… and moving its blog to its own hotshot new website!
So please make sure your feed now points to feed://www.zattoo.com/blog/feed to keep up-to-date with all things Zattoo. And here’s your direct path to the blog itself: www.zattoo.com/blog.
The comments function is now open on the new blog site, by the way. We’re looking forward to lots of oohs and aaahs.
Well, alright, we’ll take the other stuff too.
See you again over there …
Yes to all of the below:
* It was impossible to find information on the old website (we thought so too)
* The design was – well, how can one put it nicely – early nineties?
* The channel list was never quite up-to-date (and yes, Wikipedia was tons more reliable in listing our offering)
* And the FAQ section was hell to search through for frustrated people in a hurry
Enough of the self-flagellation. NOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED. We’ve become more structured (very possibly due to the increase in women in the company – hint, hint, male colleagues. And yes, it wouldn’t hurt you to clean up after yourselves in the kitchen), acquired a glossy flashy new century look, complete with interactivity and a cute little TV avatar dude, and it’s finally possible to see all the channels we carry in every single country we’re live in. And the whole thing is in all the languages of the countries that we’ve launched in so far. Which made the webteam briefly wonder about whether it was worth the hassle of launching in further countries – but no. The Italians alone would never forgive us.
From: Olivier
Subject: ZATTOO Live TV experience in the TGV (high speed train between Brussel and Paris)
Date: February 27, 2008 10:04:21 AM GMT-05:00
To: Team Zattoo
Hello,
Just to share with you that for the first time I am experiencing ZATTOO Live TV experience in the TGV at 300km/h thanks to internal Wifi access (free for the moment). Quality and stability of the signal is great. Switching time also great\!
Olivier
The fastest ever use of Zattoo on record was Olivier’s Zattoo experience on the TGV at the end of February. It’s hard to top 300km/h as long as Zattoo is not available on flights. Which makes us wonder if there are any other records out there. Where, for example, is the weirdest place ever you watched Zattoo? What’s your longest ever Zattoo session? Or do you have a personal Zattoo story you’d like to share?
(Here’s mine, to start it off: Zattoo is also a dating agency. My fella read an article on us in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, written by Simon Feldmer, and then contacted us. And things took their course and Simon has my eternal gratitude …)
Zattooees united: it’s time to pop a bottle in celebration of the over 100’000 users in Germany and the fact that we finally made it to the country of Weißbier and Currywurst.
Join us at the ZATTOO LAUNCH PARTY in Berlin on 22 November. Meet Sugih and Beat, the founders. Get a chance to chat up with other members of the Zattoo team and all your co-users out there. Share a beer and more and some hours of fun and relaxation.
Here’s the where and when:
ZATTOO LAUNCH PARTY
22 November, 2007
starting at 21:30
At Theater Ballhaus Ost
Pappelallee 15, Prenzlauer Berg
10437 Berlin
Important: please send a quick note to helen@zattoo.com or leave a comment by November 13 at the latest if you’re planning to attend. This helps us calculate the bottles of beer to chill …
Also important: please print this blog invite and bring it as an entry ticket to the party.
Zattoo – Long live orange TV!
As a truly global company we’ve got offices on two continents: a US office in Ann Arbor, near the University of Michigan, headed by Sugih (co-founder, CTO, Chairman, professor of computer science at U of M, fifth from the right), and a Swiss office in Zurich, Switzerland, headed by Beat (co-founder, CEO, President, nothing else).
The techies (see above) are based in Ann Arbor, while the business people (see entry below, clearly distinguishable by their sophisticated clothing) sit in Zurich. Well, okay, the only thing that distinguishes us in Zurich from our better half in Ann Arbor is our higher women to men ratio. (Ann Arbor might point out some additional differences to do with analytical thinking, BUT DON’T LISTEN TO THEM.)
By the way, the above photo was taken at last Friday’s beer-thirty event, in commemoration (nice word, Helen) of our 1-million user milestone.
Zattoo – Bringing you TV for the next generation.
This is the Zurich team celebrating. We still look a little dazed, which is only partly due to the Prosecco we’d been downing sipping. Ok, it’s only part of the Zurich team. Some vital members are missing because they were actually working when the big moment arrived. Sugih, our co-founder slash Chairman slash CTO, was in Ann Arbor with the rest of the US team (am working on getting their photo up as well), Beat, co-founder slash CEO slash President, was on the road in the UK, Francesco, marketing wiz, dito, Thomas, head of business operations (whatever that is – all I know is that it’s important), was on a secret mission in Zurich.
