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tucows

Tucows – Provider Of Second-Largest Domain Registrar In The World.

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Tucows is a company that works to keep people connected and the Internet accessible. With its corporate headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and its incorporation in Pennsylvania, Tucows is an American-Canadian publicly listed Internet solutions and telecommunications firm.

About The Company

Tucows provides SaaS, Fiber Internet Services, and web domain services through its three independent businesses named Tucows Domains, Ting, and Wavelo. As the second-biggest domain registrar in the world and the largest domain name broker, Tucows Domains assists people in creating their websites online. It operates Hover, OpenSRS, and Ascio. Ting Internet, provide communities all across the country with high-speed fibre internet access. Wavelo provides software for telecom billing and operations for Fiber Internet Services and Mobile Virtual Network Operators.

History

Tucows was established in 1993 as a site for downloading freeware and shareware software. In 1996, the company was acquired by Internet Direct. In 1999, STI Ventures bought Tucows. A deal between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN in April of that year put an end to Network Solutions’ monopoly on domain name registration. After obtaining ICANN permission to operate as a domain registrar, It started registering domains for around $13, far less than the initial industry starting price of around $70. In 2000, It introduced the OpenSRS system and entered the arena of wholesale domain name registrations. The OpenSRS system turned become Tucows’ profitable venture, and it made ten times as much money as the entire company did in 1999. In 2001, Tucows announced that it will start issuing multilingual domain names, enabling consumers all around the world to buy domains in their local alphabets. Tucows offered around 70 accessible languages. Later in 2001, the company launched Liberty Registry Management Services (LibertyRMS), which provided so-called “generic top-level” website domains like.info. Later, LibertyRMS was sold by Tucows to Afilias. On August 28, The Company merged with Infonautics, a publicly listed online information services provider that ran the free Encyclopedia.com and subscription-based article database Electric Library. This was a significant development as It was able to go public without having to do an IPO because of this all-stock arrangement. Ownership of Infonautics was transferred to Tucows stockholders, and the combined business, which had a $41 million market value, took the name Tucows Inc.

tucows
Image source: pressablecdn.com

Controversies

For the first time, the USTR included Tucows on its yearly “notorious markets” list in 2015 to serve as an example for domain name registrars who fail to prohibit or suspend sites that offer illicit items. In response, Tucows stated that although it regularly suspended dozens of websites, “unlike certain competitors, it thoroughly investigated all complaints to guarantee they were justified.” It previously served as the registrar of domain names for the controversial American message board 8chan, which Google delisted for harboring child pornography and where several swatting incidents and terrorist plots, including the 2019 New Zealand Terrorist Attack, were disclosed and plotted by users. Additionally, the company serves as the domain name registrant for the white supremacist website Stormfront and the social media network Truth Social. The company devised a plan in 2021 to describe their involvement in addressing domain name misuse.

Founder – Scott Swedorski

In 1991, Flint native Scott Swedorski began serving as the Mott Community College’s computer lab manager. Swedorski noticed a need to make shareware reviews available to the general public before the end of 1992 when he left Mott College to work as the system admin for FALCON at the Genesee County Library System. He founded TUCOWS (The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software) in 1993.

CEO – Elliot Noss

Elliot Noss is the CEO of Tucows. He has advocated, agitated, and educated to support and defend an Open Internet throughout the world through his work at Tucows, his participation in ICANN, and his initiatives.

kakao

Kakao – Renowned For Its Free Messaging App Kakao Talk.

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Kakao corporation is a South Korean internet company providing services like messaging, advertising, music, and e-commerce. The firm was established 12 years ago in 2010 by Brian Kim headquartered in Jeju City, South Korea. Presently, It is managed by Co-CEOs Manson Yeo and Sean Joh. The Firm achieved a 4.16 trillion South Korean Won (2020). Currently, it is competing for the Number 1 Position with Naver in the Japanese web novel and comic market.

Founding Of Company

Kakao corporation is the company after Kakao Talk serving as its primary platform and flagship application founded by Kim Bum-Soo in 2006. It is based in Seoul, South Korea. Three of App Annie’s Global top 10 android apps were bound up with Kakao Talk in august 2013, which were Everybody’s Marble, Ani pang, and Cookie Run. Some games played on its platforms, such as Dragon Flight and Ani Pang, were named National Games. Some key people were Brian Kim, Stephen Kim, and Namkoong When. It’s a versatile corporation providing services in different industries such as entertainment, fashion, finance, transportation, community services, and investment.

Mergers

The Corporation decided to merge with Daum Corporation, one of Korea’s top Internet portals, using a stock swap in May 2014 to compete with South Korea’s biggest portal, Navier, and was renamed Daum Kakao, which was changed back in 2015. The firm’s board of directors replaced CEO Kim-Beom-Soo with Rim Ji-Hoon.

kakao
Image source: mk.co.kr

New Business Model

Kakao corporation introduced its KakaoTaxi service on March 10, 2015, which allows users to call a taxi using the Kakao Taxi app. Different taxi companies supported the Kakao taxi service, and approximately six lakh taxi- users booked their rides with this application just eight months after the launch.

