mactavish
- 10 Sep 2004 22:20
Company Profile
YooMedia plc is one of the fastest growing interactive entertainment companies in the UK.
Since 1997 we have been developing and launching leading B2C consumer brands in the gaming and community sectors. We also work in a B2B capacity with leading brand owners, agencies, content developers and broadcasters to design and develop their interactive content strategies.
Led by Executive Chairman Dr. Michael Sinclair and Group Managing Director Neil MacDonald, YooMedia has assembled a highly experienced management team that possesses a unique blend of skills and experience in the areas of Digital TV, Internet and mobile phone services and technology.
With main office locations in London, Exeter and Maidstone, YooMedia manages core assets including:
Over 30 office locations throughout the UK alone
State-of-the-art studio, production and post-production facilities at our Wapping location.
UK broadcast return path & bandwidth owner
Fully fledged UK Bookmaker License
Database with over 350K UK singles
SMS Engine access with international reach
Fully staffed 50 seat Customer Contact Centre in Maidstone, Kent
YooMedia Dating & Chat - Our dating subsidiary company manages the oldest and largest UK-owned dating brands including Dateline, Club Sirius and Avenues. YooMedia Dating has over 20 office locations throughout the UK and also manages YooChat, our world-leading interactive chat service found on UK digital cable on the Telewest platform (platform extensions planned for 2005).
YooMedia Gambling & Games - Combining the brands of Avago and Channel 425 (in partnership with William Hill) YooMedia is on the leading-edge of interactive fixed odds, casino and poker gambling services for digital TV, the web and 3G mobile phones. Our gaming business also manages YooPlay, the only interactive just for fun games channel found on all four Digital TV platforms in the United Kingdom.
YooMedia Enhanced Solutions (YES) - YES works with brand owners, agencies, content owners and broadcasters to clarify the options, define the strategies and deliver the interactive content that enhances consumer and audience experiences. YES customers include the BBC, Nestle, Celador, William Hill, Channel 4, ZipTV, The Cartoon Network and HR Owen.
NickB
- 17 Mar 2005 23:18
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Are the results due in March ?
mactavish
- 17 Mar 2005 23:56
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Either end of March or early April.
ranoszek
- 18 Mar 2005 07:44
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Dynamite
- 18 Mar 2005 07:55
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Well done Ransoszek; here is the text in full for those of you who wish to read it...come on YOO Yay!!!
YooMedia rides the wave of interactive enthusiasm
By Dan Sabbagh
How David Docherty is harnessing the joy of text
WHEN a contestant in the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? hotseat decides to sit on their winnings, David Dochertys YooMedia steps in. Chris Tarrant, the shows host, turns to viewers and asks them to supply the answer to the question by text message within 30 seconds.
At stake is a modest 1,000 but an average of 80,000 people pay 1 each to enter the competition. Its a nice earner. Gross profits are about 60 per cent and one of the companies that takes its share is the technology supplier, YooMedia.
In an industry of glamorous names, AIM-listed YooMedia is an unknown. In two years it has been built up rapidly in pursuit of the future of television, but not traditional broadcasting.
YooMedia was effectively founded by Michael Sinclair, a doctor-turned entrepreneur, who built Londons Portland Hospital, before creating a US healthcare group that was sold for $600 million (312 million) in 1993.
Now an investor, aged 61, with a fortune thought to be at least 45 million, Sinclair bought into struggling dot-com, e-district, for 2 million, hoping to make something out of the companys community websites. He didnt succeed immediately, but Sinclair, now chairman, turned the business over to David Docherty.
Docherty, 47, a former BBC and Telewest executive, and in his spare time a successful novelist (he taps out books on the way to work) arrived in 2003 when sales were about 300,000. Docherty had been at Telewest when he first met Sinclair and had impressed him by calling off a contract negotiation with another of Sinclairs businesses. Sinclair said: He said his salesmen were lying to me. That was pretty honest. I would have had no idea.
