When was Marqueze.net born?

The beginning of this story has to be situated in 1996, a time in which Internet had hardly began to take off in Spain. At this stage the budding personal page of Emilio Màrquez; now General Director of Marqueze Telecom. SA, and the leader of Marqueze.net, was born, just as he entered the faculty of Internet Technology.

This birth was provoked in part by having direct access to the Internet by means of the Iris network, (a high capacity Internet access net in Spanish universities), and partly, by being the main person responsible for the page, “allowing me to indulge in my hobbies: to always read and write about computers, Linux, humour and erotic stories”. The first contents and original portal from those times is still accessible from this url.

At this early stage only the dedication of Emilio Màrquez to offer new daily contents to the ever increasing number of visitors to Marqueze allowed the web to move forward. For 3 years he was a student by day and a webmaster by night, giving up hours of sleep in order to update his web at midnight, every night, without fail.

Becoming a Professional Web

1998 was an important year for Marqueze, the personal page “El Rincòn de Marqueze” reached an audience of one hundred thousand visitors, thanks to “word of mouth” broadcasting from the users.

This form of marketing, together with great effort and many working hours, resulted in the page evolving to make a living, creating as a dominium: marqueze.net, a page with it’s own identity.

The First Promotion

The respect for users, continuous daily updating, and excellent marketing media (word of mouth) over the years resulted in Marqueze.net beginning to strengthen on the net, attracting a faithful audience who shared and participated in the web daily with suggestions, criticisms, etc., then in 1999, with an experience of a thousand days updating the web without a break, carrying out a continuous labour of promotion between users, searches and preparing formats for contents to keep the users interested, Emilio Màrquez decided to move into the business world.

At this time the number of users was truly elevated and after receiving commercial propositions for more than a year, the first publicity promotion took place on the personal page of the young Emilio Màrquez. In that moment all the best expectations were easily surpassed, and an excellent opportunity arose for interesting new challenges with the knowledge of how to take advantage of such opportunities.

The evolution from 1999 until the present time has exploded, actually Marqueze.net counts with a record of almost 302.420 visits only in one day, exhibiting a place of 40 in the ranking of Spanish pages in Alexa and amongst the first two thousand in the world ranking. Some very promising figures.

The secret of this success is the direct consequence that Marqueze.net is one of the pioneering pages of quality adult content in Spanish, being today the number one in adult leisure in Hispanic language on the net.

A Business Boom

In the year 2001 when constructing the flagship of the Marqueze group; Marqueze Telecom. S.A., included in the Marqueze group of companies. Sharing the same enthusiasm for new technologies, focusing on projects that develop the web with webmasters as the principle clients, with whom a network of 310 webs were constructed with contents and services of unified payment.

In 2003, Marqueze Telecom, S.A. began to organise the “Marqueze Business Lunches”, meetings for business people, amongst which are well known, outstanding entrepreneurs, webmasters and online business professionals. The goal of the meetings being to make good inter-business contacts, established with the vocation to be a live and direct networking forum, promoting the interchange of ideas and the gestation of new business and collaboration on the net.

Also in this year, 2003, the Services of Marca Blanca contents was put into motion, designed to make available the integration of attractive and interactive contents for webmasters, adapting perfectly to the corporative identity of each one of them with a non aggressive and simple navigation for users.

The labour of arduous work and continuous innovation was recompensed in 2004, when Marqueze.net was regaled with the Ninfa prize for the best web with adult leisure content in the International Festival of Erotic Cinema in Barcelona (FICEB) . A prize which has been recognised in the written press, radio and television, and of course, naturally, in internet.

Now in 2006, the Marqueze group has grown, putting into gear Marqueze Audiovisual Services S.A., a company included in the Marqueze group of companies, dedicated to projects that are developed in multiple formats and platforms going beyond the net, (digital television, satellite TV, mobile phones and much more, including international plans of expansion beyond the Spanish borders).

Today The Marqueze Group is formed by a network which combines the website Marqueze.net, the online service and solutions provider of online payments and contents, Marqueze Telecom. S.A., Marqueze services Marca Blanca, S.L. and Marqueze Audiovisual services S.A., and operates with a total of 310 webmasters.

In addition to this, the Marqueze Group has an active part of investment in different groups in the sector; business projects and real estate investment, as in the ThursdayInternet.com community and RomanzaClub.com, and recently taking part as a shareholder in Grupo ItNet.

Evolving and Learning from our Users

We have evolved at length by the hand of our users. We have been witness to a static time that the network lived at the beginning of navigation in 1996; we participated in the increase of resources when the first non modem connections began, ADSL and RDSL at the beginning of 2000 (publishing each time bigger and better quality contents and videos), we also saw the users become authentic Internet Kings during the in between years of 2003 and 2004, offering them the interactivity and the personal contacts which meeted their needs.

During all of this trajectory in time, the most important factor of our success has been the commitment of users to the Marqueze corner, they never felt cheated by the web or by our work, and we have always treated our users with respect and affection. Those who have tried Marqueze.net always come back because they feel comfortable and know that they are going to enjoy a safe navigation., If it wasn’t for our business philosophy of respect to our users we would not be in the privileged position that we find ourselves in today.

To this day we can affirm that it is the user who is in charge, he utilises the resources and what’s more, is who actually provides the resources, giving place to the denominated nets 2.0.

Some years ago a content of photos and quality stories was enough to satisfy the needs of users, today they look for interactivity, the Internet user knows very well what possibilities the net offers. Amongst that most in demand today, is our personal contacts between users, with 2,300.000 people registered.

WORK CALENDER

10 years on Internet … and still counting!

2006
* VII Marqueze Business Lunch. Session for 23rd of November 2006

2006 in Madrid
* VI Marqueze Business Lunch. 1st June 2006 in Barcelona, 170 people

* Marqueze Audiovisual Services, S.A. was founded (Business specialised in contents
for TV and Mobile phones).

Marqueze became a shareholder of the ITnet group.

2005
V Marqueze Business Lunch, 1st December in Madrid, 120 people.
IV Marqueze Business Lunch, 17th March 2005 in Barcelona, 82 people.
Marqueze enters the real estate world, by means of the group, Romanza Real Estate Investment Club.

2004
* Ninfa Prize for the best adult leisure web in the Festival of Erotic Cinema, Barcelona
III Marqueze Business Lunch, 13th May 2004 in Barcelona, 63 people.
II Marqueze Business Lunch, 12th February 2004 in Madrid, 42 people.
Marqueze joined the Thursday Internet Business Club

2003:
Founding of the Marqueze Marca Blanca Services S.L.
The first celebration of the “Marqueze Business Lunch” (15th December 2003)
With 27 people attending.
The redefining of Marqueze.net towards more interactivity with personal contacts
between users, as we understand that person to person piracy is going to affect the contents market. We search for an auto generated content that can not be pirated at the same time as the users search for more interactivity and higher their standards.

2001:
Marqueze Telecom. S.A. was created, - at that time we changed static contents – photographs, stories and videos of short duration – to multimedia contents of longer duration, improving quality. The users demanded to take advantage to the maximum the technological advances (adsl, cable).

1999-2000:
The introduction of non modem connections, rdsi and adsl, increasing resources.

1998
The personal page became a web page with dominium and complete independent identity on the net, and we reached one hundred thousand visits.

1996:
Marqueze.net went online with the spirit of a personal page, formed at the base of
collaboration with many users.