Revenue

Having 93 % of the South Korean population on Kakao Talk, it made a revenue of approximately 200 USD with gaming, mobile commerce, digital content, and marketing channels, becoming the world’s third top publisher at google play in 2013.

Achievements

Kakao Corporation was acknowledged as an elite developer on Google’s Android Market, and its flagship application KakaoTalk was selected as the number one Free messaging App by Cnet. It became the World’s Top publisher on Google Play in December 2013. Presently, it is the No. 1 publisher for Google Play and iOS in South Korea, and KakaoTalk is the Number 1 application for Google Play and iOS platforms in South Korea. In 2014, It was chosen for the Most Innovative Mobile App Award at Global Mobile Awards.

Subsidiaries

Its renowned subsidiaries are:

  • Kakao games
  • Kakao entertainment
  • Kakao mobility
  • Kakao friends
  • Lycos Inc.

Founder – Kim Beom-Soo

Kim-Boem-Soo, also called Brian Kim, born on 8 March 1996, is a Korean Billionaire Entrepreneur, chairman, and founder of Kakao corporation. He grew up in Seoul, and his grandmother did his upbringing, and he holds a BSc and MSc degree in engineering from Seoul National University. He joined Samsung as a developer. Kim started Hangame as an internet cafe business in 1998 which became Korea’s first online gaming platform. He also worked in NHN corporation as a representative until 2007. He was worth 11.2 billion USD by Forbes in 2021.

Chief Executive Officer – Namkoong Whon

He worked on finding new growth engines for the corporation and worked as Chief executive officer at Kakao corporation’s new organization. He holds a degree from Sogang University. He was also an early founding member who led the firm through a difficult time and contributed much to making it a success.

Xunlei

Xunlei – One Of The Top Internet Companies In China.

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Xunlei is a publicly-traded Chinese multinational technology company that was founded in 2003. Based in the technology sector, the company is mainly a provider of online services. It is one of the most widely used internet brands in the country but it is primarily famous for computing and blockchain technology. The headquarters of Xunlei is based in Shenzhen, China. It also has a subsidiary called Shenzhen Xunlei Networking Technologies Co Ltd. Xunlei offers products and services to both individual and enterprise users and the solutions include cloud computing, download acceleration, blockchain, etc. It has also received several awards and accolades for its digital technology, and innovative products, and for consistently being one of the top internet companies in China. 

Story of Xunlei

Although Xunlei was officially founded in 2003, the company’s first prototype emerged in Silicon Valley, the USA in 2002. After one year, when Xunlei was established, Thunder 2 was released for the first time. Within the next year, the company witnessed an increase in the number of users and eventually released Xunlei 3 and Xunlei 4. In 2005, the company hosted a funding round in which it successfully raised $10 million approximately. In the same year, it also released Mini Thunder and Thunder 5. 2006 was a benchmark year for the company as it crossed 100 million users. Moreover, the company’s download-acceleration software became a software with the largest user scale. In 2007, Xunlei signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Google in Beijing. The company also incorporated many implementations in the cross-protocol download section. 

Xunlei
Image source: sinaimg.cn

Expansion

In 2008, the company released a chain of new products together including Thunder Software Assistant, Thunder Game, Thunder Security Assistant, and many more. Later that year, the company held a press conference regarding China’s internet content distribution. Again in 2009, a lot of new products and upgraded versions of some products were released. For example, Xunlei released its Home Digital Entertainment products and along with that launched Thunderbolt Heroes Web Game. In 2010, the number of Xunlei users exceeded the 300 million mark, and paid users reached 1 million. The company also released Thunder 7 that year, thus opening a new era for internet downloads. 

In 2011, it finally released its products for iPad, and the Mac version for Thunder was also released. The company’s online video site, Xunlei Kankan became the first online video site in China to achieve high definition on the whole network. In 2013, the total Xunlei users reached 460 million and the paid users reached 5.2 million. Earlier in 2014, the company received a huge amount of funding of $200 million from Xiaomi followed by which it went public and got listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. After the investment, Xioami also partnered with Xunlei to jointly release Star CDN. In 2017, it occupied 42nd place in the list of China’s top 100 internet companies. Recently, the company has released its BaaS platform such that users can deploy their chain with a click, thus making the process much more convenient. 

Jinbo Li – CEO of Xunlei

In April 2020, Jinbo Li became the Chairman and CEO of Xunlei. Li comes with industrial expertise of more than 20 years exclusively in China’s internet and technology sector. He is associated with the company from the very beginning as he helped in establishing and running the core R&D team of the company from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Li left the company and worked for two other internet ventures for the next four years followed by which he founded Itui International Inc, a mobile application development company. Jinbo Li went to Shandong University followed by Peking University.