Sex sells – even in Poland.

Pink Poland is the first in Poland advertising network for adult oriented websites. In their portfolio, you can find 40 erotic websites including (NSFW) pornolia.pl, roksa.pl, blow-job.pl, podrywacze.pl and retroporno.pl.

The main asset of the group for now are two websites. The first is escorts classifieds board Roksa.pl (with 30 million page views and 1.78 million unique users per month). The second is amateur porn website Pornolia.pl with 386 000 real users. Pink Poland is still negotiating with prospect partners including also erotic blogs. Full offer of the network will be presented at the beginning of Q3 2009. At the moment, the biggest Polish porn website, pornotuba.pl is not interested in joining any advertising network, as Maciej Pater (owner) declares in Internet Standard.

According to Sylwester Kubiak, Managing Director in Pink Poland, erotic websites are already responsible for 6% of Polish online advertising value. A total market is estimated to PLN 1,17 billion (PwC and IAB data). As Mr. Kubiak says to Newsweek, the company is going to advertise not only erotic services, but also pharmaceuticals, and even financial services.

According to PBI/Gemius 30% of the Polish Internet users is visiting erotic websites (4,4 million users monthly). What may be interesting after dynamic growth between 2005 and 2007, now the numbers are stable.

Pink Poland is owned by Polska Kompania Reklamowa and backed by unknown Venture Capital fund. The offer does not include context ads.

Editor in-Chief of “Dziennik” newspaper replies to the Internet readers: Kiss my ass!

Robert Krasowski, Editor In-Chief of “Dziennik” answering criticism after his newspaper has revealed identity of the political blogger says: “kiss my ass” to the public.

Image via Wikipedia

In his editorial titled “Open letter to the Kataryna defenders” Krasowski declares, that reading all the comments, he could not find any arguments but invectives. He describes his newspaper online readers as: “small people from Gogol or Dostoyevsky, that are putting bile of envy on the whole world”.

“You are entering web forums not to discuss, but to smash everybody on your way” – Krasowki says.

Mr. Krasowski cites in his article many epithets commonly used in emotional discussions on political websites. He also says to the Internet users:

“You have never accomplished anything, you never revealed anyting important, you have never found any scandal”

Krasowski states, that they did not explicitly reveal Kataryna’s identity, and even so, that it was just what journalists have to do. He also states, that the blackmailing her was an example of “true journalism” and “normal way of convincing somebody to share information”.

Mr. Krasowski is not mentioning false allegations that his journalists wrote about Kataryna, and he tries to divide readers. As he writes most of them are “good”, but he wants to fight with “this small but noisy group that makes a tone of the Polish Web”.

As a margin note we may add, that Krasowski’s Dziennik is dramatically loosing readers (40 % year-to year as for March 2009). Should we consider this as a fight for life with growing online media industry? Alternatively, maybe “Dziennik” tries to shut down independent commentators empowered by Web?

Polish Political Blogger “Kataryna” Identity Revealed. It Raises Discussion On Privacy And Bloggers Rights.

22th of May 2009, Polish daily newspaper “Dziennik” (Axel Springer) revealed personal data of famous, and until this date anonymous political blogger, Kataryna. To get the story more spicy, blogger was conflicted with Polish Minister of Justice, and threatened by his son.

[read also follow-up story]

Hunted

Kataryna is a nickname of the anonymous Polish political blogger and commentator on Gazeta.pl forum active since 2002. Lastly, she was attacked by son of the Polish Minister of Justice. Krzysztof Czuma has demanded to reveal blogger identity in rude and arrogant emails addressed to the blogging platform Salon24.pl, that hosts Kataryna’s blog. Those demands were declined and publicly announced by Igor Janke, owner of the website.

Krzysztof Czuma insisted, that he needs Kataryna’s data to file a suit by the name of his father, Andrzej Czuma, who was criticized on her blog with words:

“I am strangely convinced, that information published by the Newsweek are going to be confirmed in few days, and we will see that the Minister of Justice lied, again.”

