We participated in the 4th annual Mehregan Festival which was held last month in the Southern California.  our parent company and us had a booth to promote Iran Online and the full range of web hosting services that we offer.  During the two day festival, we had the opportunity to meet many of you who live in California.  To us this was a very pleasing experience since it gave us a chance to meet some of our viewers and receive their feedback. Some asked us to further expand the existing sections, some requested new features and some talked about their experiences with Iran Online. One of the visitors told us about becoming friends with 10-15 Iranians from various parts of U.S. through our chat line and their get together in California. Another one told us about meeting an Iranian who lives in Sweden on the chat line and how he hosted  him and his family in California for a few days. There were also those who talked about reading  the stories in the kids/youth section of the Iran Online to their children and using its various features.

We talked to approximately 400 to 500 people during the two day festival, half of whom had visited Iran Online previously. Although this was a sample of our viewers just in the Southern California area, nevertheless it helped us to get a better idea about our viewers age groups and  their interests. In designing Iran Online we have focused to appeal to 18-45 years age group.  Of course we realize that, it is too broad of a range by any marketing standards. However, we were pleasantly surprised to see that our visitors age group ranges from about 14 to 50 years old.  Needless to say, we do not mind to make corrections of this type in our predictions and forecasts.  We want Iran Online to be peoples' forum. Therefore, what we learned during the festival together with the statistics that we collect via Iran Online server log file, will help us in our future expansion plans for each section.

A question that we were repeatedly asked during Mehregan Festival was "How do we profit from Iran Online?"  The answer is that we hope the Iranian community and business owners come to realize the role of  advertising on the Internet and start taking advantage of the opportunities that Iran Online offers.  We also hope that businesses who wish to have their own dedicated domain, realize Iran Online parent company is the only Iranian Internet service provider who can offer web hosting packages that include advertising in the Iranian Online Yellow Pages.  Finally, we think that if our visitors believe that we provide a useful service, they owe it to themselves to help us grow by educating others about our web hosting and advertising services.
 

Since the last issue of the Iran Online Magazine, we have been working to expand some of the existing sections.  We also prepared a report about the 4th annual Mehregan Festival.  A new section, Anti-Violence Campaign by Dr. Farideh Kioumehr of the International Health & Epidemiology Research Center, has been added to the Rainbow section. We are very excited to be able to add this section to the Iran Online Forum.  We encourage our visitors to visit this section and become familiar with Dr. Kioumehr’s crusade against violence among kids and youth. In the near future, we will add a new section for the Gilanian
Council, a Southern California cultural organization, to the Iran Online Rainbow section. As long as our resources allow, we will continue to extend our free of charge offer to the Persian cultural and social clubs, organizations and publications who are interested to be present on the Internet as part of the Iran Online forum.
 

Most of the articles posted here are from a pool of articles submitted to us by our visitors. They cover a wide range of areas and do not  necessarily represent Iran Online views. We thank those who have sent us their articles. We would like to remind you that you can send your articles to Info@IranOnline.com for future issues.
 

Iran Online
November 1997