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8 august 2005
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Haaretz, Captain Internet
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An index of abstracts of global knowledge
Avi Shaked, one of the four founders and owners of one of the largest Internet gambling empires in the world, has established the www.shvoong.com Web site, which operates in 20 languages.
By Galit Yemini
Internet entrepreneur Avi Shaked, one of the four founders and owners of one of the largest Internet gambling empires in the world, has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a new and ambitious Internet enterprise, the www.shvoong.com Web site, which is slated to offer a international data bank of summaries of books, academic papers and Internet sites – an index of sorts of abstracts of global knowledge.
The site is a joint venture of Shaked and Avner Avrahami, a journalist and Haaretz columnist. Avrahami and Shaked, both 52, studied together at Tchernichovsky High School in Netanya.
In 1997, Shaked and his brother, Aharon, along with brothers Shai and Roni Ben Yitzhak, set up the on-line gambling empire Cassava Enterprises, which owns the www.888.com Web site, and two of the world's largest gambling sites, Casino-on-Net and Pacific Poker. Cassava will be issued on the London stock exchange in September, based on a company value of $1.5 billion.
Some three years ago, Avrahami and Shaked ran into each other again by chance, and the two renewed the warm friendship they had shared in high school. "I knew that Shaked was doing well in the field of on-line gambling on the Internet, and I told him about the idea that I had come up with – about a site of abstracts of global knowledge that would include, aside from the abstract, a link to the source of the material itself," Avrahami relates. "We wanted a site with educational appeal. We decided that our mission in life is to summarize human knowledge."
The enterprise failed to take off at the time; but in November 2004, Shaked got in touch with Avrahami again, and they set out on their path.
The site was launched some two months ago, and operates today in 20 languages. "The idea is to allow anyone who so desires to write and to update the site, and to submit abstracts," Avrahami says. "Everyone will share in the profits. The site earns its income from advertising, and we are partners in the Google advertising program, which puts its advertisements on our site. Ten percent of our overall profit will go to the abstract writers, with the money to be distributed in keeping with the number of hits every abstract gets. Those whose abstracts are more popular will receive a larger slice of the profits out of the 10 percent," he notes.
Avrahami stresses that unlike Wikipedia, the Internet's free encyclopedia, Shvoong will not give surfers the option of editing the texts of others. Moreover, Shvoong will not offer definitions of terms, but abstracts of books, academic papers, daily newspapers, and content from Internet sites. The site reportedly already has 3,000 abstracts in 20 languages on offer. Some of the abstract writes have already earned $200-250 for work they have done on the site.
"Our lofty ambition is to get to one million abstracts and one million surfers," Avrahami says. "We are just at the beginning of the road, but we see it as a promising one. The site has an active managing director by the name of Eyal Rivlin, and Avi Shaked and I meet with him every week to discuss the site's progress."
Avi Shaked is personally invested in the site; his brother, Aharon, and his other partners are not involved in the enterprise. Shaked has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the establishment of the site. |
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