Ciao.de
| Ciao.de | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| www.ciao.de | |
| description | Shopping portal |
| Registration | optional |
| owner | Shopping Guide GmbH |
| Published | 1999 |
Ciao.de was an online consumer community within the LeGuide Group. In Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, Ciao is one of the largest shopping portals.
Company history
The portal was founded in summer 1999 by Frederick Paul, Max Cartellieri and Verena Mohaupt in Munich . The portal went online in November 1999. In February 2000, Ciao merged with the competitor Amiro.de . The headquarters of the new company Ciao GmbH became Munich. Ciao was financed over three capital rounds by the venture capitalists Wellington Partners , Index Ventures , Apax and Acton Capital Partners as well as various business angels with approximately EUR 28 million.
The company employed over 220 people in seven European agencies in Munich , London , Paris , Wroclaw (Poland) and Timișoara (Romania).
In April 2005, the American online panel company Greenfield Online, Inc. ( NASDAQ : SRVY) bought Ciao AG for USD 154 million.
As of May 1, 2007, the company divided the two business areas “Ciao Comparison Shopping” and “Ciao Surveys” into independent companies: on the one hand, the online shopping portal Ciao in seven countries and languages, which offers consumer opinions on a wide variety of products and services others the Ciao Surveys GmbH, as a provider of online surveys and service provider in the field of online market research.
Sales in 2007 were $ 67 million.
In October 2008, Microsoft took over Ciao GmbH for around USD 486 million in order to significantly expand its range of search and e-commerce in Europe. Max Cartellieri founded the AlphaSights expert network in 2008.
In March 2012, Ciao was taken over by the French LeGuide Group , which had previously bought the competitor dooyoo.de. After Corinne Lejbowicz left, Olivier Sichel took over the management of Shopping Guide GmbH, which operates the Ciao shopping portal in seven languages and markets, in July 2012.
The platform was taken offline at the beginning of 2018. The reports are no longer available. An online shop search engine is now available under this domain.
offer
Ciao.de offered price comparisons for over six million different products and services as well as a shopping guide that consisted of over five million personal experience reports with products and services written by the Ciao community. The vast majority of these reports dealt with groceries and drugstore items.
As a registered user you could help other users with your own experience, gain awareness in the community and receive low incentives . The members were able to rate their testimonials from one another (particularly helpful, very helpful, etc.) and thereby collect points. In order to achieve a high status within the community, not only the number and quality of the experience reports played a role, but above all the systematic development of as large a circle of friends as possible, which could be achieved most easily by generously evaluating as many other reports as possible. The practice of "reading rounds", which has now been officially approved in a community newsletter from Ciao.de, documents the degenerate writing, reading, commenting and evaluating of experience reports, which is an end in itself The highest possible remuneration was a priority for many registered users.
Consumer advocates accused the review portals of the fact that product reviews due to financial incentives were not always 100% objective. However, the total remuneration achieved at Ciao was mostly in the order of € 1, even for a high-quality experience report, so that this argument only applied to a small extent for Ciao members.
From May 2007 the evaluation and price comparison portal Ciao.de operated independently of the online market research company Ciao Surveys.
Online surveys
In addition to comparing prices and products, Ciao has also been offering a service for market research customers since 2001 . For this purpose, the Ciao community members were asked to register on the company's market research panel and thus be given the opportunity to take part in surveys commissioned by market research institutes. In this area too, users were able to make money. Depending on their interests, Ciao invited its members to surveys of partners at irregular intervals. For completing these online surveys, you usually received amounts between 0.25 and 10 euros. However, this assumes that the participants fit into a certain profile, which makes it possible to fill out the respective questionnaire in full. In contrast, questionnaires that were only partially completed were generally not reimbursed.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ computerbild: Microsoft buys shopping portal Ciao
- ↑ Reuters: LeGuide.com announces successful closing of Ciao acquisition ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Imprint Ciao.de ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Imprint dooyoo.de ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ ciao!: Reading rounds - live and let live ?! ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
