AEIOU

AEIOU.pt is a Portuguese news and entertainment portal. It was born on January 13th 1996, initially as a web search engine, and it took a significant role in the early years of Portuguese internet. Launched with the purpose of cataloging all Portuguese websites, soon became widely known due to its real-time pioneer database and its fast and efficient search engine with a simple and intuitive navigational interface, all managed and built by the Portuguese internet user community. Throughout the years new content and services were added, providing users with information, leisure, entertainment and useful tools. In 1999 the search engine and catalog changed into a news and entertainment portal, and the company launched two of it's flagship services: Blá webchat (bla.aeiou.pt) and Xekmail free webmail (xekmail.aeiou.pt). AEIOU would later build a site network mainly based on web communities and user generated content services such as a well known job market (bolsa.de/emprego). In 2006 AEIOU was acquired by the Portuguese media group Impresa, and later became AEIOU - Impresa Digital. Amongst other services, contents and utilities, AEIOU offered a blog community (weblog.com.pt), cooking (Kitchenet.pt), soccer (relvado.com), video (tube.aeiou.pt), news (quiosque.aeiou.pt), games (MyGames.pt), photography (Olhares.com) and a leisure, tourism and entertainment portal (Escape.pt) In January 2012 AEIOU.pt left Impresa and is now held by AEIOU Cool Beans, Lda.