Universo Online

Universo Online (Portuguese for "Online Universe") (known by the acronym UOL) is a Brazilian web content, products and services company. It belongs to Grupo Folha enterprise.

In 2012, UOL was the fifth most visited website in Brazil, below only Google portals (Google Brasil, Google USA, YouTube) and Facebook. According to Ibope Nielsen Online, UOL is Brazil’s largest internet portal with more than 50 million unique visitors and 6.7 billion page views every month.

Overview

UOL is the world’s largest Portuguese speaking portal, which is organized in 42 thematic stations with more than 1,000 news sources and 7 million pages. The portal provides website hosting, data storage, publicity dealing, online payments and security systems. It also holds more than 300 thousand online shops, 23 million buyers and 4 million people selling goods and services in its portals

UOL includes:
*UOL Cliques, ads and publicity portal.
*Radar de Descontos, group buying portal.
*Emprego Certo, jobs portal.
*Shopping UOL, online price comparing tool.
*UOL Segurança Online, online safety firm.
*Universidade UOL, online education portal.
*UOL Revelação Digital, online photo developing portal.
*Toda Oferta, buying and selling portal.
*UOL Wi-Fi, unlimited wireless broadband Internet access.
*PagSeguro, e-commerce tool in which shops and people can pay and cash online payments.
*UOL Mais, portal with unlimited space for videos, photos, audio and texts.
*UOL HOST, hosting and cloud computing firm.
*UOL Assistência Técnica, technical support services for computers, tablets, and smartphones.
*UOL DIVEO, online IT outsourcing firm.
*UOL Afiliados, membership program for subscribers and non-subscribers. The program pays UOL associate that remunerates websites and blogs that disclose ads. Each associate receives a quantity per clicks received in each ad or signature conversion.

History

UOL was established by Grupo Folha on April 28, 1996. After 7 months, UOL joined portal Brasil Online (BOL) from Editora Abril. However Editora Abril does not own shares in BOL anymore. Portugal Telecom had 29% of UOL, but sold its shares to Folhapar, a company controlled by businessman João Alves de Queiroz Filho of Hypermarcas holding in 2010. Grupo Folha and Folhapar are UOL’s main shareholders. UOL won more than 100 awards as one of Brazil’s largest online portal since 1996.

Early years

On April 28, 1996, UOL went online. In July 1996 it put online an operation with a 2 megabit per second base connection. In August, UOL launched a web provider in the cities of Greater São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro coupled with e-mail accounts and the setup of browser Netscape version 2.2 in Portuguese.

In 1997, UOL created a series of forums, focus groups and surveys, as well as the online version of ”Nova Enciclopédia Ilustrada Folha’’ encyclopedia. UOL also launched TV UOL (their Video Sharing Platform), with content based on music videos, interviews and movie trailers, and AcessoNet, a company that provides larger Internet access in Brazil’s major cities. UOL also expanded its connection capability to 20 megabits and received the award of best web provider and Internet users favorite’s website of Informática Exame magazine in 1997.

UOL absorbed the subscribers of Internet provider Compuserve in Brazil in a move that increased its connection capability to 74 megabits. UOL launched UOL Discador, a feature that eliminated lack of Internet access in case the network get busy in 1998.

In the following year UOL reached more than 350,000 subscribers and released UOL Educação portal (UOL Education) and also Placar UOL Esporte, which presents scores of soccer, tennis, volley, basketball, and F1 events all over Brazil and the world. In the same period UOL launched an unlimited web access platform, a Bible online version and started to offer free e-mail hosting via Brasil Online (BOL), a new firm of UOL group. The company also expanded its online operations with portals in Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and United States of America.

2000s

In 2000, UOL launched its portal in Spain, established a partnership with Embratel to expand its internet connection to 1.2 Gigabyte per second and released Rádio UOL (UOL Radio), which initially offered a series of music shows, new releases of music and playlists creation. In the same year, UOL launched a partnership with financial website Patagon in a move that secured US$8 million in funding to disclose financial information on UOL portals.

In 2002, Mercado Livre became UOL INC’s exclusive partner for auctions in branches UOL Brazil, UOL Colombia, UOL Sinectis and Brasil Online (BOL). In the same year, UOL reached the mark of 5 million visitors per month, 1.5 million subscribers and started a live broadcast of reality show Casa de Artistas 2.

UOL went on to supply more than 560 Brazilian cities with Internet access. Afterwards it released the UOL Business channel providing information to corporations and executives and also channels for Brazilian celebrities such as Leonardo, Raul Gil and Sandy & Junior in 2003.

In 2005, UOL made its IPO on Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo (BOVESPA). However, the firm went back private in 2012. UOL created the social network UOLK in 2005, which was online until 2008. In the following year, UOL established a partnership with BBC
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