Europe's Most Visited Newspaper Site Chooses Polopoly Technology


STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Dec. 5, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, part of Norwegian Schibsted Group, and the most visited newspaper Website in Europe, has decided to use the platform of Swedish Content Management vendor Polopoly for future development.

Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet was an Internet pioneer, launching its first web service in 1994. Today it is Europe's most visited newspaper Website in Europe with some 4.2 million unique visitors per month (November 2002). The paper edition has a daily readership of more than 1.5 million people. Up until now, Aftonbladet has been using technology from U.S. vendor Vignette for managing content and customers. Aftonbladet has now decided to use the technology of Swedish CM vendor and developer Polopoly to add flexibility to the current platform. Polopoly's platform will integrate with Aftonbladet's legacy systems, Vignette and others, making it easy to develop and launch personalized content and services on the web.

"Polopoly's technology is open and easy to integrate with, and it meets our hard requirements on functionality and security. By connecting Polopoly's turn-key module for personalization and commerce, it is easy for us to develop and launch new services for our members," said Mattias Nyman, IT Director at Aftonbladet.

"One of the ideas of Polopoly is to work together with customers that are pioneers in their own fields, like ourselves. That's how we can stay in the forefront of the technological development," said Polopoly CEO Gustaf Sahlman. "Craving, visionary customers like Aftonbladet drive our development to new areas and along new paths, helping us to sharpen and focus our business efforts. The Aftonbladet project also resulted in a plug-and-play connection to Vignette for customers who run Vignette, but need to add functionality for personalization and commerce," Gustaf Sahlman concluded.

Polopoly is a fast growing, profitable Swedish company that develops platform independent systems for Content Management, personalization and commerce. Clients include some of the main Scandinavian players within media and retail, such as IKEA (global retail), COOP (Northern Europe retail), the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, Dagens Nyheter (Scandinavia's largest morning newspaper), Aftonbladet (Scandinavia's largest tabloid), Expreesen (Sweden's second largest tabloid) and all the Swedish Pharmacies. The most recent customer in the U.K. is the University of Sheffield. More information: www.polopoly.com.

For further information, please contact:


Mattias Nyman, IT Director
Aftonbladet
+46 8 725 22 71

Gustaf Sahlman, CEO
Polopoly
+46 8 506 782 99, +46 70 447 82 99

Kare Hallden, Marketing Director
Polopoly
+46 8 506 782 86, +46 70 447 82 86

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