This was just short reference to the story from the Newsweek, that Mr. Czuma was managing his own legal troubles with Lisa Madigan, Illinois Attorney General, using his official prerogatives during his private trip to Chicago, IL. Anyway, they did not manage any action against Newsweek, but started attack directly on the commenting blogger.

Protected

Igor Janke declined revealing data but published demands of Krzysztof Czuma. Kataryna announced, that she can reveal herself to Mr. Czuma if he wants to file charge. During next days, facing a public opinion and journalists overwhelmingly criticizing Czuma’s actions, Mr. Andrzej Czuma publicly declined that he asked his son to perform any such actions. On Czuma family website Krzysztof Czuma published few statements, describing Kataryna as the journalist working for Agora, owner of the leading Polish newspaper, “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

Blackmailed

This story would be probably enough to discuss how to deal with anonymous defamation on the blogs. However, in following days, “Dziennik” managed to perform an interview with Kataryna. Shortly after, 19th of May, Kataryna has got an SMS message from Sylwia Czubkowska, journalist working for “Dziennik”:

“Mme Katarzyna, please seriously consider our proposal. We do not want to reveal your identity and help Czuma’s. We prefer you to make “coming out” on your conditions, including hiring you as our columnist. However, please understand our point “how frustrating is to know and not write it”. I know that your identity is known to “Fakt” [Polish tabloid newspaper, also from Axel Springer, known from brutal attacks on privacy of celebrities - PW], and they will not treat you so well – please do not thin it is a blackmail. We do not want to hurt you, really.” [see original at Kataryna’s blog]

Defamed

Kataryna after this message stopped answering to any further Dziennik’s calls. 22th of May on Dziennik website, Cezary Michalski former second editor in-chief of Dziennik has published an article informing, that his newspaper knows identity of Kataryna. He declared that they will not reveal it. In the same article he alleged, that Kataryna had conflict of interests. The title of an article says: “Lost veneration of Kataryna”

According to Michalski in 2004 Kataryna criticized on the Internet Robert Kwiatkowski, who was then President of Polish Public TV, when in the same time she was in some business relations with him, including earning money from the same Public TV. Those allegations of Michalski were not true. Kataryna has never worked for or cooperated with TVP, she just participated in Polish NGO’s working group for better cooperation with TVP. It was voluntary action without any business or money related issues, which could be easily checked by asking any of the participants.

Michalski also stated, that Dziennik attacks Kataryna by the name of ethics of free and open speech. He states, that anonymous critics should not be allowed to public discussion, as there is no way to make them responsible for their statements. It is worth saying, that Cezary Michalski was an object of massive criticism over Internet himself.

Exposed

Few hours later Dziennik published Sylwia Czubkowska (the SMS lady), and Robert Zieliński revealing data of Kataryna by saying her real name, place of birth, age, and job position. Kataryna in real life is a leader of NGO working for promotion of democracy and citizens activity. Her posts often directly criticizing government officials can complicate her cooperation with those officials. What is interesting one of the authors of this article, Robert Zieliński, was also personally attacked by Kataryna. In her post from December 2008, she pointed out lack of professional skills presented by Mr. Zieliński, who did not check an official version of the incident he later falsely described.

All those events are evidently some kind of private revenge on the blogger who publicly criticized “Dziennik” journalists. In a wider perspective case of Kataryna can be seen as part of the conflict between growing citizen journalism and so-called old media.

What for…?

On the other hand, Kataryna herself was demanding to reveal identity of another blogger who wrote on the Salon24.pl with a nickname “Ketman”, which was in this time linked to the former communist secret police agent who in a new regime worked as a journalist in “Gazeta Wyborcza”. Kataryna wanted to check if it is the same person (it was not), and urged Igor Janke to ask blogger to officially confirm his identity – finally blog of Ketman was closed by Janke.

The problem is, that according to the Polish law, bloggers and online journalists are not protected if they are not affiliated to register, traditional media. If their identity is revealed, they can stand civil and crime charges for revealing some information, even when it is in the public interest. They can be legally forced to reveal their informers, and of course they can lose their jobs if they dare to report against their bosses. If there is no protection for them, and we are not allowing for anonymity, the only way for whistle blowers is to go for old media journalists. And even so, who would trust such persons like Czubkowska, Mazurek, Michalski or Zieliński from Dziennik?

