Giganews

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Giganews, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded1998 in Austin, Texas
HeadquartersAustin, Texas
ProductsUsenet
Websitewww.giganews.com

Giganews, Inc is a popular Usenet/newsgroup service provider. Founded in 1998, Giganews service is available to individual users through a subscription model and as an outsourced service to internet service providers. Giganews currently offers service to over 10 million broadband users in 180 countries. Well-known ISPs that have outsourced Usenet access to Giganews include Comcast, RCN Corporation,[1] BT, WOW! (Wide Open West), and Kingston Communications.

According to www.top1000.org, the combined weight of Giganews' servers makes Giganews the second most peered Usenet server currently online.

Starting in early 2006, the Mozilla Foundation’s newsgroup hierarchy was sponsored by Giganews.

Giganews traffic is peered at Equinix in Ashburn in Loudoun County, Virginia as well as AMS-IX and NL-IX in The Netherlands.

In the summer of 2005, Giganews provided open Usenet access to attendees of the What The Hack conference in The Netherlands.[1].

Article retention in binary groups was increased to 200 days in the summer of 2007. [2].

Giganews announced on July 11, 2008 that they plan to raise their retention to 240 days by September 2008.[3].

Marketing model

Comparing to other Usenet providers Giganews practices a different kind of marketing model. As it prices the unlimited Usenet access up to two times higher than other Usenet providers - users are attracted through a complex network of affiliates - websites and newsreading clients apart from Google ads. Additional profits are spent on agressive advertising, paybacks to affiliates, salary incentives for management and to keep qualified engineering work force from leaving. To address the price gap and appeal to different groups of users (by age, interests etc.) Giganews also wholly operates a number of "resellers" - Power Usenet, Usenet.net, Rhino Newsgroups [4] and very likely more. As the part of its marketing strategy the Giganews Usenet retention is kept just above the retention of its competitors. At the same time there is no definite proof the quality of Giganews Usenet access is different comparing to other major providers - if to judge by user feedback, rather than to take into account the Giganews affiliate websites which are the interested party because of relatively high referral comission and incentives package (including free Usenet access for selected affiliates). The recent trend among major ISPs not to offer binary Usenet access to their customers [5] may affect the company negatively since some of its profits are derived from ISP newsgroups outsourcing [6].

References

  1. ^ RCN Forum FAQ - dslreports.com

External links

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