Company information AfterDawn Ltd is a privately owned company located in Finland (European Union) that owns various web properties. Most important web properties are called AfterDawn.com, Dawnload.net, MP3Lizard.com and Blasteroids.com. Company is fully owned by its original founders and has been profitable right from the beginning. The web properties that company controls currently (July, 2003) generate over 10,000,000 page impressions a month and we estimate that this figure will grow by 50 percent within next 10 months. The company currently employs three part-time employees, all of them part of the original team of company founders. History AfterDawn.com was founded as a hobby project back in spring 1999. Originally the site's focus was to provide various MP3 news and software downloads to users and also provide a free web hosting services for independent artists who wish to distribute their music in MP3 format for free. The website was launched as beta test site in summer 1999 and officially launched in October 1999. The focus of the site has somewhat changed since those early days. MP3s became an everyday hobby for most of the web users and also the controversy surrounding the "MP3 movement" kinda died, so we broadened the area of interest to cover also digital video issues. This decision was made in late 1999 and proved to be successful. We still cover all the news, software updates and issues in MP3 world, but as times change, most of our news articles are related to digital video and DVD technology nowadays. In summer 2000, we decided to launch a web-based MP3 search engine when that kind of sites were extremely popular. The site was called MP3Lizard.com, but eventually it became clear to us that the web-based service wont work -- Napster and other P2P tools were already way ahead of any web-based search engines. So, at some point in 2001 we decided that we need to focus more on our "core business" at AfterDawn.com and decided to move our artist promotion service to MP3Lizard.com. This is still the case -- our "sister site" MP3Lizard.com still carries the long history of AfterDawn.com's artist service and has improved over the years to offer thousands of tracks from independent artists in MP3 format. In spring 2001, we launched yet another site, called Dawnload.net. The site's idea was ultimately to transfer AfterDawn.com's software selection under its own domain. This has happened already, but AfterDawn.com still has its own software section because our users insist that we must keep at least the core tools available directly at AfterDawn.com. So, currently Dawnload.net is basically just a slightly better organized mirror of AfterDawn.com's software selection. Although this situation is hopefully going to change within year 2003 as we plan to introduce more software sections that will be available only through Dawnload.net. Our site has also long history of being one of the best bilingual implementations in the world -- all of our sites are available in Finnish and in English. All the content is updated in both languages. We also offer our content through various other non-traditional forms, such as WAP (wireless devices), AvantGo and through various content-feed partners. In spring 2002, AfterDawn.com and CD-RW.ORG decided to co-operate in content and site development area. AfterDawn.com doesn't have any financial links to CD-RW.ORG and vice versa, but as our sites' core areas match pretty nicely without overlapping too much, we have worked in co-operation ever since. AfterDawn.com provides CD-RW.ORG hosting facilities, site development, news articles and certain software reviews. CD-RW.ORG on the other hand provides AfterDawn.com extensive CDR-related news and articles and software reviews. We also share the same discussion forums. In December, 2002, we agreed to host 321 Studios' technical support forums for their products DVD X Copy and XPRESS. We don't have any financial relationship with 321 Studios, but host their forums and carry their advertisements on our site. The main purpose for hosting the forums was to gather larger userbase to our other sites as well. The site eventually grew to the point where we decided that the site and its future would be best served by setting up a company to run the site. Such company, AfterDawn Ltd, was launched in June, 2003 to run the website professionally. The company is owned fully by the people who originally found the site back in 1999. In July, 2003 we entered into a new area and launched our gaming website, Blasteroids.com. As of now (July, 2003), the site offers only discussion forum facilities for gamers to discuss about game news, rumours, cheats and tricks. The plan is to expand further to gaming market later on this year. We are always looking for advertisers and investors who are interested of our website or want to get more information about AfterDawn.com. http://www.afterdawn.com/general/company.cfm
