ABV is powered by Swedish Picsearch - abv.bg, gbg.bg, netinfo.bg and sportni.bg introduces global image and video search

It was announced today that the biggest Bulgarian communication portal ABV now provides access to the impressive image and video search services, provided by Swedish Picsearch. Elena Koleva, Marketing Manager at Net Info.BG, said “We chose Picsearch because they can offer a complete suite of multimedia search services including image, video and audio search. We are impressed with the performance of the search services, and happy that four of our most valued properties will meet the needs of Bulgarian internet users at a better level now.” The new design and the search possibilities of ABV now meet the users’ daily needs for search, communication, and information. Thus, ABV provides quick access to top news of the day, weather forecast, and daily horoscope. Swedish Picsearch also powers gbg.bg, netinfo.bg and sportni.bg. The sites are respectively the first portal website and the most visited news and sports websites in Bulgaria. The multi-year agreement between Picsearch and the websites’ owner Net Info.BG will provide a platform for further improvement of its search services and is the first of its kind in the country. Robert Risberg, Picsearch CEO said “We are proud to enter the Bulgarian market in cooperation with four of its most prominent websites. We view Bulgaria as one of the more interesting markets in Europe and our success here is important for further expansion into other markets with high growth.” Approximately 10 percent of all searches on the internet are image searches (Hitwise July 2007). Picsearch is the second largest image search provider in the world and has over 1.7 billion searchable images. Every month, several million new images are added to the service. Picsearch has, since its inception, strived for relevancy and family friendliness. High relevancy helps the user to find the image they are looking for. Family friendliness allows children to surf in safety as offensive material is filtered out by advanced filtering systems. In July 2007 Picsearch became the first search service in the world to block child pornography in cooperation with police authorities. The cooperation protects users of search services from being exposed to any kind of child pornography. The goal of blocking access to child pornography is to decrease the traffic to these sites, limit the profits from child pornography and thereby protect children from abuse. About Picsearch Picsearch AB is a premium provider of image and multimedia search services that are leading in relevancy and family friendliness. Picsearch powers several leading internet sites as well as its own internet properties. The company was founded in 2000, is privately held and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. For more information please visit www.picsearch.com. About the four Bulgarian websites The four top websites are part of the portfolio of Net Info.BG. The leading Bulgarian company aims to become an inseparable part of the digital lifestyle of every Bulgarian: Abv.bg is the largest Bulgarian communication portal that integrates mail, IM, chat, forums, etc. ABV Mail takes pride in more than 2.2 million active accounts quarterly. ABV*ICQ, the first IM tool in Bulgarian language, is the result of company’s strategic partnership with ICQ Inc. ABV*ICQ has about 450 000 active users. Gbg.bg is the first Bulgarian search portal with more than 1 million unique homepage visitors per month. Gbg.bg offers a full suite of search products including search in directories and web search, as well as image and audio search from Picsearch. Sportni.bg is the most visited Bulgarian sports information website /according to bgcounter.com/ with over 300 000 unique monthly visitors. The website covers all major sports events and provides a vast archive of photo galleries. Recently sportni.bg launched a unique Livescore! section, which provides the richest compilation of instant sports results in Bulgaria. The most visited news information website netinfo.bg provides a balanced coverage of news, events and entertainment topics (Alexa Web Search, Top 500, България, октомври 2007 г.). The site attracts over 700 000 unique visitors monthly. For more information please contact: Carl Sarnstrand, Communications Manager at Picsearch Tel: +46 73 204 14 79 E-mail: carl.sarnstrand@picsearch.com Svetlana Belcheva, PR manager at Net Info.BG Tel: + 359 2 960 31 00 E-mail: svetlana@netinfo.bg