Targetpoint, Empornium saga
p2p news / p2pnet: In previous posts about Targetpoint’s involvement Empornium.us, we never got to hear the story from Empornium’s former admins. The Israeli advertising company denied that it owns or bought Empornium. This motivated one of Empornium’s former admins to contact Torrentfreak to tell their side of the story.
But let’s correct something first: Targetpoint confirmed yesterday that they were indeed interested in buying Meganova about a year ago, as we’d reported three months ago. This makes it likely that the statements of the two other torrentsite admins, who told me that they were asked by Targetpoint if they were willing to sell their sites, are true as well.
Most site owners were offered a fixed sum of money and a percentage of the future ad revenue on top of that. Similar to the proposition the made to Meganova. Moreover, this recent confession makes me wonder what’s really going on at Empornium. Let’s ask a former Empornium admin…
Torrentfreak: Is there, to your knowledge, some kind of ownership agreement between Targetpoint and Emporniums former owner Sazaraki?
Emp admin: To the best of my knowledge, yes.
Torrentfreak: What’s the nature of this contract?
Emp admin: The rough outline was, the contract would call for a couple of lump sum cash payments by Targetpoint, with the last bit paid upon transfer of the domain name. Sazaraki was to remain on for some time as head admin to smooth the transition. He intended to use the cash payment to pay for professional development of new site code. At the time these negotiations were taking place, Jan-Feb 05, the site was dying under the strain of the large number of users – load times were slow, timeouts were common, and staff were spending many hours every day simply manually correcting user’s stats because the tracker was timing out on them. The contract called for Saz to continue to receive a share of the ad revenue for the next year, for a token monthly payment to hand out to staff, and for Targetpoint to pay the salary for a professional backend sysop of Saz’s choosing. It also called for Sazaraki and the original admin team to retain access to the boxes and 100% editorial control during this 1 year period.
After an initial payment was made and the domain was transferred, Targetpoint proposed changing the deal. The deal essentially remained the same, but Targetpoint was to become an investor, rather than buy the site outright. The only significant changes were that they would not pay another cash payment, it was now a permanent partnership rather than an ownership transition, and Targetpoint agreed to pay for a professional site development house of saz’s choosing to improve Empornium, rather than have us build a new site.
Torrentfreak: How much money is involved, and who paid the money?
Emp admin: The money was payed by Or Kunztman, CEO of Targetpoint. As far as the amouunt of the monthly minimum that he was paid, I don’t feel it’s my place to say.
Torrentfreak: Who’s in control of the site at this very moment?
Emp admin: I’m sure today it’s just as it was last week. Or Kuntzman and Targetpoint control the money, Oded makes the day to day decisions, Arjan (aka Noos) does the tech stuff.
This is supported by the list of admins on empornium.us empornium admins
Torrentfreak: What made you decide to leave emporium?
Emp admin: The admins realized last year, shortly after the deal was made, that they were not living up to their end of the agreement. We were constantly having Arjan login to our boxes doing stuff without permission… like that whole “Piratebay Moderated Network” banner that caused such a controversy… Slipping in more and more obtrusive Targetpoint ads, which he wasn’t supposed to do without Saz’s approval.
Torrentfreak: Do you know why he put The Piratebay banner up?
Emp admin: No. At the time there was speculation that it was a “google bomb” … that they were trying to steal hits from TPB when people searched on google, they’d hit on Empornium and draw more eyeballs to Targetpoint’s ads… but that’s just speculation. I have no personal knowledge of their involvement with TPB
Emp admin (continues):
So they weren’t paying the monthly payments, weren’t hiring the professionals they had promised. we knew they were screwing us. So some of us started development work on Cheggit.net. We hung around because we were never in this for the money, we got into this for the community, and the money was intended to improve the site because it was dying under the load it had grown so big. If we had left at that time, we would’ve been box-banned and that would’ve been the end of that community. So we swallowed our pride and did Targetpoint’s gruntwork while simultaneously working on cheggit.net. We knew a day would come when we couldn’t stomach it anymore, we just didn’t know when, and we hoped we would have a new working site before that day came.
Then their new site rollout happened
We had a working beta site on Cheggit… not perfect yet, but the nuts and bolts were there, we knew we were close… just adding on the non-essentials … the “pretty stuff”. And there was Sazaraki’s reaction to the whole new “pay to signup” site rollout that the rest of us had to consider. Sazaraki got fed up, abandoned ownership of the IRC channel, logged out of Empornium and told us he was quitting. Despite Arjan’s claims, we did not do any attacking on Empornium, the rest of what happened was the user’s reaction. We have a loyal community. Targetpoint never understood that.
Torrentfreak: How many of the original staff members are still at emporium?
Emp admin: Save for Saz, who is bound by his contract, ALL of the original Empornium staff, mods and admins alike, were a part of the development and/or beta of the new site, and all of us have left.
Torrentfreak: Thanks.
The nature of the contract described by this former Empornium admin is similar to the one offered to Meganova. Although Targetpoint officially denies that they have an ownership agreement with empornium.
Torrentfreak contacted Targetpoint and they responded with the fillowing statement:
It’s very simple. Targetpoint do not own in any way Empornium.us. We never owned it and we shall never will. Targetpoint only connection to Empornium was advertising business relations. No more.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
Digg this.
Also See:
Targetpoint’s involvement Empornium.us – The Targetpoint controversy, July 11, 2006
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