One year after its launch in october 2006, french start-up Looneo.com, which centralises product reviews from bloggers, has just raised € 2 million from some business angels and GML, personnal holding of Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, who controls Fimalac Group and Fitch, one of the biggest financial rating agencies with Moody’s and S&P.
Looneo should not use this money to build a “social rating” platform but to simply strengthen its position on the french market, still dominated par german group Ciao, and to prepare its European expansion.
“According to a study that we did in August, 45% of internet users read consummers products review before buying something on the web. Social shopping should become stronger in the next months, espacially during Christmas” explains Alban Peltier, Looneo CEO.
On the french market, other start-up also surf on the “social shopping” wave like Zlio or Xinek, a wave that could also be dominate by eBay and its new “neighborhood” but which does not yet interest social networks giants like MySpace, Facebook and Hi5…
