France joins the Open Gov Partnership to develop its open data strategy
Today, Marylise Lebranchu, Minister of Decentralisation and State reform announced at La Conférence de Paris that France is joining the Open Gov Partnership. France is the 64th country to join the international initiative to promote Open Government OGP is an “international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to […]
Vivendi chooses Numericable, Bouygues and Free on the sidelines for now
On Friday, the French telecom world was buzzing from a somewhat surprise decision that Vivendi would be entering into exclusive negotiations to sell-off its telco unit SFR to Numericable, effectively leaving Bouygues and, indirectly, Free out in the cold. While Numericable had reportedly been Vivendi’s preferred candidate early on, Bouygues came in later in the […]
Free may finally get its own network if a Bouygues-SFR deal goes ahead
Over the past couple weeks, Vivendi has been in concurrent negotiations with both Bouygues and Numericable about an eventual sale of SFR to one of the two telcos. It looks like whoever ends up the winner, the deal will be valued at around 10 billion euros. While both entities would be amassing substantial levels of […]
Canal+ buys France’s #1 YouTube Channel – Studio Bagel
Just a few months back, Canal+ decided to change from its strategy of only diffusing its content line via their own player to developing a Canal+ ecosystem on YouTube by launching 16 of its own channels. Now they seem to have changed course yet again, announcing that they have bought a 60% stake in Studio […]
“Les Soldes” continue to trend digital
According to a study conducted by CSA for FEVAD, France’s leading e-commerce and mail order trade association, 7 out of 10 of internet users plan to either prepare for or make their actual purchases on-line during “les soldes” (bi-annual sales), which equates to 30 million people. Perhaps reflecting the apparent slow-down in France e-commerce sector […]
5 French tech companies shaking up the Mobile AdTech space
The writing is written on the wall: the next frontier for advertising is mobile. The difference between advertising budgets devoted to mobile and usage on mobile vs. desktop is staggering, and analysts predict that it’s only a matter of time until the budget percentage and usages converge. Startups in France don’t seem to think it’s […]
Midemlab announces finalists to top music industry competition
Midemlab which takes place each year during top music ecosystem event Midem has an impressive track record as a launch pad for the industry’s most promising startups. With names like The Echo Nest, Songkick, Mobile Backstage and, most impressively, SoundCloud having participated in the competition, Midemlab has proven itself as great platform for startups to […]
France continues its Open Data mission with the 4th annual Dataconnexion competition
Dataconnexions, Etalab’s contest to identify the most promising up-and-coming open data startups, honored the 8 winners of its 4th edition yesterday. This time around, the jury was presided over by Blablacar co-founder Frédéric Mazzella and consisted of 30 key personalities from France’s tech and economic communities. Dataconnexions is truly sector agnostic as past and present entries have come […]
Offline Mode: The Elephant in the HTML5 Room
There seems to be 3 groups of people involved in the HTML5 discussion: Evangelists, whose role is to push technology adoption. In most industries they’d be called salespeople but in Tech we like to coin words to make us sound specials so the tech evangelists were born! They are comprised of both staff from large […]
RudeVC: Don’t shoot the messenger (App)
In continuity of last week’s piece on the arrival the Japanese mobile game models to Europe, I thought it appropriate to discuss another tech trend in Asia which makes me enthusiastic for potential investment opportunities, even here on the old continent: the next-generation of mobile messaging apps. Most Europeans are familiar with WhatsApp, Viber, Kik, […]