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Gary Wetsel Joins LookSmart Board of Directors

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 20, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK), a leader in Internet search, today announced that its board of directors has appointed Gary Wetsel as a member of the board on September 15, 2004. Mr. Wetsel will serve as a member of the audit and compensation committees. Mr. Wetsel's appointment fills the vacancy on the board of directors created by the departure of Greg Santora in July 2004, and brings the total number of directors on LookSmart's board to seven.
Mr. Wetsel has served as Executive Vice President, Finance, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Administrative Officer of Aspect Communications, a provider of enterprise customer contact solutions, since April 2002. Prior to joining Aspect, he served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Zhone Technologies, a telecommunications vendor, from 2000 to 2002. From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Wetsel served as Chief Executive Officer of WarpSpeed Communications. From 1996 to 1998, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Wyse Technology. Mr. Wetsel is a certified public accountant and received his B.S. in accounting from Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.

"We are very pleased to welcome Gary to the board," said Teresa Dial, Chair of LookSmart's board of directors. "With over 30 years of operating and financial expertise within the technology industry, Gary will bring tremendous insight to LookSmart, and we look forward to working closely with him."

LookSmart also announced that co-founders and directors Evan Thornley and Tracey Ellery have adopted trading plans pursuant to Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b5-1. Each trading plan provides for the sale of up to 125,000 shares of LookSmart common stock per month starting in November 2004 and ending in October 2005. The transactions under these plans will be disclosed publicly through Form 144 and Form 4 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rule 10b5-1 allows corporate insiders to establish prearranged written plans to sell a specified number of shares of company stock over a predetermined period of time, committing in advance the number of shares to be sold and the corresponding prices at which such sales will take place. Insiders may adopt such plans when they are not in possession of material inside information in order to gradually change their investment portfolio, to minimize the market effect of stock sales or purchases by spreading them out over an extended period of time and to avoid concerns about initiating stock transactions while in possession of material non-public information.

About LookSmart

LookSmart is a leader in commercial search services and a developer of innovative web search solutions. The Company provides consumers with relevant search results through a distribution network that includes Lycos, CNET, InfoSpace (Excite, MetaCrawler, Webcrawler), Cox Interactive, Apple's Sherlock, U.C. Berkeley and LookSmart.com, while delivering high performance sales leads at a reasonable price to online businesses. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.looksmart.com.

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