” can drive measured revenue growth and cost savings for manufacturing, retail, travel, and financial services companies. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in London, Paris, and Singapore. For more information and access to client success stories, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarblog.com, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.

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