Read more in Polish:

• Wstyd mi za “Dziennik” – by Igor Janke from Salon24.pl
• Kataryna case: Spór o (wymykająca się) „władzę” – Dominik Kaznowski from nasza-klasa.pl
• Dziennik szantażuje Katarynę – Dominik Panek from Radio Wrocław
• Epitafium dla Kataryny – Piotr Śmiłowicz from Newsweek
• Pieprzony los dziennikarza-Kataryniarza – Olgierd Rudak from Money.pl

Micro-blogging in Poland - report

Although internet market in Poland is more or less mature, many worldwide leading services are not used by Polish users. The very special cases are, of course, Instant Messaging and what is maybe more interesting, micro-blogging.

In this post you will find information about Polish micro-blogging services, that overtook Twitter among users in Poland.

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging allowing users to post brief messages, or micromedia like MMS, photos, video or audio clips. Posted messages are visible to anyone, to restricted group of "friends" or to selected user only.

Worldwide leader in this category is Twitter.com. Its competitors was Jaiku and Pownce. Pownce is already dead, and Jaiku after acquisition by Google is invite-only. However many social networking websites included micro-blogging as a feature called "status updates". The most known and used is probably Live Feed in Facebook. Other kind of microblogging is Tumblr, which seems to be just a blog platform with very limited functionality.

Any of those services is commonly used in Poland. Instead we have three local micro-blogging services (Pinger.pl, blip.pl) and one major social networking website (grono.net) with such feature, called blimp.

According to the Google Adplanner and reach measured by Alexa.com, the leader is Pinger.pl. [Please note that we measure only website traffic, when many users are using those sevices via IM and widgets this traffic is not included here.]Pinger is owned by one of the leading horizontal portals, o2.pl. O2.pl has also it's own IM called tlen. Portal o2.pl has reach 48% with 1bn pageviews and 7,5 million users (Megapanel/PBI, September 2008), and is 7th most popular website in Poland. Its IM, tlen.pl has reach 5,03% and is on the 3rd position with huge gap to Skype (28,03%) and leading Gadu-Gadu (38,88%).

Pinger.pl has Alexa rank 260 in Poland. Google estimates traffic on Pinger to 350-380 k per month. Although Pinger is mostly used by teenagers, you may find there thoughts of one of o2.pl owners, Michał Brański. Website offers micro-blogging in Tumblr style - rather writing posts and comments than live chat. It seems that users on Pinger are redirected from Google and other websites owned by o2.pl.

Another player is blip.pl. Blip is owned by Gadu-Gadu (company that runs the most popular IM in Poland).

Unlike o2.pl, Gadu-Gadu seems to be unable to move its users between different services. Blip.pl is still very weak in reach (the same happens to Gadu-Gadu's social network MojaGeneracja.pl). On the other hand with 12-15k of new messages daily it is one of the biggest micro-blogging website in terms of active users in Europe.

According to Google blip has 36 - 39 k users per month. Its reach in Poland is only 0,2%. [Note, that it is website traffic only. We cannot measure widgets and IM with those tools]

Blip is not gaining traffic from Gadu-Gadu nor from search engines. "Also visited" websites shows clearly, that blip is place for heavy internet users, blog readers and IT professionals.

But it is not a traffic that makes blip valuable. Blip.pl has very dedicated and active community of users. As application is widely used by Polish IT professionals, blip has many 3rd party applications and mashups. The whole list of blip add-ons is here.

One of those applications, first developed as livestreaming mashup applications is pretending to be third player on this market. Flaker.pl is made by independent developers from Netguru company. It's traffic data are to small to be measured via Google. Alexa suggests, that flaker is sharing users with blip and its reach in some periods is even identical.

Blip since start had hard times with competitors. The only major social networking website with "status updates" is Grono.net. Grono is invite-only social network, that was the first website of such kind in Poland. Intel Capital in September 2007 bought shares of Grono.net planning to exit by IPO. Those plans were not realized since today, partly because unclear legal situation of the company, partly because of market situation.

