France24 – the round the clock TV & Internet news network touted as the “French CNN” – online since December has released figures claiming 3 million visits were made to their website during the last 3 weeks of 2006. Announcing the numbers, Alain de Pouzilhac, France 24′s chairman, said “I’m not happy with those figures, I’m over the moon.” Continue reading
With less than 100 days to go to the first round of the French Presidential elections, France2 along with Google Vidéo France has opened a website elections.france2.fr dedicated to the campaign. Along with a selection of the main stories from the biggest public daily news channel here in France, the site will also be showing amateur content sent in by viewers eager to play a part in the debate.
This is a major inroad from mainstream media. In a country where 9 million people consult at least one blog a month and half of those leave comments, the media can no longer afford to ignore the rapid growth of the French blogosphere, said to be the largest in Europe with the highest level of ‘internaute’ participation.
Neither, of course, can the politicians. It will come as no surprise that the principal candidates have all been busy in this domain. None more so than the candidate for the socialist party. According to Yves-Marie Cann of French pollster Ifop “Ségolène Royal has built her political strength outside the Socialist Party with her Web site ‘Desirs d’Avenir‘â€
Desirsdavenir.org has coordinated over 700 local comities, the latest one has just been opened in Second Life! In a video placed on DailyMotion, Ségolène Royal inaugurates the 748th comity saying ‘…there will be participative debates about the presidential project… so come here in number and you will find me here†!
No virtual stone shall be left unturned, et pourquoi pas ?
As for Nicolas Sarkozy leader and candidate for the UMP, there is a flashy, professional looking site sarkozy.fr complete with a TV station – NSTV, a large digital clock countdown to the big day is displayed in milliseconds, there are podcasts and words & music to ‘go get ‘em sarko’ songs etc.
Politics meets web 2.0 what do you get? No clues now….. Politique2 – a new personalised start page inspired by the popular Netvibes. Syndicating over 850 political websites & blogs, hopefully it manages some neutrality in their presentation, it does seem pretty well pieced together.
Talking of neutrality, I should mention bayrou.fr, the website of François Bayrou, as he himself seldom forgets to mention his ‘mise à l’écart’ by the French media only interested, according to the UDF candidate, in a two horse race.
Even a quick glance at each of the 3 candidates’ websites is revealing in their stark portrayal of given clichés: Désirs d’Avenir is soft in appearance with clouds dissipating behind the title. Sarkozy.fr is more – business in the city, web 2.0 going on (le)web 3.0. Bayrou.fr, the candidate from the Midi-Pyrenees, is – feet on the ground, a little austere – more web 2.0 going on web 1.0.
sources – L’Atelier infodunet Neteco second life address SLObserver
For more precise information about the French political blogosphere see the Ifop-panel Maximiles report on the 2006 – 2007 presidential net-campaigne.
The first week of 2007 was the week that saw the world’s oldest newspaper (361 years) cease to exist…in print that is. That’s right, the Swedish daily – Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, lives on…on-line.
This was posted by Jeff Jarvis on his popular media blog Buzzmachine whose b&w header photo of rolling mill-type machinery from the industrial age fits this story to a T.
Jarvis cites Media Culpa a Swedish blog, as his source; who in turn link to the WAN – World Association of Newspapers website showing a list of the oldest newspapers still in print.
An Internet Hit list?
Wikio continues its international development this Monday by launching an English version – Wikio.com, und German – Wikio.de and Spanish – Wikio.es, también.
Pierre Chappaz, who founded the popular (600,000 users in Fr, 100,000 in Italy) user-contributed news company, admits that while Wikio intends to stay a European focused news site, with a UK version coming next indexing the British media, Wikio.com is a direct stab at the massive U.S. market. Good luck to them.
via lexpansion
The France24 website was launched Wednesday night followed by the TV station – available on cable and satellite (list of satellite and cable service providers) as of Thursday.
The News website is in French, English and Arabic and will dedicate 20% of its programming to culture & lifestyle, the TV station has Arabic previewed for 2007 and Spanish in 2009.
So Chirac’s vision of international news seen from a French perspective is finally under way and the public funded company (€86m) dwarfed by its major competitors CNN and BBC in terms of budget – €1.2bn for CNN, is aiming at viewing figures in the region of 75 million households in more than 90 countries.
update: over 500,000 people from 108 countries connected to the France24 website during its Wednesday evening launch, according to AFP. via Le Expansion
more info Guardian Atelier.fr
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 unionsâ€
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