Oodle Hires Knight Ridder Publishing Exec Lem Lloyd as VP of Sales and Business Development

Business Wire, August 8, 2006

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Oodle, the search engine for local classifieds, announced today that former Knight Ridder publishing executive Lem Lloyd will be joining the company as vice president of sales and business development.

In this new role, Lloyd will be charged with growing traffic and usage to Oodle's classifieds listings network through partnerships and distribution deals. Lloyd will also be responsible for generating revenue across the various vertical categories for Oodle and its partners.

"At this stage of Oodle's development, it makes sense that we bring on someone with Lem's background and experience," said Craig Donato, Oodle CEO. "We believe we have an attractive model for both media companies and vertical businesses alike and Lem will lead our efforts on these fronts."

While at Knight Ridder, Lloyd oversaw the print and online classified businesses for the media company's 31 newspapers and websites, as well as its sales partnerships with such sites as: CareerBuilder.com, Cars.com and Apartments.com. In addition, Lloyd was in charge of Knight Ridder's online national sales and its Real Cities Network, an advertising network consisting of some 130 websites, including sites owned by such publishers as: E.W. Scripps, Media General and MediaNews Group.

Knight Ridder was purchased in late June of this year by The McClatchy Company.

As a former head of business development, Lloyd has forged distribution and content deals with such companies as AOL, Yahoo, Marketwatch, ESPN, AT&T, Sprint, Cingular, Palm and USAToday.

"Oodle is a fast growing company that plays a valuable role in sourcing leads for businesses in the real estate, automotive and services categories," said Lloyd. "For buyers, it offers an easy and elegant way to locate exactly what they're looking for, allowing the user to view listings from multiples sites. I'm excited to be joining this talented team."

In addition to Oodle.com, Oodle also works with partners to power the classifieds search for their online marketplaces. Oodle search is currently deployed at Lycos, ReadExpress (a Washington Post publication), and The Sun (the largest daily newspaper in the U.K.).

About Oodle, Inc.

Oodle is the leading search engine for local classifieds. Oodle helps consumers find great deals in every major classifieds category: cars, real estate, apartments, jobs, merchandise, pets and tickets. Launched in April of 2005, Oodle (www.oodle.com) provides the largest and freshest index of local and national classifieds with more than 17 million active listings from more than 60,000 sources in the US and the UK.

Oodle sends classifieds publishers and their advertisers millions of qualified leads every month. The company also powers the Oodle Network, a collection of websites that incorporate Oodle's market leading search capabilities. To be included in the Oodle index or learn more about the Oodle Partner Network and the Oodle API, please contact partner@oodle.com.