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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47796247
BERNHARD WARNER
REUTERS[ THURSDAY, MAY 29, 2003 12:06:10 AM ]
LONDON: A trio of European dot-com survivors have embarked on one of the Internet's promising, but niche, new businesses as they launched on Wednesday a Web publishing business for Internet diarists.
Stefan Glanzer, Stefan Wiskemann and Christoph Linkwitz, founders of the once high-flying German Internet auction site Ricardo.de, have used some of the proceeds from its 100 million-pound ($163.5 million) sale in 2001 to launch what has been dubbed Europe's first commercial service for Web loggers, or "bloggers".
The service is called 20Six. On Wednesday it went live in four European countries - Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands - the privately held company said.
Blogs, pithy online accounts written by professional journalists and ordinary Netizens with a bone to pick, have become increasingly popular forums for news junkies looking for an unfiltered, grassroots account of current events.
Their popularity took off during the war in Iraq. The Pew Research Center in the United States recently reported that four per cent of American Internet users visited Web blog sites for some form of coverage on the war in Iraq.
As with most novel ideas that turn into a craze online, entrepreneurs are swooping in to see if they can turn it into a viable business.
Later this year, 20six will charge users for services such as Website hosting and extra memory for the larger blog sites.
Building on European's fascination with mobile technology, the company said it was seeking to sign contracts with mobile phone operators that would enable mobile phone users to send multimedia messages, or MMS, directly to a Web site giving them the ability to "blog" while away from their computer.
The nascent attempt to make blogging a viable commercial business kicked off when Google, the Web's dominant search directory, agreed to buy in late 2002 Pyra Labs, a team of developers behind Blogger, the pioneering software tool used to design and publish simple Websites.
Free or low-cost publishing programs such as Blogger, Movable Type and Userland are largely responsible for the explosion in blogging. Until now, the commercial activity has been centred around the United States.
20six would not disclose its financial backing.
BERNHARD WARNER
REUTERS[ THURSDAY, MAY 29, 2003 12:06:10 AM ]
LONDON: A trio of European dot-com survivors have embarked on one of the Internet's promising, but niche, new businesses as they launched on Wednesday a Web publishing business for Internet diarists.
Stefan Glanzer, Stefan Wiskemann and Christoph Linkwitz, founders of the once high-flying German Internet auction site Ricardo.de, have used some of the proceeds from its 100 million-pound ($163.5 million) sale in 2001 to launch what has been dubbed Europe's first commercial service for Web loggers, or "bloggers".
The service is called 20Six. On Wednesday it went live in four European countries - Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands - the privately held company said.
Blogs, pithy online accounts written by professional journalists and ordinary Netizens with a bone to pick, have become increasingly popular forums for news junkies looking for an unfiltered, grassroots account of current events.
Their popularity took off during the war in Iraq. The Pew Research Center in the United States recently reported that four per cent of American Internet users visited Web blog sites for some form of coverage on the war in Iraq.
As with most novel ideas that turn into a craze online, entrepreneurs are swooping in to see if they can turn it into a viable business.
Later this year, 20six will charge users for services such as Website hosting and extra memory for the larger blog sites.
Building on European's fascination with mobile technology, the company said it was seeking to sign contracts with mobile phone operators that would enable mobile phone users to send multimedia messages, or MMS, directly to a Web site giving them the ability to "blog" while away from their computer.
The nascent attempt to make blogging a viable commercial business kicked off when Google, the Web's dominant search directory, agreed to buy in late 2002 Pyra Labs, a team of developers behind Blogger, the pioneering software tool used to design and publish simple Websites.
Free or low-cost publishing programs such as Blogger, Movable Type and Userland are largely responsible for the explosion in blogging. Until now, the commercial activity has been centred around the United States.
20six would not disclose its financial backing.
