About Us
Background
In August 2002, Patrick Spain, along with a small group of individual investors, purchased eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com from Tucows, Inc. eLibrary was a subscription-based research service, costing under $100 per year, that provided its users with access to 13 million articles from 1,200 newspaper, magazine and radio/TV transcript sources. Encyclopedia.com was a free online encyclopedia that served as a marketing vehicle for eLibrary. The newly formed company was named Alacritude, LLC (Alacrity + Attitude) and was to be the platform for a new kind of online research company -- one that served individuals with a service that delivered enterprise quality results at Wal-Mart, rather than Tiffany, prices.
In October 2002, Alacritude acquired the Researchville.com domain, a meta-search site that allowed users to search across multiple sites simultaneously. After enhancing the search technology, Researchville went live as a test site in mid-2003.
During 2003 the company began the process of developing a new user interface and technology platform to knit its three services into a single, powerful research engine. In September of 2003, the company significantly increased the eLibrary archive to include 28 million articles from 2,600 publishers.
In December 2003, EContent magazine included Alacritude in the EContent 100 list of "companies that matter most in the digital content industry" for 2003. EContent magazine named Alacritude as a leader in the "Fee-Based Info Services" category in its third annual industry review.
In January 2004, the company launched a new brand, company name and service, re-naming itself HighBeam™ Research, LLC, and launching the HighBeam™ Research Engine (www.highbeam.com) and positioning itself between free search engines and the traditional high-end information services.
In June 2004, InfoCommerce Group Inc. (ICG) chose the HighBeam Research Engine as an ICG "InfoCommerce Model of Excellence."
By July 2004, HighBeam Research had improved its searching functionality and added millions of documents to its eLibrary archive. The company added the ability to specify a list of multiple publications to search at once and to exclude a list of publications from their search. In addition, HighBeam Research added more than 4 million documents to its HighBeam eLibrary Research archive, increasing its collection to 60 million articles from more than 3,500 newswires, newspapers; leading business, consumer and industry magazines and journals; transcripts; images; and reference sources.
In October 2004, the company launched advertising on the HighBeam Research Engine. It also reached the milestone of more than one million registrations for its HighBeam Research Basic Membership since the Research Engine's launch in January, 2004.
In November of 2004, the company converted from an LLC to a C corporation and became HighBeam Research, Inc.
In December 2004, EContent magazine included HighBeam Research in the EContent 100 list of "companies that matter most in the digital content industry" for 2004. EContent honored HighBeam Research in the "Fee-Based Info Services" category.
In March 2005, Fast Company magazine listed HighBeam Research CEO Patrick Spain in its fourth annual Fast 50 list of remarkable business leaders.
In April 2005, HighBeam launched HighBeam Research BlogEnhancer. The tool makes it easy for bloggers to improve their blogs by incorporating content from the HighBeam Research Engine's collection articles, including those from 3,500 respected newspaper, magazine, book, journal and transcript publishers. The company also launched HighBeam RSS, which enables users to track dynamically created topics. RSS feeds can easily be created based on keywords and/or by publication and users receive an update in their favorite RSS readers as soon as new articles related to their research are added to the HighBeam Research Engine.
In June 2005, HighBeam Research won a Codie Award from The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) for "Best Content Aggregation Service."
In December 2005, EContent magazine once again included HighBeam Research in the EContent 100 list of "companies that matter most in the digital content industry." EContent honored HighBeam Research in the "Fee-Based Information Services" category for 2005.
In January 2006, HighBeam expanded its collection by adding thousands of premium news and reference articles from Oxford University Press, Knight Ridder and The Washington Post.
Also in January 2006, HighBeam launched two new programs for advertisers. HighBeam Publisher Direct allows publishers to integrate their articles within the search results of the HighBeam Research Engine. HighBeam Advertiser Direct offers cost-per-click programs allowing advertisers to easily integrate their ads on HighBeam.
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