Looking for new ways of attracting users, Grono.net has started its "status updates" with name Blimp, directly suggesting that it is copycat of blip.pl (then in private beta). Ther is no specific data for "Blimp" usage, however it did not make any impact on Grono.net traffic.

Polish micro-blogging is domain of local IM providers - o2.pl and Gadu-Gadu. The market will be shaken again, when nasza-klasa.pl will have it's own status updates. Whoever takes those statuses first into micro-blogging or IM system will win all the market.

CEO of Nasza-Klasa in the interview

Arkadiusz Pernal, since November 2008 is CEO of the biggest social networking website in Poland, Nasza-Klasa.

The former CEO, Maciej Popowicz is now dedicated only to product development, when Arek Pernal manages all the company.

In the interview for Internet Standard, Mr. Pernal reveals his plans for the nearest future.

Nasza-klasa.pl is still growing with 20 000 new accounts registered daily. Mr. Pernal believes that in 2009 this growth even if not so dynamic will be continued.

Looking at competitors on the local market, Pernal says that "the market od social networking websites in Poland seems to be barren".

According to Mr. Pernal, there are only few exceptions like Fotka.pl (which is Polish hotornot.com clone). Nasza-Klasa does not see any direct competitor at the moment.

Pernal sees growth of Facebook in Poland as not significant yet, and limited to the people with friends abroad.

Looking at 2008, CEO of Nasza-Klasa says that the most important events for the website were connected with the hardware performance and moving to the new datacenter provider in Poznan.

Nasza-Klasa with its huge growth has achieved high market penetration. Last but not least, Nasza-Klasa gained new industry investor - Estonian group AS Forticom. Forticom owns similiar websites in Baltic states (One.ee, One.lt, One.lv) and Russia (Odnoklassniki.ru).

As the most important trends for future, Pernal points online games and mobile internet.

Nasza-klasa.pl is the biggest social networking website in Poland. As for the end of 2008 year it declares more than 11 million active users. Its current value is estimated on 90 million USD.

Technorati Tagi: nasza-klasa,Poland,social network,facebook,Arkadiusz Pernal

Bebo allies with Polish Gazeta.pl to win CEE markets

Today, the new social networking portal has started in Poland. It is mashup of commonly known european social networking leader bebo with leading Polish rich content portal Gazeta.pl, owned by old media company Agora S.A. Other players in the new alliance are Bebo global partners: CBS, BBC, Endemol, MTV and last but not least Yahoo!

New website bebo.gazeta.pl aims to gain leadership over Polish social networking market, but strong competition is already there.
Local top players are epuls.pl, grono.net (supported with Intel Capital), newcomer nasza-klasa.pl (owned by European Fonders VC) and based on the Polish most popular IM MojaGeneracja.

There are also significant global players ready to fight - Hi5 and Microsoft' Live Spaces are already localized for Poland.

Does new Bebo and Gazeta.pl win the market? Tomasz Jozefacki, Head of the Internet in Agora, strongly believes that.
But Bebo by itself did not get Polish users attention during last 4 months. Does support of the 3rd Polish portal will help?

Ceneo has a mobile version available

Ceneo.pl the leading Polish price comparison tool has mobile version available since today.
Ceneo is owned by the biggest Polish auctions service Allegro.pl (there are rumours, that eBay is going to buy Allegro soon).
Mobile version called mCeneo.pl is free of charge and available from all WAP enabled devices.

[via Internet Standard]

Handelo.pl - more than product search?

Handelo.pl is Polish product search engine with social rating feature.
It has started about 7 weeks ago, and its spiders has already indexed huge number of products available on the Polish e-commerce market.
According to Tomasz Cincio, VP of Handelo.pl till the end of November they will have more than 1 mio products from the biggest eShops in Poland.
The company is owned by three persons who created the website and its idea (Tomasz Cincio, Dariusz Januszkiewicz and Łukasz Bartoszewicz), and strategic investor Denis Eckhoff.

