| Organic growth boosts new registrations
to nearly 2 million every 30 days.
Haifa, Israel, May 6, 2001. - SpeedBit
Ltd. today announced that Download Accelerator Plus
(DAP), its freely distributed platform for delivery
of rich digital content, including software, music,
games, movies and videos, has exceeded 20,000,000 registered
users - in less than 18 months since the release of
its popular Version 3.9. DAP's popularity is spread
strictly by word of mouth and user recommendations,
and about 2 million new users register every month.
DAP has been one of CNET's top downloads for PC for
the last year, and is used to deliver 7 to 8 million
rich media files every day.
DAP enables highly accelerated content
delivery - up to 200%-400% faster according to users'
and website reviews. It achieves this by detecting mirror
servers that host the requested file, determining which
servers will be most responsive for the specific user's
location, and then initiating a multi-connection multi-server
download process. This allows users to receive maximum
benefit from available bandwidth. DAP makes the process
even more efficient by allowing resumption of interrupted
downloads if and when they occur.
"In addition to clear-cut benefits
for users who download rich media over the Web, DAP's
core functionality has significant advantages for content
providers, providers of distributed storage services
and CDN providers," said Co-founder and CTO Idan
Feigenbaum. "DAP's client-side optimization performs
a real-time proximity check, taking advantage of the
overall conditions of the network from the user's perspective.
This extends the delivery optimization chain with load
balancing and fault tolerance to the true edge of the
network - the user's PC," concluded Feigenbaum.
When users opt-in for DAP's services,
DAP gains a non-invasive presence on the user's desktop
that lasts on the average several hours, allowing content
providers to initiate sessions with users for ads, notifications,
news and other communications. This is in marked contrast
with ordinary web surfing where the user initiates a
session that may last for only a few minutes.
Yossi Vardi, an investor in SpeedBit and
founding investor of ICQ (acquired by AOL), pointed
out that "this persistent desktop presence with
its unique delivery technology will give DAP scaled-up
subscription functionality, enabling users to subscribe
to predefined channels and to constantly and automatically
receive new items of preferred content - in short, what
they want, when they want it, and completely free of
user intervention. DAP's transparency to various Digital
Rights Management (DRM) allows content providers to
offer paid-for as well as free subscriptions,"
Vardi said.
About SpeedBit
SpeedBit is a privately held company founded
at the end of 1999 by a young Israeli programmer, Idan
Feigenbaum, and his father Yerach. It has received funding
from investors Yossi Vardi and STI Ventures, an international
early-stage investment company, with an emphasis on
Israeli technology. Strategic investors in STI Ventures
are Softbank, Comverse Technology and Pacific Capital
Group. |
