Submit It! was a search-business internet advertising product that

Scott Banister Scott Banister (born 1975) is an American entrepreneur, startup founder, and angel investor. He cofounded the anti-spam company IronPort, and he was an early advisor and board member at PayPal. He invented paid search advertising via keyword a ...

created in 1995, while he was a student at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

. Co-founded by Bill Younker and Larry Gormley, it was acquired by

LinkExchange LinkExchange was a popular Internet advertising cooperative, similar in function to a webring, originally known as Internet Link Exchange or ILE. It was founded in March 1996 by 23-year-old Harvard graduates Tony Hsieh (who later went on to invest ...

in June 1998.

Description

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported, "

started Submit It, a free, automated resource for bringing your page to the attention of many Web-searching outfits at once." In 1996, ''

Business Wire Business Wire is an American company that disseminates full-text press releases from thousands of companies and organizations worldwide to news media, financial markets, disclosure systems, investors, information web sites, databases, bloggers ...

'' said, "Submit It!, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in Bedford, Mass. The company's services today are used by Web site developers and marketers throughout the world who are responsible for promoting Web sites on the Internet. Submit It!'s mission is to develop and market services and products that allow anyone to easily submit and send information on the Internet." According to

Ali Partovi Ali Partovi ( fa, علی پرتووی; born 1972) is an Iranian- American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of Code.org (which he founded with his twin brother Hadi), iLike, LinkExchange, an early advisor at Dro ...

, Banister created a search-business model, "a simple but elegant concept that turned out to be one of the best business ideas in history". Partovi wrote that Banister created Submit It! as a service that

History

Banister was still a student at

UIUC The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Unive ...

in 1995 when he created ListServe. Eventually he and his friends added a bot tool to manage lists, and they renamed the company SubmitIt/Listbot, the precursor of Submit It! In 1996,

became partners with Submit It! ''Business Wire'' described the resulting partnership as "the world's most popular service for registering web sites with search engines and directories. The two companies will join forces to provide web site owners with the most powerful, simple and effective solutions to promote their sites online." In 1998, LinkExchange announced acquisition of Submit It! and its developers.

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

subsequently acquired LinkExchange, including integration of its employees, in December 1998. According to Partovi, none of the former LinkExchange employees "...received a meaningful role at Microsoft. Not one stayed at Microsoft more than a few months." According to UIUC's ''Department of Computer Science, Alumni News'', "Both Submit It and ListBot and another Web service that Banister created called ClickTrade live on as part of MSN LinkExchange."

References

{{Reflist Digital marketing companies of the United States Marketing companies established in 1995 Online advertising services and affiliate networks

Description

History

See also

References