Walla, currently known as Walla Communications (owned by Mashov Computers, Bezeq International and the public) executed two moves that made it what it is today. The first was its change of ownership. The founders sold the company to Mashov which, running into difficulties, was sold to the Formula group headed by Danny Goldstein, whom the Israeli high-tech market regards as the "man with the touch of gold". Relatively speaking, Goldstein paid mere pennies for properties such as Walla, Magic and Babylon, all of which he skilfully upgraded.
The second move was a professional one. Throughout its existence, Walla had been adept at keeping one step ahead of everybody else. Founders Gadi Hadar and Erez Pilosof may take the credit for this.
Yesterday, Walla Communications came out with an announcement, and, true to form, did so ahead of everyone else. It was concurrently deploying, it said, for the age of both broadband and cellular Internet. Content, of course, is the basis for all of this, and the tidings Walla brings speak of full integration of the portal into one information system. The most outstanding expression of this is a Walla-developed, state-of-the-art search engine called Unified Search, which enables the seeker to obtain full information on the object of his search.
"In my opinion, this represents full utilisation of what is known as a 'portal'", says Hadar. "The trick is to combine everything into one big picture for the surfer. Today we are no longer a collection of links, but provide the surfer with a true snapshot".
"All decentralised platforms have been fused into one, which enjoys a constant inflow of content" Pilosof adds. "There have always been innovations in search content. We will invest a great deal of money here. In the near future, this platform will also incorporate e-commerce".
Walla Communications subsidiary PortalPrize is about to transform the new search engine into a shelf product, and market it worldwide. The new company, which recently raised $2 million from private investors in consideration of 60% of its shares, currently numbers 15 employees and will market all of Walla's contemporary developments. Walla's 20% stake in the subsidiary will not be diluted on issuance, and another 20% are employees' options.
The parallel line along which Walla is operating is content marketing, both through cellphones and personal accessories, especially the palm pilot, and through broadband for customers' computers or television sets. These are two opposite directions, and both require specific specialisation. The first direction calls for conversion of content for simple, mainly textual media, based on simple, easy-to-operate menus.
The second direction requires content to be thickened and improved by more complicated visual means such as pictures and video films. In future, with the advent of the third cellular generation into application, the two paths will converge, and cellular telephone users will be able to surf at a rate of 2 Mbps.
Walla and Partner recently announced the set-up of a joint cellular portal. Correct to the present, the two companies are conducting joint trials in which information is transmitted by SMS from the Walla portal to Partner's GSM telephone display screen. In other words, short text messages are being relayed through the Orange network's electronic telegram service. At the same time, Pass Call made a conversion of Walla to WAP format (cellular Internet protocol), and even today the site can be surfed by means of a MIRS Leader telephone.
Walla's big innovation is its mobile.walla.co.il site, which is adapted to the palm pilot. Walla is not the first provider in the world to set up a palm pilot site, but in all the other sites, including famous ones such as CNN and Yahoo, each customer entering the site from his palm pilot or by means of a cellphone, gets the entire unfiltered site.
Walla is the first of the well-known sites to enable personalisation. Through the site, one can predefine what information one wishes to download to the palm pilot every time one enters the site online. This is very significant, because the palm pilot has limited memory, and anyone downloading unfiltered information, including graphic information, can get stuck due to a memory problem.
Walla also enables e-mail to be sent and received, and has actually created a mobile palm version portal. Another application that will be available in a few weeks time in the portable Walla will be the option of downloading road maps to the palm pilot, to enable the user to find his way.
Walla can already show an initial version of the broadband portal. This is still an early version, with some features that work, and the page looks very colourful with plenty of pictures. Some of them are actually a short video film that is operated by clicking the mouse on the picture. "Walla is getting ready for full frame video broadcasts", Pilosof maintains, "and is currently making an examination of two formats, - MPI and Microsoft".
Meanwhile, it is making the broadband test in Tevel, to which it provides content. It is not taking part in Bezeq's ADSL test, but is definitely also prepared for broadband services in Bezeq and also for those the cable companies are expected to provide. "I believe we have another six months to continue development", Hadar concludes, "and when the networks are ready for operation, we, too, will be ready".
Published by Israel's Business Arena January 13, 2000