The episode won Sinclairs confidence, and, after agreeing to take over, Docherty has strung together a series of deals. In 2004, turnover is expected to top 100 million, and the business is close to being profitable. Sinclairs shareholding has been diluted but its value has doubled.
In the often simplistic TV business, David Docherty is one of a handful of executives who loves technology, talking enthusiastically about people who get it. Roughly speaking, Dochertys idea is to develop new ways of interacting with TV, and owning content which takes advantage of that.
Whats going to work on interactive television? Theres sex but were not doing that and theres dating, gambling and games, which we do, Docherty says, before resorting to his characteristic phrase: We want to have direct routes to market for our technology, because too often you are trying to flog yourself to people who just dont get it.
So, YooMedia has become Britains biggest dating agency. It owns Dateline and Club Sirius, serving 1.6 million lonely hearts in all. It also owns and operates the gambling channels, Avago and the William Hill channel, and it develops and supports the text services of TV games such as Millionaire.
The activity is supported by in-house technology. Voting in the case of Millionaire YooMedia can time-stamp text messages, guaranteeing the moment they were sent. Without the technology, the delivery standards for texts are so unreliable that broadcasters would have no idea who was first.
Add it all up, and its a bizarre mix, held together by Dochertys enthusiasm, and a hardcore of enthusiasts, such as the armchair Millionaire players.
Weve come up with a business model which nobody else has, he says, although he hopes that expected flotations of the poker businesses behind Party Poker and 888.com will allow the company to ride a wave of interactive enthusiasm. A typical YooMedia idea is video mobile dating. Lonely hearts will soon be able to sample a video service developed by Dateline, in tandem with mobile operator 3.
In Datelines demo, a lonely heart is asked a preset series of questions and the answers are videoed for its database. Other members can browse the results from their mobiles.
Fearless is the working title of Dochertys latest book, about a women who suffers from a medical condition that frees her from fear and applying the metaphor to YooMedia is irresistible. Its far from clear if dating and gambling will work happily in the same business, but only an optimist like Docherty would have tried to find out.
proptrade
- 18 Mar 2005 14:48
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you can'y buy publicity like that!
mactavish
- 18 Mar 2005 15:12
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More PR for Yoo in today's Times, this time about Dateline and video over G3 mobile
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1530819,00.html
016622
- 18 Mar 2005 16:33
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just sitting here waiting for this thing to blow then?
moneyplus
- 18 Mar 2005 18:51
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Today's Times has done a great job in highlighting YOO--2 separate articles. Patience will reward us I'm sure.
Poverty
- 19 Mar 2005 10:13
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It is now 3 months since the infamous dilution on 20th Dec 04 - and despite all the press and enthusiasm these shares are still nailed to the floor! I agree they are due to break-out and could zoom to the dizzy heights of 22p! - but when that happens I don't know???????????????
iPublic deserves a mention in Doherty's flaky novels for his steadfast loyalty to YooMuddier (I love YOO).
(The contributor is a holder of these shares)
moneyplus
- 19 Mar 2005 11:45
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IMO it's still early days but the press article said T/O expected in the region of 100 million---we need to wait for trading update or results before the true potential will sink in. Ever hopeful! cheers MP
jimwren
- 19 Mar 2005 16:34
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I will repeat what I said some time ago - I don't think that most people (other than readers of this excellent site) fully understand the breadth of what YOO can offer or the potential of digital media. And by most people I include some so-called analysts. I firmly believe that when this starts to sink in YOO will take off. I agree with moneyplus - we need to wait until the next update.
iPublic
- 19 Mar 2005 22:40
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http://www.webeventseurope.com/Common/StandModules/StandArticleDisplay.aspx?intStandID=307&intArticleID=4012
"Webtrafficker will play a key role in the promotion of Dateline as the leading online dating service by focusing on the target audience and promoting the site using a number of online marketing tools, effectively driving traffic to Datelines new website."
ranoszek
- 19 Mar 2005 22:55
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Green09
- 20 Mar 2005 12:32
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Thought you might like to know the proposed Dateline service has just been advertised under the News /Mensroom area of my ISP homepage under the heading
" Mobile mate".
iPublic
- 20 Mar 2005 14:26
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Green
Thank you
Can we have a link to your ISP homepage, please.........
