TRACERLOCK ACQUIRES THE INFORMANT; PASSES 50,000 REGISTERED USERS.
September 5, 2001

SEATTLE, WA -- TracerLock (www.tracerlock.com), provider of award-winning web monitoring and news clipping services, today announced that it had expanded its user base to over 50,000 by acquiring another monitoring business, The Informant (informant.dartmouth.edu). The current businesses of TracerLock and The Informant, which include the monitoring of newly published material for content matching users' search terms, will be merged to make one of the web's largest monitoring services. The merged businesses will do business under the name 'TracerLock' at www.tracerlock.com.

'Web monitoring is an invaluable tool for journalists, investors, professionals, marketers, researchers, fans, collectors, shoppers - anyone who needs to stay up to date with developments in their field, with competitors' activities, with market shaping events or with the availability of goods and services' said TracerLock's Director, Andrew Cohen. 'With this transaction TracerLock now has the critical mass of users to continue to roll out effective tools that allow users to find what they need to know in the enormous quantities of new material that are published daily on the web.

'And' he added, 'we are now also able to offer these services either free, or at economical, cost justifiable rates that will make them accessible to a very broad range of individuals, organizations and small and large businesses - to anyone who recognizes both the value of their time and the worth of up to date knowledge'.

Terms of the transaction have not been released.

TracerLock's core clipping service allows users to monitor hundreds of online news sources, and to be notified within as little as 15 minutes of a new article being published that matches one of their stored search terms. At a cost of $19.50 per month to monitor 5 terms, TracerLock costs less than 10% of the price of most competing services. TracerLock also offers a host of free services to the general public, including monitoring of financial market information, search engines, UseNet newsgroups, changes to websites, employment listings, and Web personal ads. For each service, TracerLock sends e-mail alerts when new listings appear that match the user's stored search queries.

For more information:

Andrew Cohen
Andrew@tracerlock.com