Word: zennstrom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once you've sold a company for $2.6 billion, life on the beach can be tempting, particularly if you're Scandinavian. But for dotcom veterans Janus Friis, 30, and Niklas Zennstrom, 40, whose sale of Skype to eBay rocketed them toward Gatesian wealth, the lure of a Great Leap Backward has proved stronger than sun and sand. Having launched Kazaa, one of the first music-file-sharing networks, in 2001 and Skype, the first big Internet-powered phone service, in 2003, the duo began work a year ago on a secret venture dubbed the Venice Project, whose goal...
...this time, Friis, a Dane, and Zennstrom, a Swede, won't have every media lawyer in the U.S. waiting to sue them, as was the case with Kazaa. TV networks are pleased with Joost's advanced encryption, which they say makes it virtually piracy-proof. Joost's founders learned the importance of that the hard way: Kazaa was forced last summer to pay more than $100 million to settle copyright-infringement claims...
...first time that Zennstrom has pursued a counterintuitive business model. In 2000 he and Skype co-founder Janus Friis launched Kazaa, a peer-to-peer exchange that allowed users to swap music and videos online. Now Zennstrom is at the vanguard of voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), a technology that lets voice traffic travel over the Internet. Gartner Inc. analyst Katja Ruud estimates that about 100 million people worldwide will use VOIP by 2008. Even telecom giants like AT&T, BT Group and Verizon realize they have to offer VOIP. Zennstrom practices extreme VOIP: free calls and free software...
Swedish entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friiss have already shaken the music industry to its roots with their Kazaa file-sharing software. Now Zennstrom, 37, and Friiss, 27, have turned their attention to another industry: telephony. The duo's new creation is known as Skype, and they hope it will do for phone calls what Kazaa, which lets millions of users get songs for free, did for file sharing. Download Skype's software www.skype.com and buy a $15 headset, and you can make free phone calls worldwide to anyone else who has installed Skype. Like Kazaa, the system...
...improving. Zennstrom and Friiss say Skype users will be able to call anyone--non-Skype users included--in 2004. The pair plan to make the business profitable by charging for services such as call waiting, multiple lines and voice mail. More than 2.5 million copies of the basic program have been downloaded since its August release...