1. Margins running at 65%
2. Record YooDating turnover in October.
3. Service on DTV about to be revamped, major upgrades.
4. Video based dating ready to be unleashed on mobile phones.
5. Services will knit together to create a truly unique, multi-tiered dating operation.
I've high hopes for our Dating division. Have Yoo?
EWRobson
- 20 Mar 2005 17:42
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Di, rd: my trading emphasis is via CFDs which increases the gearing from the investment. The role of the broker, blue index in my case, is to negotiate the trade; with a large quantity you may be outside the spread but at least you can buy or sell them. There's a good supplement in Shares this week on CFDs. After early mistakes (in particular, buying at top of trading range with ASC) I feel I have established a trading strategy which keeps the risks under control. On holiday in Cornwall - but you do need to keep more closely in touch and can't take a complete break. You certainly need to be sanguine about risk. Gearing for SEO is 5:1 and YOO 4:1, so ratios not as large as those quoted in Shares. I see the key technique as an extension to running the profits: the price rises leading to a positive position; you then pruchase another CFD with the surplus. Knowing your ability is stock-picking, di, it would be worth setting aside a sum to trade this way.
Eric
mactavish
- 20 Mar 2005 23:14
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It's good to see the Yoomedia Marketing/Publicity machine at work in earnest
Here's the article to save the link:
WebTrafficker works with YooMedia. ---------------------
Webtrafficker has been commissioned to provide YooMedias Dateline with a range of online marketing solutions including search engine optimisation and PPC and link building campaigns. ------------------------------------------------
Dateline was founded in 1966 making it Britains longest running dating company. This brand was bought by YooMedia in 2004 and sits along side two sister dating brands Club Sirius and Avenues.
Dateline has recently undergone a major development and re-branding process to help it emerge as the most popular and innovative dating service on the web, interactive TV, and mobile phone. This includes a new website, launched in September 2004, which was designed to appeal to a British customer base. About the Website, Managing Director Jim Weir said:
The new Dateline website is altogether cleaner, clearer and more appealing to our uniquely British customer base.
More importantly, its the first step in the integration of our recently acquired stable of dating brands, ahead of the launch of our mobile service and major upgrade of the interactive TV offering on Sky Active.
These services will knit together to create a truly unique, multi-tiered dating operation. Were saying: Whether youre 18 or 80 we have a level of service thats comfortable and affordable for you.
Webtrafficker will play a key role in the promotion of Dateline as the leading online dating service by focusing on the target audience and promoting the site using a number of online marketing tools, effectively driving traffic to Datelines new website.
For more information contact us on 01423 524 300 or email info@webeventseurope.com.--------------------------------
Clare Baines ----------------------------------------------
10/03/2005
Green09
- 20 Mar 2005 23:35
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iPublic
Isp address :- www.supanet.com/mensroom/frontpagenews/feature.php4
EWRobson
- 21 Mar 2005 12:43
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Topped up with a CFD for 80K this morning. iPublic will be pleased to know as my entries into YOO are (usually) followed by a buying spree and price hike. Well, can't me more than a couple of weeks before a trading statment plus evo. barn-stormer!
Eric
Dynamite
- 21 Mar 2005 12:55
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I hope you are right Eric...about time Yoo's price moved up amd stayed there. Everything is looking good so hopefully a move up will be a big jump up. I looked at trading CFD's a couple of years ago when I started this share lark. I was turned down as I had no share trading experience at the time. Since then although I have made loads of dosh on buying actual shares I have never managed to make money with Spread Betting so the chances are I won't with CFD's either. That does not mean I have given up; just still trying.
I appreciate the bit about holidays; when we go away we not only have to keep an eye open for share prices but our two websites too.We cannot leave painting orders waiting whilst we are away and we have over 140 artists on our books so we have to log in everyday and sort things out.
www.artandparcel.com
Di