Interia abroad

Poland's third-largest internet portal, Interia.pl, has plans to set up a portal specifically for the hundreds of thousands of Poles living and working abroad. It is looking for partners for the project, which  should be launched in Q3 of this year.

Grzegorz Błażewicz, president of Interia.pl, says the new portal will not be similar to Onet's onet.eu, and will target only the Polish diaspora. "It will have a high profile and will provide information interesting only for those people," says Błażewicz.

This is just a part of Błażewicz's broad strategy for Interia.pl. He says that the company is currently putting all its energies into generating new creative ideas for internet products and better exploitation of the company's potential.

In Q1 the company launched a new home page, internet TV and radio stations, its iDesk application, and a motivational website called zrobie.to. "For us the second quarter means working on a series of community services enabling communication in smaller local groups. The best of them will be sold abroad," says Błażewicz.

Deputy president and financial director of Interia.pl, Dariusz Mazurkiewicz says that the new projects enable more efficient use of its resources.

Interia.pl's Q1 2007 net profit doubled compared to the corresponding period last year, reaching zł.2.3 million. The company's revenues amounted to zł.13.7 million and were 24 percent higher than in Q1 2006. Profits generated by advertising grew by 68 percent and from e-commerce by 39 percent.

"We are happy that we are able to consistently implement the development strategy. We are going in the right direction to achieve our goal for 2007," says Błażewicz. By the end of the year, revenues are expected to grow by 30 percent compared to 2006.