Zendehrood
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Zendehrood (live river) (Persian: زنده رود) is an Isfahan based Persian e-society named after the old name of the Zayandeh River. Zendehrood aims to promote Persian culture and providing entertainment content for Iranian internet users.
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[edit] Pre History
It all started as an online Persian community in 1999. It was a simple online Yahoo! club, having a regular meeting schedule. It was considered one of the most popular Persian Yahoo! clubs with more than 1000 members at the time. Along with Yahoo’s shift from Club to Group program Zendehrood also became a Yahoo! Group at 1 Jan 2001. The group founder, Mahmoodreza Nik-khah was at its very first days of becoming the CEO of Farabord company - a Persian IT Company at those days. 2001 was also the year when the Mahmoodreza Nik-khah, Amir Harandi, and Majid Ghaffari had their historical meeting to convert Zendehrood Group to a DOT COM. They started the website with a wish to promote Persian culture through the means of the web, backed with Zendehrood community’s current members. The very first day of website was “Mehregan Ceremony” 2001. The visitor hit of 900+ was what none of the founders would ever dream of for the first day. Hosting server was also shocked and website was stopped by the server at its second day of activity for a migration to a better server.
[edit] History
It was a simple Flash website at beginning. A flash main page with a big picture of an ancient Persian soldier was what visitors would get at their first view. All the founders intended to do was to deliver Persian Cultural values to the visitors. Then there were nothing inside, but a couple of Flash clips, a small forum, and some articles about Persian culture. Farabord Company acquired 25% of the share at the same year and the site became more commercially in pressure to benefit. Version 2 of site had much more to present. Photo gallery, Weblog, Link box, Flash Clips, and e-Cards were available. It was a site based on Microsoft ASP technology. Next year, a new version was released using ASP.Net technology. Owners deleted forum, Link box and photo album, but enhanced the remaining parts. Alireza Haghshenaas - the site's master programmer - bought the share of Majid Ghaffari and shortly after, left the programming duties to his younger brother, Mehdi. The site especially became famous after online introducing ancient celebration of Persian Valentine “Sepandaar mazdgaan” for the first time which were also reflected in BBC and Persian medias.
[edit] Next Acquisition
2005 was a critical year for the team. Persianblog Group [1] owned by Dr. Boutorabi and Aria Gostar Company acquired 60% of the share but left the management tasks for the Farabord Company. This alliance was very important to the site. It was a gate to connect the biggest Iranian online community! PersianBlog which according to Alexa and Marketleap is one of the few Iranian true players in online industry was now supporting Zendehrood and it was seen as a great opportunity by Farabord Company and founders. These changes led to a change in Zendehrood’s position in Persian online society which is obvious regarding to it link popularity reported by Marketleap. Owners are now looking for more strategic alliances and supportive actions.
[edit] Current State
Backed with the PersianBlog group’s supports and services Zendehrood is now a Persian online society with more than 10,000 members, 2000 weblogs and 500+ flash clips which places the site one of the 3 highest players among Persian flash clip providers! It is also trying to enter the weblog providers’ zone more seriously. The burden of entertainment content supplier for PersianBlog group of website is now mixed by initial goal of representing Persian Culture for its visitors. The growing number of visitors for this website is a positive signal for zendehrood’s attitude towards its goals.
[edit] What is special about Zendehrood?
For many Iranian, Zendehrood is not a simple website! It is not pure virtual environment. Many events have been held each and every year by this society. Special cultural ceremonies are good reasons for this society members to gather together and learn more about Persian cultures while having fun! For example in Mehregan gathering 2004 and 2005 more than 150 people gathered at Isfahan. Many companies supported the ceremony and it was reflected in some Persian media. Zendehrood was also the first community to celebrate Yalda Night over cyber space on 2004. It was even reflected in gooya.com which was at the time the most popular Persian online news agency.