Back to the major moment. At 5:09 pm sharp the total user number jumped from 999,999 to 1,000,000. Pop went the bottles and the run on the tortilla chips began. We tried to persuade Fredy, most senior member of staff present, to make a speech, but he somehow weasled out of it. It all eventually ended in a cheerful blur on a very uplifting note. To be honest, it’s a great feeling to know that 1 million people are now using Zattoo. Thanks for believing in us!
Zattoo – Now working on the next million.
… Or: Of countries and channels
Hola to all current and waitlisted Zattoo users out there! Thanks to all of you for your remarks, suggestions, for your incredibly encouraging praise and also for your critical remarks. The praise makes us soar high and keeps us going, the criticism pulls us back to the ground and drives us to give you a better Zattoo.
Apart from the many comments you also have many questions, especially on when we plan to launch in other countries and on what’s going to happen with the channel offering. So here’s a quick update on things:
Next on the list of countries to be Zattoo-ified are Belgium, Austria („WE HEAR YOU, LINSE!“), and France. In most other European countries we’re in discussion with the broadcasters – in some more intensely than in others. We’ve stopped announcing launch dates ahead of time because we had to learn the hard way that things never go as planned when there are two parties or more involved (a variation of Murphy’s Law).
While we’re mainly focusing on Europe this year, the rest of the world is not completely off our map. We’re also talking to broadcasters in the US („Stand by, Josephine!“) and in some Asian countries and hope to also move forward in South America very soon (this for Betty in Paraguay).
We’re collecting all your channel requests and will certainly try to fulfill as many of them as possible, though you may need to be a little patient with us. We’re reluctant to communicate starting dates for new channels before we don’t hold the rights for them in our very own hands. This means that we can’t tell you exactly when this or that channel will be available. But you can be sure that the channels that are hot on your list are also hot on ours …
One last thing: if you’ve got technical questions, it might be best to address them to support@zattoo.com (for Germany there’s a separate support email address: support.de@zattoo.com).
Cheerio from the guys and gals at Zattoo!
Zattoo – It’s a TV world. Let’s enjoy it. Wherever, whenever, whatever.
Yup, we are on the way to conquer the world launch in other countries, but it’s not a box of chocolates. Which means that Portugal (for you, Jorge) and Italy (for Carlo and Hefe) and many other countries in Europe, America and Asia are on our map. However, it takes a lot of legwork (read: flight miles and sizzling phone lines) to collect the necessary rights to transmit the channels. Fact is that as good guys (and chicks), who plan to stay around for a while and not get slapped with a million dollar lawsuit for operating illegally, we diligently acquire the rights in each separate country. Unlike the fast food world, the media world doesn’t operate on a global basis, so if we acquire the rights to carry a French TV channel in Switzerland, say, we don’t automatically get the right to carry it also in France or Germany.
All of this doesn’t make us piss in our pants deter us, of course. Chance actually is that we’re talking to a broadcaster somewhere right now, as you are reading this. So stay tuned for more channels in Z-countries and a launch in countries that haven’t been zattoed yet. And, as always: a big thank-you for your interest and support!
Sugih (co-fundador, presidente y CTO), Daniel (responsable para España) y yo estaremos en Madrid, mañana jueves, día 5 de julio de 2007. Durante el día daremos una rueda de prensa y en la noche iremos de copas y tapas para celebrar un poco.
Todos los 124’438 usuarios de Zattoo en España estáis cordialmente invitados a acompañarnos. Estaremos en el bar Viva Madrid a partir de las 20:00. No podemos ofrecer más que responder a vuestras preguntas, escuchar vuestras ideas e… invitaros a una cerveza. Pero nos encantaría conocer personalmente muchos de vosotros!
We ran all the text strings that make up our software through Start Trek’s Universal Translator (pictured above), but the results sucked were disappointing to say the least. That’s why we’re now looking for help from our users to localize the Zattoo player in all of the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese, and Kazakh.
If you:
then our inbox is eagerly waiting for a message from you.
UPDATE: Ok, ok, you got me… I only put Kazakh up there to bedazzle our competitors 😉
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