Archive for May, 2013

What is porn site juggernaut Manwin doing in Ireland?

Sunday, May 26th, 2013

To save you from reading the whole post: They make mobile apps. Apps to download porn, gambling apps and viral video viewing apps.

Today the Indo had a piece on porn company Manwin and their Irish setup. The Irish Times also did this story a few months back.

The bit that interested me was them not saying what they do here:

Manwin refused to comment in detail on what it does here or to discuss whether it had located here in part for tax purposes.

“Manwin is a private company and accordingly, matters pertaining to its operations are treated in the same manner,” the spokesperson said.

If you did some LinkedIn searches however, you’d find a number of people who work for Manwin.

This is their CEO for Ireland.

Now there’s a games company in Dublin called Super Hippo Studios that never mentions they’re owned by Manwin on their site. But some of the Super Hippo Studios staffers confirm the Manwin link on their LinkedIn profiles:

Staff1Manwin

and:
QALeadManwin

A search of the CRO and we find out…
Super Hippo Studios Registered Office:
1St Floor
Riverview House
21/23 City Quay
Dublin 2
Ireland

Which is the same registered address as Manwin Ireland.

And Super Hippo acknowledge on GameDevelopers.ie who their owner is but point out that they don’t do anything around porn:

Game Developers Ireland Manwin

Anyway, Super Hippo (who we now know is owned by Manwin) tweeted about some of their games.

One is a Trivia game. On iTunes the publisher is registered as another company, yet again – Mirmay Limited.

TriviaPics

and a lookup of them on Duedil tell us…

Registered Office:
1st Floor
Riverview House
21/23 City Quay
Dublin 2
Ireland

Same address for the Manwin companies and Super Hippo, this is just a firm that does all of these registrations but, still, all using the same company to reg.

And some of their other “apps” include this one that hints at it being used to download video content from “tubes” sites and to hide away the content then: “The app allows you to easily download media from free tubes and other media sites to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. ”

Tubes, hmm. And going back to Manwin wikipedia page: “Manwin is the owner of many major pornographic web 2.0 websites including YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube

Apple is very anti-porn so one can’t say directly on an ITunes listing that an app is for porn as it might be banned. This app was only recently updated: May 20, 2013.

And so a further twist, another of the games made by Mirmay/Super Hippo/Manwin is called Video Bash.

The app and website mentions Clayden Holding Ltd, owned by the owner of Manwin, though they say registered in Cyprus but a record I found said that company was dissolved in Cyprus. Here is the Canadian listing.

And finally, a gambling game made by them, Golden Slots Casino.

Fairly convoluted structure.

Fluffy Links – Friday May 24th 2013

Friday, May 24th, 2013

Nice handy list of social media policies.

Coming to the Opera House – Singing Nina, The Life and Music of Nina Simone, performed in narration/sung by Karen Underwood on May 31st.

The West Cork Garden Trail is on 15th to 30th June 2013. Nice pretty gardens open to the public.

Courses from Mulley Comms:
PR Workshop – Getting your business into the media.
Responsive Web Design.

Euclid, Google Analytics for retail stores. Great idea, maybe slightly creepy. Track visitors by them trying to connect to your store WiFi.

Greenshoots 2013 Awards & Showcase are on May 30th 2013. This ceremony marks the end of the third Greenshoots Programme and you’ll see how companies have progressed after the 9 month programme.

The dark social web. Email and IM.

How to use Facebook to capture leads.

Interesting site. Economiser.ie

Reach for the Dead

Fluffy Links – Wednesday 22nd May 2013

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Kickstarter shows that celeb Kickstarters bring more people in, bring more money to other projects.

Visually, connect it to Google Analytics for nice data graphics.

Scott Ian, spoken word in Cyprus Avenue.

While this back and forth between Steve Jobs and James Murdoch shows Steve didn’t take shit, it actually shows what Amazon is up to with e-books and how they’re losing money. For now.

Bank of Ireland now doing free spaces in Dublin for business people. Do I need to be a business customer?

Hollywood already has script doctors. Now they go through data on movies too. Data science y’all.

Job in UCC. Director of Marketing Communications.

Watched a documentary on Leigh Bowery. Fascinating guy. Some performance artist. I want his glasses.

@BreakingNews and how they operate. “With us it’s interesting — there’s pressure to be second”

Marc Almond – What Makes A Man

Fluffy Links – Wednesday May 8th 2013

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Billy Hawkes, the man who tamed Facebook and Marne Levine, Facebook’s Vice-President for Global Public Policy talk Protecting Personal Data in the Digital Age. 17 May at 12.00p.m.

Remember that idea of a foldable plug? Get it here.

300 social media policies.

The next iteration of Seán Bonner’s Safecast cheaper Geiger counter is to make it portable. Dronized Safecast.

Habitual by AJ. A simple personal analytics app. Android based.

Facebook Wifi, love the idea, they need to bring it to Ireland. “Will check-in for WiFi”.

McBain stitched together. Genius.

An information session will be held at Western Gateway Building, UCC on 5 June for those interested in entering the Seedcorn Business Competition. Big wad of cash for overall and area winners.

Panti mentioned Leigh Bowery in this video about how she started in drag. The full documentary about Leigh Bowery is available in six parts on YouTube. It starts here. I think I’ll get myself a pair of his glasses.

Rebekka Karijord – Oh Brother

Moments of truth

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

Steal this objective from Netflix, it applies to all businesses:

Netflix in 2013 on what comes next:

Our North Star is to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”. Those decision moments are, say, on Thursday 7:15 pm or Monday 2:40 am when our member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is just bored. They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, turn on Hulu or Amazon Prime, or they could tap on Netflix. We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth.

We win those moments of truth when members expect, based on their prior experience with us, that Netflix will be pleasurable, compared to all those other options. The pleasure comes from our simple experience for choosing, control over when to start/pause/resume the video, and from content that suits their taste and their mood.

When we deliver enjoyment, members watch more Netflix, continue their membership, and evangelize Netflix to their friends