The company hires 9 persons team working at new features such as advanced filters, and possibility to search specific product within database according to parameters such as energy efficiency, product quality and so on. Those parameters are going to be user generated. the current test version usability is limited because lck of the real users in this phase of development.

What is interesting in Handelo.pl, the website provides also closing of the transaction and check-out within. The competitors like ceneo.pl and skapiec.pl generates only leads to the shop's websites, when Handelo allows consumer to buy the product immediately without redirecting.

Handelo.pl will start promotional campaign this days.

[via Internet Standard]

Blogowisko.org - New blog catalogue in Poland

We have another try to earn on the Polish Blogosphere.
Blogowisko.org seems to be just a yet another catalogue of blogs with some social features (bookmarking and rating). Blogowisko.org announces also some contests with prizes for its users.
Blogowisko.org is in early beta and it still has serious technical problems like incompatibility with Interner Explorer.
However, the buzz around service has started and first 50 blogs already joined to the listing.

Blogowisko.org has a very strong competitor, blogfrog.pl. Blogfrog is called by some people "Polish Technorati" - it is also in early beta and still works at its rating algorithm. It's main advantage for now is support of the new owner (Agora), and huge database of crawled blogs.

Blogowisko is trying to be simplier and powered rather by community than automated feeds, but it would be hard to compete with such a big player as Blogfrog.

Elefanta.pl - Polish clone of Stumble Upon

Elefanta.pl is the first Polish toolbar-based application for social bookmarking, with usability similar to offered by StumbleUpon, currently owned by Ebay.

SU has more than 3,8 mio users. Elefanta within one week after launch gained attention of more than 10.000 users and it has some advertising contrats proposals.

The business model of the Polish website is dual: targeted advertising and premium accounts (to be released after achieving critical mass of users).

Elefanta is created by four persons team. Piotr Krawiec, the leader of the project is responsible for the communication and marketing strategy of the website. Piotr has previously worked at Onet.pl (the biggest portal in Poland), and in Money.pl (leading financial portal in Poland).
Adam Cuper, Paweł Majewski and Błażej Karmelita are working at technological issues of the elefanta. They are IT professionals with an experience gainedg in both Polish and international projects.

I am not sure whether Polish market is matured enough for social browsing/bookmarking, but elefanta as the first clone of StumbleUpon have an opportunity to lead this segment in Poland.

There are of course some threats for elefanta's business plan. If any of the existing social networking websites in Poland (such as Grono) launch similar feature with toolbar it will easily smash elefanta with the mass of users.

Also original StumbleUpon has the possibility to localize its interface and use its existing users from Poland to expand business here, with proven technology and marketing budget.

Is elefanta.pl able to achieve its target of unique users before it happens?
Without external investor and promotion, I would not bet for it.
However, I wish to Piotr and his team all the best.

You may see Polish source for this article at wnet.

Pinger.pl - miniblogging in Poland by o2.pl

Pinger is a new website that offers miniblogging (or just copy of Twitter) in Poland.

We have observed some defeats of similar concepts like: patrz, robisz.pl and thoro.pl/co.robisz/ or corobisz.

We had a kind of cybersquatting by Grono.net owners (blimp), and finally still existing moblo, and the favourite of mine blip.
And now pinger is coming.

It seems that top players on the market are somewhat crazy with miniblogging then. Moblo, blip and pinger are backed with local market leaders.

Blip vs. pinger competition maybe the same history that we observed at Polish IM market.
GG (or gadu-gadu) was before o2. Now GG has started with blip, and o2 is coming second with pinger.

But there are differences. Blip has started with testers community of computer geeks, older and different than GG users profile. Pinger is targeting younger audience - traditional target of Gadu Gadu.

Both services are starting with open API and plug-in into their owners IM software.

Who will win the race and become local twitter? Maybe no local twitter in Poland is needed?

Anyway, for both players twitter is another chance to compete with portals. O2 needs anything to stop loosing to Interia. Gadu-Gadu needs anything to content stakeholders.

[you may find the post in Polish at new1.pl]