Cyber MARRIAGES.

News stories tracking the local dot-corn carnage have become a morbid fixture in the media in recent months. But less often told amid the Internet bubbles bursting have been the tales of couplings in that sector. A slew of local Internet companies has been acquiring, merging or otherwise partnering up with others to weather the storm and stay strong. A few of the larger of those local cyber marriages follow:

Two-year-old Novica.com, an L.A.- based e-commerce site specializing in handcrafted fine art and home decor from 1,700 artists worldwide, inked a deal with 112-year-old National Geographic Society. The alliance lets Novica access National Geographic's vast editorial content and gives the startup some cross-promotional support at National Geographic's online and print publications. The alliance also helps Novica.com founded by a former United Nations human rights officer, strengthen its humanitarian mission. Under the terms, National Geographic became a 19 percent shareholder in Novica.com, with the right to increase its interest to 30 percent.

Culver City-based StyleClick Inc. inked a sweet deal with About.com Inc., the New York-based online information site. The deal lets StyleClick, a designer and producer of Web sites for businesses, be the exclusive provider of merchandise from its supplier network on About.com's network of 700 topic sites. StyleClick will customize and maintain a universal shopping cart, offering users a secure platform for transactions. Styleclick, which handles a variety of e-commerce services, represents more than 90 product categories, with 100,000 products from more than 300 brands.

L.A.-based How2TV, an online media solutions provider for manufacturers, brick-and-mortar retailers and e-commerce sites, linked up with Emeryville-based AskJeeves, the provider of question-and-answer technologies. Under terms of the alliance, both parties will cross-promote their products and team up in research and development. Executives from both companies said the deal will, among other things, help customers to lower call center costs and reduce product return rates.

In an attempt to dominate the pay-for-results advertising space, Westlake Village-based ValueClick scooped up two rival Internet advertising firms, onResponse.com Inc. and ClickAgents.com Inc. The firms operate similarly under a cost-per-click system, which requires clients to pay only when a consumer clicks on their ads. ValueClick places ads in a network of some 12,500 Web sites in categories such as business, entertainment, sports and travel. Online ad server DoubleClick owns 28 percent of the company. Reaching more than 20 countries and about 20 percent of Internet households in the United States each month, ValueClick already delivers more than 215,000 visitors daily to advertisers such as Providian Financial, Microsoft, the United States Postal Service and Verizon. With the acquisitions, ValueClick gains its rivals' clients, including MTV, Salon.com, AltaVista, Doubleday, NextCard and Excite@Home.

Thousand Oaks-based Homestore.com Inc. grew into a giant by scooping up real estate sites left and right. Possibly its grandest acquisition came in late October when it bought rivals Move.com and Rent.net, units of Cendant Corp., for 26.3 million shares of its stock, a deal worth an estimated $760 million. Move.com and Rent.net, both based in San Francisco, provide apartment-finding and moving resources. The sites add to Homestore's growing portfolio of sites that let users buy, sell and build new homes, arrange for a move and repair and restore residences. Homestore.com, founded in 1996, posted its first profit in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. Competitors left on the playing field include Microsoft's HomeAdvisor, Yahoo and eBay.

Agoura Hills-based MyCorporation.com -- an online incorporation, LLC formation and trademark service provider -- formed an alliance with Staples.com, Staples Inc.'s online marketplace. The deal lets MyCorporation.com feature its services at Staples.com. MyCorporationcom will offer toll-free assistance to all Staples.com customers seeking to start a business or protect a trademark. Staples.com's products and services will be offered through the MyCorporation.com Web site via a link from the MyCorporation.com home page. Already, MyCorporation.com attracts an impressive 1.5 million page views per month.

Compatibility was the operative word in the deal between Pasadena-based Answers.com and Austin, Texas-based KnowltAll.com. Answers.com, a creation of Idealab, develops tools that help businesses provide services to their customers. KnowltAll.com develops Web-based customer service applications that use text, charts, video and other types of information. The deal brings capabilities to each company that neither had on its own. Both companies started in the B2C market but switched to targeting companies seeking to improve customer service.

Santa Monica-based Fandom Inc., an operator of fantasy, sci-fi, horror and online gaming sites, bought Glendale-based Creation Entertainment, which specializes in fan conventions, multimedia promotional tours and merchandising. During the Internet shakeout, Fandom has been aggressively expanding its reach to other media platforms. Creation Entertainment was founded in 1971, when it pioneered the concept of the touring comic book fan convention. The acquisition came on the heels of Fandom's purchase of Cinescape, a Chicago company that publishes a horror genre magazine related to popular film, television and new media.

PeopleLink Inc., an application service provider for online communications, partnered with Siebel Systems Inc. to extend Siebel's information gathering from customers. Santa Monica-based PeopleLink will share its so-called eCommunity data, which will help users of Siebel's applications gather and manage information from message boards and chat rooms created by PeopleLink. San Mateo-based Siebel provides software that enables organizations to sell, market and manage customer contacts across channels like the Internet, call centers, resellers, retailers and dealer networks. PeopleLink installs services, including message boards, instant messaging, chat rooms, member directories, e-mail discussion groups and online events for Web sites like MTV.com, iVillage.com and ChickClick.

Hollywood-based IFILM and Santa Monica-based Filmtrust formed an alliance to bring online production, location scouting and job-search tools to the entertainment industry. Under terms of the agreement, Filmtrust, an ASP for the entertainment industry, will acquire some of IFILM's software assets. IFILM, a film portal and directory, will provide Filmtrust with promotional support and consulting to help bring the e-business tools to the entertainment market. IFILM will receive a significant preferred equity position in Filmtrust as compensation for FILM's contributions to the co-venture, which will be branded under the Filmtrust name.