Walla!

Walla! Communications Inc.

Type	Public (TASE: WALA)
Industry	Internet services
Founded	Israel (1995)
Headquarters	Tel Aviv, Israel
Key people	Avraham Gabai, Chairman of the board Ilan Yeshua, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Erez Philosoph, Founder & former Vice President Gadi Hadar, Founder & former CEO
Net income	132 Million NIS (2009)
Employees	250
Website	www.walla.co.il

Walla! (Hebrew: וואלה!‎) is an Israeli web portal, providing news, search and e-mail, among other things. One of the first Israeli internet portals, Walla! is considered as one of the most popular web sites in the country. As of August 2011, Alexa rankings put it in the top 6 sites by traffic originating in Israel. It was founded by Erez Philosof and Gadi Hadar in 1995 to serve as a guide to internet sites. By 1998, the company had gone public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and in 2001 it merged with IOL, a similar site run by the Ha'aretz Group.

Walla! provides news from Israel and around the world, 24 hours a day. Most news stories that appear in Walla! come from the Ha'aretz Group, news agencies and other content providers. However, during the year 2006, Walla! started building an independent news and editorial staff, which produces original news stories and special features. In addition, Walla! produces original content in various fields such as sports, cinema, music, fashion and food.

The website offers many programs and services, a search engine, E-mail, online shops, chats, and video on demand. The main holders of the company are Bezeq and Ha'aretz Group.

Main Services

• Walla!News - Breaking news and analysis from Israel and around the world, 24 hours a day.

• Walla!Mail - A free E-mail service offering unlimited storage space.

• Walla!Shops - Online shopping network.

• Walla!Music - On demand music as well as the option to listen to various radio stations live.

• Walla!Cellular - Downloads for mobile phones.

• Walla!pedia - In 2005 Walla has made use of the GFDL copyright license on which Wikipedia runs and copied the entire Hebrew Wikipedia's database. Walla! displays the articles under the headline Walla!pedia, but mentions that the articles originated from Wikipedia. Unlike Wikipedia, the users cannot edit the articles and the former versions and history of the articles are not shown.

External links

• Walla! (Hebrew)
• Walla!Shops (Hebrew)