Dan ROSE, VP Marketing Development of Facebook was in Paris this morning for LeWeb3 and he annonced the launch of Facebook.fr and Facebook.de on the “first half of 2008”, probably on the second quarter.
The company, which is still focusd on its advertising solutions only plan to translate its website in french and german. No local team should be hired even if Facebook will soon hit 1 million unique visitors in France, according to Nielsen Netratings.
Value Added Social network ? Bahu.com, a French social network for students with around 300 000 members has just closed € 1 million in first round funding led by Lightspeed-Gemini Internet Lab (LGiLab).
Its founders Stéphane Soler and Fabien Guiraud, will continue to work in the company and Bahu.com will now be headed by Oleg Tscheltzoff (Fotolia, CitizenBay, Wixi…) who becomes president and also by Ouriel Ohayon, Techcrunch.fr editor and LGiLab CEO, who becomes ‘director’ and member of the board.
<<Bahu will continue to provide social features but will also be focused on promoting gifted people : writers, artists, musicians, models..>> explains Oleg Tscheltzoff, who expects to launch Bahu.com on major Eastern Europe, latin America an Asiatic markets.
GooJet (Good Gadget), a french start-up based in Toulouse, south of France and developping mobile widgets for Java MIDP2 environnement, has just closed € 2.3 million in first round funding led by Partech International, Elaia Partners and IRDI.
<<GooJet is a management and creation space for mobile widgets>> explained in september Marc Rougier, GooJet CEO, in an IntrudersTV interview with Thierry Bezier.
GooJet should be launched in a private beta version on tuesday, during LeWeb3 conference in Paris but french blogger Jacques Froissant already had more details from Cedric Giorgi, GooJet co-founder, about this project which apparently competes with Webwag or Widsets.
Netvibes 2.0 ? As announced at the web 2.0 conference in Berlin, Netvibes is about to launch on tuesday at LeWeb3 conference in Paris a new version called “Ginger”.
With more than 100 000 widgets in Netvibes ecosystem, Tariq Krim now focus on features such as a ’social networks’ or ‘friends activity’, to connect its users.
These new features should help Netvibes to compete with Facebook or Google Opensocial partners (Orkut, MySpace, Xing,..).
VP Marketing at Neurosky, Greg HYVER was at l’Echangeur, in Paris, to present its bio sensor technology and to annonce a partnership with Musinaut and its MXP4 technology.
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According to Challenge News Magazine, Orbus, a Holding controled by AXA private Equity (80%) and Pierre Bellanger (20%) is about to sale Skyrock.com, a platform claiming to have more than 12 millions blogs in Europe and around 9 million monthly users in France. (Source comScore)
With a € 300 million expected price, Skyrock.com could interest French media companies like Hi-Media, which has just bought Fotolog, Lagardere, wich is still vera late in online services, and maybe News Corp, N°2 on French market with MySpace.fr and official owner of “Sky” brand all around Europe.
In about one week, probably during LeWeb Conference, two french start-up should officially launch new music services : Airtist.com and You.dj.
More ambitious than Deezer.com, Airtist.com should provide free, legal and “ethical” files to download. Without DRM but with advertising, Airtist.com will offer more than 13 000 files, from independent artists and labels, according to Olivier Reynaud, Airtist cofounder.
Apart from airtist.com, musinauts should also benefit from You.dj services. More open than Deezer, You.dj will invite internet users to upload their own MP3 files on its own servers. Looking like iTunes from Apple with a full Ajax interface, You.dj should allow its members to create playlists and to share MP3 files even if Romain Moyne, You.dj founder, explains he still has to negociate with music industry to make you.dj legal…
Content is the King ! Hi-Media, a european Ad Network based in France announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire american company Fotolog, Inc. for a combination of cash and stock valued at approximately $90 million.
Launched in May 2002, New York-based Fotolog is a social network with more than 10 million members, reaching 15 million unique monthly visitors and logging more than 3.3 billion monthly page views. Fotolog now ranks 20th on the Alexa list of the world’s most-trafficked websites.
“Hi-Media was attracted by Fotolog, which has only just begun converting its strong audience growth into revenues. We think that social networks are one of the pillars of what the Internet is and will be important in the years ahead, especially when underpinned by simple mechanisms. We are also convinced that Hi-Media can benefit substantially from Fotolog’s efforts to generate maximum revenues from its audience thanks to the advertising and micro-payment services that Hi-Media has developed over the past decade. In addition, we believe that the expertise and experience of the Fotolog teams who are joining us will allow us to reinforce“ comments Cyril Zimmermann, CEO of Hi-Media, a group which now belongs to the Web Top 100 properties.
Indeed, return on investment could be fast for Hi-Meda, which has paid this acquisition 9 dollars per members, a much cheaper price than Facebook, a platform with 50 millions members valued 300 dollars each by Microsoft…
The “Agence France Press”, one of the biggest press agencies with AP and Reuters, has decided to take a 30% stake in CitizenSize.com, a french site enabling internet users to sell press material (photos, videos) to major media companies.
Formerly known as ScoopLive, CitizenSize.com should use this money to strengten its relationships with media companies but also promote its new brand to internet users on a french market already adressed by Fotolia.com (for photos) and Eyeka.com (for videos).
François Chaney, a french blogger already knows for a blog dedicated to latest Apple smartphone, has decided to launch a mobile guide called iStart.fr, giving access to best iphone compliant web sites.After a first wave this summer with Netvibes, DailyMotion or Exalead, many news web sites have revealed their iPhone version this week : L’Oreal Paris, Liberation, Dior, Cortado, Lycos, AlternativeChannel or Freetouch.Even if Orange provides an official portal dedicated to Apple smartphone, iStart.fr has already attracted more than 3000 mobile internet users, looking for “offportal” content.
