Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 23rd June 2009
3 COMMENTS 
Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester
French filesharers might have thought they were home dry when the country’s Constitutional Council scrapped tough anti-piracy proposals earlier this month. Now France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said he will continue to push for with the new law regardless.
The controversial HADOPI law aims to give those accused of illegal filesharing a “three strikes and you’re out” ultimatum. Unlike similar schemes elsewhere which tend to work on an ISP-by-ISP basis, the French approach would put those suspected of offending on a blacklist available to all ISPs, completely banning them from having any home internet connection.
Speaking yesterday Sarkozy made clear that France is not a place that will tolerate “lawlessness” online.
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Written on 19th March 2009
2 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Innovative online storage and file sharing service Wuala has some big news today. The Swiss company are ‘merging’ their online backup service with established French external storage device company LaCie.
Dominik Grolimund, Wuala’s CEO and co-founder says
“We’re very proud to announce that we join forces with LaCie. This is a major leap forward for Wuala and will bring us to the next level. LaCie is the perfect match for us.”
Wuala launched publicly in August of last year and gained impressive press coverage and popularity amongst users and analysts alike - we covered the company here and interviewed Grolimund here. The nine members of Wuala’s development will remain with the company but will also be joined by a team of LaCie staff, all working towards enhancing product offerings.
“This merge has allowed us to acquire a very innovative online storage solution that will transform our company from a leading hardware manufacturer to a comprehensive digital storage provider,” said Philippe Spruch, founder and CEO of LaCie.
Grolimund makes clear that there will be absolutely no changes to Wuala as a product, all current and future users will only benefit from the merger. A list of FAQ’s have been provided for any current users concerned about potential changes.
Written on 8th December 2008
3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Arjen, Ernst-Jan and me are on our way to Paris today to attend Le Web. It starts on Tuesday morning and ends on Wednesday evening. This evening we are having dinner with a large group of Dutch people but look forward to meeting a lot of local people too. Let us know if you are in town too!
Oh, since a large part of our team is in this car with only iPhones for connectivity (at €2 per MB) don’t expect too many posts today. We expect to make up for it tomorrow with live reports from LeWeb.
(Published after 6 attempts over 0.5G at €2 per MB)
Written on 31st August 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Europe knows some language barriers, we all know that. Every time we compare the Valley with our continent, that’s the first thing which comes to our minds. But trying to break those barriers can be really worth it.
Next Web team in Paris
My Next Web colleagues Patrick and Arjen plus I tried that in the beginning of this year, when we made a road trip through Europe. We’ve visited Geneva, Brussels, Gent, London, and Paris. The latter was a particularly interesting experience, as the city has a really vibrant and cowboy-like start-up community. Anything seems to be possible there. You don’t even need an Internet connection at home, just work at a free Internet hub. Seeing all that was really interesting. We’d like to offer you a similar experience.
Therefore, we’ll give away two invites for WebDeux.Connect, a meet-up in Paris with over 400 web professionals. It takes place on the 11th of October. Some basic knowledge of French is vital, but if you have that, you’re good to go. Leave a comment and we’ll pick two winners next Sunday with a raffle.
Written on 27th August 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Russia has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe, research by ComScore shows. The study about the online behavior of European Internet audiences (based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service) learns us that the Russian Internet population has grown with 27 percent past year up to 17.5 million visitors.
The total number of European Internet users grew with 8 percent during the past year to 241.8 million visitors in June 2008. Next to Russia, countries like France (up 21 percent to 31.5 million visitors), Spain (up 15 percent to 16.2 million visitors), and Ireland (up 15 percent to 1.6 million visitors) also see the Internet becoming a more important part of their society.
See all the interesting stats in the press release. Here are some more highlights:
- Internet adoption was highest in the Netherlands, where 82 percent of the country’s total population age 15 and older went online in June.
- U.K. Internet users spent the greatest amount of time online, averaging 28.5 hours per user per month, while German Internet users recorded the most page views, averaging 2,906 pages per visitor.
Oh Russia
I could fill this blog with exciting news from Russia. Whether it concerns search giant Yandex, the iPhone launch, or dodgy oligarchs buying web stocks, the country’s Internet industry never ceases to amaze me.
What makes the country extra interesting, are the contradictions. While Russia has the fastest-growing Internet audience in Europe, it ranked near the bottom in terms of penetration and page views. Two conclusions can be drawn here: Russia still has a long way to go before they’ve bridged the digital divide and the Russian Internet market will become incredibly important when it has reached its full potential.
Written on 25th August 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
YouTube has become one of Holland’s top 3 most visited sites, a study by Dutch research agency Multiscope shows. Two thirds of Dutch Internet users check the video site on at least a monthly basis, partly due to the network effect of the service (You know the deal, bored people sending each other videos during work). Apart from these impressive numbers, one part in the study report particularly struck me: the extraordinarily high average visit time, which is 8 minutes. Is online video becoming a substitute for TV?
