FloNetwork

Last updated
FloNetwork
FormerlyMedia Synergy Inc.
Industrymarketing
Founded1993
FounderPaul Chen
Mina Lux
HeadquartersCanada

FloNetwork was an eMarketing Application Service Provider (ASP) that specialized in permission- based Internet direct marketing and communications services. The company, which was privately held until its acquisition by Doubleclick [1] (now owned by Google), operated as an ASP and enabled clients to send mass email campaigns. Flonetwork was an early leader in the permission-based online direct marketing and communications market.

Contents

History

Toronto-based FloNetwork was cofounded in 1993 by entrepreneurs Paul Chen and Mina Lux, under the name Media Synergy Inc. In November 1999 the company changed its name to FloNetwork Inc. Its initial business involved the development, sale and licensing of multimedia consumer software products. In 1998, they began developing and selling e-mail messaging software applications and services. In January 1999, they discontinued the development, sale and licensing of multimedia consumer software products and adopted a business strategy to offer e-mail messaging services over a hosted technology platform, quickly becoming a leader in the field. [2]

Products

FloNetwork offered a suite of hosted applications and services to handle all aspects of permission-based email messaging campaigns, including designing email messages, building and managing email address lists, testing and deploying email messaging campaigns and real-time tracking, reporting and analysis of results. As an early provider, the company quickly became recognized as a leader in the field, including articles in the NY Times, Business 2.0, and The Wall Street Journal. [3]

Early customers

FloNetwork quickly became a leader and established a strong customer base early on, including well-known companies including barnesandnoble.com, buy.com, CNET, Careerpath, CMP, Experian, Hallmark, Ingram Micro, Internet World, J. Crew, Meredith Corporation, Omaha Steaks and Virgin Records. [4]

Awards

FloNetwork was recognized by Deloitte & Touche in 2000 as a winner of the Canadian Technology Fast 50 award, becoming the first email marketing ASP worldwide to receive this award. It was also recognized in the top half of the Fast500 for technology companies in North America. [5]

Acquisition by Doubleclick

In 2001, Doubleclick (now owned by Google) acquired Flonetwork for $80M. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Email</span> Mail sent using electronic means

Electronic mail is a method of transmitting and receiving messages using electronic devices. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, mail. Email is a ubiquitous and very widely used communication medium; in current use, an email address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instant messaging</span> Form of communication over the internet

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipient(s), who are all connected on a common network. It differs from email in that conversations over instant messaging happen in real-time. Most modern IM applications use push technology and also add other features such as emojis, file transfer, chatbots, voice over IP, or video chat capabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webmail</span> Email service that can be accessed using a web browser

Webmail is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are AOL Mail, Proton Mail, Gmail, GMX Mail, Mailfence, Outlook.com/Hotmail.com, and Yahoo! Mail. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message. The MMS standard extends the core SMS capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prodigy (online service)</span> Online service that operated from 1984 to 2001

Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services. It was one of the major internet service providers of the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Email spam</span> Unsolicited electronic advertising by e-mail

Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.

DoubleClick Inc. was an American advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to advertising agencies and mass media, serving businesses like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa Inc., Nike, Inc., and Carlsberg Group. The company's main product line was known as DART, which was intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and minimize unsold inventory for publishers.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to building loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Openwave</span> American mobile data software company

Openwave is a division of Enea. It provides video traffic management and 5G mobile products.

Push email is an email system that provides an always-on capability, in which when new email arrives at the mail delivery agent (MDA), it is immediately, actively transferred (pushed) by the MDA to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the email client, so that the end-user can see incoming email immediately. This is in contrast with systems that check for new incoming mail every so often, on a schedule. Email clients include smartphones and, less strictly, IMAP personal computer mail applications.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smartphones, feature phones, tablets, or any other related devices through websites, e-mail, SMS and MMS, social media, or mobile applications. Mobile marketing can provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, appointment reminders and ideas. In a more theoretical manner, academic Andreas Kaplan defines mobile marketing as "any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device".

An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecommunications networks. In most cases, SMS and MMS are eventually routed to a mobile phone through a wireless carrier. SMS gateways are commonly used as a method for person-to-person to device-to-person communications. Many SMS gateways support content and media conversions from email, push, voice, and other formats.

Chikka, short for Chikka Text Messenger, was an Internet-based instant messaging application that supports free SMS or text messaging between online users and offline mobile subscribers. Chikka was released by Chikka Philippines, Inc. in the early 2000 and eventually established its connection with the country's network operators Smart Communications (2001), Globe Telecom (2002) and Sun Cellular (2004). With up to billions of messages being exchanged between online and mobile communities worldwide through Chikka, it is probably the world's first commercially successful integration of web and mobile utilities.

Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice, mobility features, audio, web & video conferencing, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), desktop sharing, data sharing, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging. UC is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.

Bulk messaging is the dissemination of large numbers of SMS messages for delivery to mobile phone terminals. It is used by media companies, banks and other enterprises and consumer brands for a variety of purposes including entertainment, enterprise and mobile marketing.

Echoworx, an email encryption software company, is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with offices in the USA and UK. As a certificate authority, Echoworx is a member of both the Microsoft Root Certificate Program and Apple Root Certificate Program. Echoworx operates several data centers, including locations in the United States and Europe.

Paul Chen is a Canadian entrepreneur based in Toronto, founder of two technology companies, FloNetwork and Fortiva.

SEVEN Networks, Inc. is a privately funded American corporation founded in 2000. It had about 265 employees in 2010. As of 2017, the company has research and development centers in Texas and Finland.

Cloud collaboration is a method of sharing and co-authoring computer files via cloud computing, whereby documents are uploaded to a central "cloud" for storage, where they can then be accessed by other users. Cloud collaboration technologies allow users to upload, comment and collaborate on documents and even amend the document itself, evolving the document. Businesses in the last few years have increasingly been switching to use of cloud collaboration.

Bigfoot International, Inc. was a New York City based holding company, which developed email communications, marketing automation and customer interaction software products during the dot-com era. Founded in 1997 by Lenny Barshack and James Hoffman, it grew out of Bigfoot.com, a free e-mail provider and Web directory. It eventually developed into a group of three subsidiaries: Bigfoot.com, Bigfoot Interactive, and Neoplanet, Inc. The company ended in 2000.

References

  1. Roundup, A. WSJ com News (2001-02-26). "DoubleClick Plans to Acquire E-Mail Marketer FloNetwork". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  2. By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCHJUNE 26, 2000 (2000-06-26). "Compressed Data; By Any Other Name, Is It Spam? - The New York Times". The New York Times . Retrieved 2018-02-19.
  3. "Archived copy". www.flonetwork.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2002. Retrieved 13 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. "New Straits Times - Google News Archive Search".
  5. "Fast 50 - 2000 Winners". Archived from the original on 2010-10-12. Retrieved 2010-04-15.
  6. "Company News; Doubleclick, An Online Advertiser, Adds Flonetwork". The New York Times. Reuters. 2001-02-24. Retrieved 2018-02-19.