Ginio

Ginio, Inc.

File:Image-Ginio-logo.png
Type	Start-up
Founded	2005
Headquarters	Boston, MA, United States
Key people	Simon Vielma, Huang Hao
Industry	Internet, Search Engine
Employees	16
Website	http://www.ginio.com

Ginio is a technology start-up company focused on providing Internet services to users, advertisers, publishers, and businesses in Latin America. It’s country-level and vertical search technologies help users to obtain access to relevant information from its online indexes. The company’s products and services for users include Ginio Web Search that allows users to instantly locate information online; Ginio Shopping which allows users to search and compare retail products and services; Ginio Ask and Ginio Wall, which serve as a query-based platforms for knowledge exchange; Ginio Music that provides algorithm-generated links to songs and other multimedia files; and other verticals. Its services for businesses include Publi.com, an ads-trade platform; and miLugar.com, a business solution for small and medium-sized retailers.

Products

Ginio Search Services

Ginio offers a number of services for its users to locate information, products and services using Spanish and Portuguese-language search terms, such as, websites, music, images, videos, retail products, and local businesess . Some of Ginio's search services include:

• Ginio Shopping, a vertical search service that enables users to find and compare prices of retail products and goods available for sale online. Ginio Shopping's goal is to allow users to be able to find the best price on anything they could possibly want to buy online by aggregating information from thousands of vendors and e-commerce sites.
• Ginio Ask enables users to ask specific questions on a Questions & Answers collective system that specializes in getting fast answers from the right people by routing questions to users with the right expertise to answer them. It accepts questions on any subject, and has a few key differences from other Q&A sites, one of them being that users need "credits" in order to ask questions. Credits are either earned by providing the "best answer" to a question or purchased using a mobile phone. New users get 5 free credits. Users can ask questions from their mobile phones through SMS, or online through IM, or through the main site.
• Ginio Wall provides users with a query-based posting board, that is tightly integrated with other Ginio services, for users to exchange views and share knowledge on any query or topic.
• Ginio Músic enables users to find music files across the internet. Ginio does not host any of their music, instead it indexes publicly accessible audio files across the internet, and plays them through their own music player. Ginio Musica uses a unique “FileRank” algorithm, to place the most popular (and higher quality) audio files towards the top of the search results.
• Ginio Video Search enables users to search for and access through hyperlinks of online video clips that are hosted on third parties’ Websites.

Publi.com

Ginio's Publi.com is an advertising marketplace that connects advertisers and publishers across different media segments namely Internet, Radio, and Print-media. Advertisers can use the Publi marketplace to buy, plan, and execute Internet advertising campaigns, radio campaigns, and print-ads campaigns. Media property owners can use Publi to connect with buyers, and sell advertising inventory.

MiLugar.com

Mi Lugar (which means "my place" in Spanish and Portuguese) is a fully integrated business solution for retailers that ties a desktop-based Point of Sale system with a hosted e-commerce application. It allows shop owners to easily manage their store inventories, create online storefronts, and manage their orders and completed transactions.

History

Ginio was started in 2005 by Simon Vielma while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. The company raised over half-a-million dollars in an angel round of financing.

External links

• Ginio.com Official site
• Ginio - The Google of Latin America?