VNU Joins Intelliseek, BuzzMetrics to Create Nielsen BuzzMetrics Service

There's big news today at Intelliseek, the home of BlogPulse: This morning, VNU announced that it has signed an agreement in principle to bring together Intelliseek and BuzzMetrics into a single company whose goal will be the creation of a new global standard for measuring and understanding word-of-mouth behavior and influence.

Upon closing, the new company, BuzzMetrics Inc., will operate under the "Nielsen BuzzMetrics"
brand and will be headquartered in New York City, with offices in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Israel (in late 2005, VNU also invested in Israel-based Trendum and merged it with BuzzMetrics).
Both companies are recognized leaders in helping major companies, corporations and brands listen to, measure and act upon consumer-generated media: the consumer dialogue that affects
their markets.

The Nielsen BuzzMetrics service will fully leverage the strategic and financial backing of VNU, parent to such renowed research names as ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research. And for BlogPulse users, the new company remains committed to BlogPulse -- which passed the 21-million blog threshold this week -- as an important component of the new business. More information is available at a new Nielsen BuzzMetrics web page set up specifically for this announcement, including a link to the full press release and information about a 1 p.m. webinar today by the new executive team.