Chinese TV threatened by online videos
In China, this already is the case. The country is the home of the world’s most exciting online video market. The government isn’t afraid to pull the censorship card every once in a while, there’s tough competition, as much rumors as videos, and millions, millions of funding and views. When I interviewed Marc van der Chijs, founder of Tudou – largest video site of the world with 35 billion minutes viewing time in January -, he told me the average visitors stays on Tudou for 47 minutes. “For young Chinese people”, he said, “it is a substitute for television”.
Will Europe follow?
So while the first signs of a similar trend are appearing in the Netherlands, the questions arises whether we Europeans will face a similar scenario in the near future. Comscore recently released data from their online video measurement service, indicating that 23.2 million French Internet users viewed 2.1 billion videos online in January 2008. That number of 23.2 million viewers makes up for 79.5 percent of the total French Internet audience. So almost 80 percent of French Internet users watched on average 90 videos in one month.
There’s of course one major difference though — European television tends not to suffer from censorship threats, thus it’s not as biased as in China. No frightened kids who run to the “unbiased” and fun environment of online videos. Though when I think about it, the quality of Dutch TV isn’t particularly high either. Will we abandon the couch en masse to watch four-minute clips?
[Via: Bright (Dutch)]
Written on 9th July 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Holiday is on its way, at least, I hope it is for you. Everybody deserves a week or two of absolute relaxation. Next to zipping cocktails and playing ball games, human beings also have the weird tendency to make a picture for every step they take on unknown soil. When home, tradition requires it that you show the pictures to your friends and relatives. A modern Web 2.0 devotee like you has the pictures uploaded to Flickr, yet this service is somewhat too clean to relive the old-fashioned cosy way of showing photographs on the couch. Well, that’s where French service Picsviewr comes to the rescue. Next to the most corny Web 2.0 name so far, they also offer seven templates that enrich the whole viewing experience.
What about some Polaroids for example? First you make a selection – based on tags, sets, most recent etc. Then your friends can just drag ‘n drop the photos, opening their favorites – and ignore the picture postcard-like boring ones.
Although the idea is nice, and Picsviewr would certainly fit the Flickr tools hall of fame, some important features are missing. Where’s the embed option? There’s not even a direct link function. The guys behind this tool still have some work to do.
Anyway, for now, Picsviewr is the way to go when you got your family gathered around the screen – eagerly waiting for those holiday pics.
Written on 1st July 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
While the Netvibes blog still triumphs the neat integration with Google Search, TechCrunch reports that a new – and more exciting – feature has launched. It’s called Buzz and it adds Digg, Mixx, Reddit and Yahoo – uhm – Buzz to its impressive list of competitors (featuring iGoogle and MyAOL). In case you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a “star” function in Netvibes, with which you can highlight your favorite articles. Buzz will track which articles are starred most – by your friends or everyone – and by doing this, gives a Digg-like overview of the Web 2.0’s most favorite articles.
My first thought was: yet another sharing tool. But then I realized that Netvibes might become an “starring overlay” for all your content, as the little star is depicted in YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, RSS, and almost every other content widget you can come up with. So instead of turning tweets in a Twitter fav, starring articles on Google Reader and appreciating Digg articles by digging them, you just have one tool to manage all your highlight needs.
Before this scenario becomes reailty, Netvibes Buzz has to come a long way. It’s still in development and the numbers on the frontpage aren’t that impressive.
Written on 30th June 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Everybody who has visited a popular tourist spot recently, knows the market stands with fake handbags, shirts and sun glasses. These poor-quality goods come straight from countries like China and Vietnam and are widely popular by people who adore the celebrity cult. It seems like these markets will be the only place where you can buy the fake stuff, as a court in France has ordered eBay to compensate fashion and new luxury empire LVMH for allowing the sale of these infamous counterfeit goods. The damage for eBay? €38.6 million.
LVMH – known from Louis Vuitton, Moët et Chandon, Tag Heuer, Fendi, and many more – claims that the French division of eBay doesn’t try hard enough to prevent the shabby salesmen from using the auction site as their market stand. This allegedly caused damage of about €50 million for LVMH.
A month ago, another French court ordered eBay to pay Hermes 20,000 euros for allowing the sale of fakes. I wonder whether these two court-rulings have scared eBay enough to stop opening its doors for the posers’ suppliers.
Update July 1st: eBay will appeal the French court ruling in this LVMH dispute
Written on 11th June 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
French politicians have proved that they aren’t afraid to try regulating the web. After adopting a bill that made anorexia promoting websites illegal last April, France now plans to block websites which depict child pornography. Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie asked the help of both ISP’s and Internet users to “protect children and their families from pedophiles”.
Michele Alliot-Marie
Reuters reports that Alliot-Marie’s want to make it possible for Internet users to flag sites that carry child pornography, incitement to terrorism, racial hatred, or attempted fraud. This information is used to create a blacklist, which ISP’s have promised to obey. When a site isn’t hosted in France, the info is passed on to international police agencies Europol and Interpol.
I find it interesting that the French government uses the crowd to trace some of the Internet’s most disgusting content, yet I hope it’s done in a 2.0 style. If people have to fill in two forms and sign them, the whole operation will be pretty useless. A website with a three text fields-form or even better, a bookmarklet, will be more effective alternatives to fight child pornography.
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