RealNetworks Pumps Up the Juice

[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] Online media company Terraplanet has struck an alliance with Internet
technology developer RealNetworks, in a deal designed to bolster the traffic
to Terraplanet’s flagship youth-oriented site, www.juice.net.

Under the alliance, juice.net will appear as a channel for Australian and
New Zealand users through RealNetworks’ streaming media portal RealPlayer,
joining the site’s list of media partners that includes CNN, Fox and U.S. ABC
News. For the ASX-listed Terraplanet, the deal means the promise of a
significant boost in traffic and international exposure for juice.net, as
RealPlayer is accessed by more than 160 million people around the world.

juice.net also stands to gain traffic boosts locally through the deal,
with more than three million RealPlayer users in Australia and New
Zealand.

The juice.net channel will feature an interactive TV-style streaming
music video of the day, as well as news headlines, CD reviews, competitions
and links to online streaming audio radio stations. Most importantly for
juice.net’s own growth, though, is that RealPlayer visitors can access the
full site through this channel.

While juice.net includes aspects such as streaming audio and video among
its features, the site has maintained a link with its offline version, Juice
magazine, with articles mirrored and extended upon in the site’s sections.
With this RealNetworks alliance, though, Terraplanet has the opportunity to
build the juice.net’s traffic on the basis of the extra services it offers,
with users not familiar with the site’s offline counterpart.

Having a presence on the RealPlayer browser is a fantastic way to
showcase our site to potential visitors,” said Terraplanet managing director
Lesa-Belle Furhagen. “We have also created significant advertising inventory
through rich media advertising and rotating banners within the
RealPlayer.”

juice.net also has the opportunity to demonstrate its interactive
capabilities with RealNetworks, as it has also been chosen to showcase the
developer’s new RealPlayer 8 audio technology. The one-third smaller audio
files this new technology offer faster download times than MP3 files, while
maintaining CD-quality audio. “This means far better quality for the
listeners of our radio channels,” said Furhagen.

The channel went live on December 12, with users who now download
RealPlayer automatically gaining access to juice.net in the application.