DailyMotion will have seen a sharp increase in page views over the weekend as over a 100,000 people in France, turned to the video sharing site, after watching the evening news.
Which gives me, by the same occasion, the opportunity to mention the French start up, that receives more than 4.000 videos every day, adding to a catalogue of more than 1 million.
A very brief account of the title story -
The so called political scoop comes from a video taken at a private political meeting in Angers. Ségolène Royal, who is favorite to lead the Socialists into the presidential elections in 2007 and may well be the first female French President, is seen addressing a small group of people.
The timing is no coincidence, the video, taken in January, has been submitted to Daily Motion just days before the vote to select the Socialist candidate for the elections next year.
Ségolène Royal is seen asking for the 35 hour law to be enforced upon teachers. A statement that is both ironic and risky.
The irony being, that the law was brought out to deter people from working more hours, thereby hopefully creating job sharing and less unemployment. What Ségolène Royal is asking, is that teachers be made to stay at work, to be present in the schools, for 35 hours a week and no less, saying that putting in 17 hours then going off to give private lessons just isn’t good enough.
The risk being, that French teaching unions take to the street in France for far less than that.
“I don’t want to shout it from the roof tops just yet, as I don’t want to take les coups from the teachers unions”
How successful the video is, in rallying the teachers against Ségolène Royal, remains to be seen in Thursday’s ballot, when Socialist card holders choose their leader for 2007.
source - NouvelObs.com
DailyMotion, a Paris based company, was founded by Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier Poitrey in February 2005, translated into six European languages it diffuses over 5 million videos a day.
Update:16 million page-views a day and 9,000 new videos sent in every day according to BusinessWeek in their recent article entitled ‘Can Daily Motion challenge YouTube?‘ 14th November
3 responses so far ↓
1 Brendan Hodgson : A Royal Gaffe? // Nov 15, 2006 at 10:17 pm
[…] A Royal Gaffe? According to Quoi9, France-based DailyMotion (an up-and-coming Youtube competitor), has been inundated with requests (500,000+ and counting) for a video of an alleged private political meeting involving Socialist Party leadership candidate and future presidential hopeful, Ségolène Royal. In the video, Ms Royal offers some potentially controversial remarks about France’s teachers and enforcement of the 35-hour work week. (Confession: although I live with a francophone and am father of twin daughters who speak better french than me, I must confess I was not able to follow the full conversation, which means that I must rely heavily on Quoi9’s summary.) Interestingly, the release of the video, which was shot in January, appears timed to coincide with the party’s leadership vote. And as with John Kerry’s unfortunate remarks in the closing days of the US midterm elections, and George Allen’s famous “macaca” clip, could impact the outcome, though to what extent remains to be seen and may ultimately be impossible to verify. That said, the bigger questions in my mind are: 1) how might these “gaffes” impact what politicians say and do in the future? For example, will it result in even greater message sterilization that could further distance politicians from voters? and, 2) to what extent will citizen-generated video be usurped by political parties in the future as guerilla-style campaign weaponry to be unleashed at the most appropriate occasions? Is this simply an evolution in campaigning and grassroots politics, or is it something more nefarious? Published 15 November 2006 13:45 by Brendan Hodgson TrackBack URL for this post:http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/trackback.aspx?PostID=5913 […]
2 robson // Nov 16, 2006 at 8:50 pm
A Royal Gaffe? Why didn’t I think of that?
Interesting Trackback Brendan, thankyou
3 test // Dec 15, 2006 at 2:46 pm
hello, sorry for test…
test … test of my blog trackback module…