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European Round-up
This popular session has been put together and moderated by Bruno
Giussani, European Correspondent New York Times Interactive
(CH). Participants were asked to list and present the main developments
in their countries 1999.
ITALY
Andreina Mandelli, Professor, Bocconi University (ITA)Bio
On the downside Italy still has one of the lowest Internet penetration
rates in Europe. On the upside it has the largest mobile market in Europe.
The straight forward analysis: online players in Italy will have to develop
content for the mobile platforms. It is there that we find growth and high
penetration (the mobile publishing phenomena can be observed it most of
the European markets).
Everyone is getting into the portal business, but no one is differentiating
themselves and often there is competition where there could be cooperation
(mergermania has not set in as of yet÷)
BENELUX
Monique van Dusseldorp. CEO, van Dusseldorp & PartnersBio
Nine perfectly ordinary people locked into a fully wired house,
broadcast round the clock on the Internet.Launched by one of the country's
most popular TV broadcasters it is the Dutch version of «big brother» .
The audience and the housemates have to kick out at least one person a
week. The remaining house occupant will win Euro 125,000.
Reality TV on the Internet has captured the imagination of the Dutch and there are now web sites, chat rooms and merchandising spin offs. QXL will auction off contents of the house when the series is finished. http://www.bigbrother.nl (as we write this, similar shows have been announced in Germany)
Another success story from this region is a very simple idea that consistently makes the top 10 in usage. It's a highly localized search page, maintained and updated by volunteers ( http://www.startpagina.nl). The site has no advertising and so far has refused all attempts at acquisition. The founder feels he would risk alienating the crew of volunteer content providers. A prime example of customer involvement (and content integrity).
Emerging from Belgium is also the "Language Valley", a technology park
for speech technology (an area that has been extensively explored by the
Belgians for many years, notably in speech recognition for the telephone
market). Dusseldorp suggested that speech and translation is part
of the next wave for interactive publishing.
UK
Phil Halliday, Summaries Editor, ft.com (UK)
The Freeserve story began as a free Internet access service provided
by electronics retailer Dixons in the UK. They charged very high support
fees to support the business. Under criticism by consumers Freeserve was
forced to reduce the cost of phone support and started selling advertising
and getting sponsors. Now a large chunk of the revenue is generated by
sharing in the phone charges with the telco (the unique cost structure
of the telephone services in Europe which allows for charging local calls,
made this arrangement feasible throughout the continent. Services similar
to freeserve swept over Europe like a forrest fire ).
About 700,000 signed up for the free Internet service within its first
few weeks.
As Phil Halliday noticed, that resulted in substantially increased
traffic also to his http://www.ft.com website (incidentally Phil announced a relaunch of FT.com early in 2000)
The IPO of freeserve and its roller coaster stock price -- the price share dipped below its first day quote and is now on its way back up again, has sent out a fairly positive signal to investors. (http://www.Freeserve.co.ukFreeserve.co.uk is the leading UK site with a reach of 38%).
A UK content provider from the audience suggested that the emergence
of a large number of copy-cat free service providers is driving demand
for content. He mentioned that free ISP are looking for content to lock
user into the site -to build customer loyalty. Now that is a cheerful prospect.
SCANDINAVIA
Terje Johansen, Online Publisher, Dagbladet (NOR)Bio
Netavisen came from nowhere to be the number three news site in the country. They used wire stories and quoted newspaper and magazine stories.
The old media journalists and analysts said the site was doomed. Proving
them wrong Netavisen was sold this past summer for Euro 23 million and
has since started to produce original content on a constantly updated site.
What did they do right?
From Norway to Sweden: Aftonbladet,
the most successful newspaper in the country and its recent decision to
split up the paper and online business. The site was recently valued at
Euro 150 to 230 million. The online publication is now valued higher by
financial analysts than the print publication. "The split could indicate
a trend," says Johansen (confirmed by Bruno Giussani with the NYT and TA-Media
of Switzerland following the same path Û And in view of the recent AOL/Times
Warner merger a most appropriate observation)
The last point in Johansen's talk was Wireless Application Protocol
(WAP). He joked that WAP also stands for "Where Are the Phones. There have
been a number of delays in getting the devices to market. The mobile or
wireless Internet, enabled by WAP, is where we will see the next content
race, most acute in the world's leading wireless countries." Today there
are about 20 to 30 mobile portals in Scandinavia. The telcos are offering
yellow page services, the newspapers offer news, sports and TV listings,
and magazines offer city and restaurant guides. The next generation of
interactive services and e-commerce will emerge when the security solutions
have been developed, enabling home banking and the like.
GERMANY
Thomas Breyer, Head New Media, Bundesverband
Deutscher Zeitungsverleger(Germany)Bio
Breyer-Mayerländer's report about the German online sector told us of the boom in classified advertising. One of the stars is AutoScout24 (owned by German Metro Group) with 60,000 automobiles on offer with a remarkable navigation aspect (AutoScout is hosted and designed by Swiss Xmedia AG (Flamatt Bern)) Classified advertising for jobs and careers is undergoing rapid growth. Some of the book and magazine publishers have recently acquired web startups in this area.
The German newspapers have recently formed an alliance to pool classifieds, host auctions, and pricing agents (after a memorable kick-off staged by the newspaper publishers association as late as last August).
There are definitely some tricky issues related to buying advertising
based on page impressions alone, as Deutsche
Bank and Volkswagen found out. Their
advertising ended up on a porn site. Not so bad after all, since
quality related issues finally entered the limelight. Page impression are
only part of the equation. Some advertisers fortunately depend absolutely
on quality context as well.
SWITZERLAND
Matthias Zehnder, Editor-in-Chief, ZDM NewswireBio
«Eiger live» was the Swiss
version of reality TV meets Internet. Over the two days, more
than a million people visited the site and had a look at the climbers in
that scary wall (only 20% were from beyond the country's borders. Just
imagine what a bit of marketing would have done).
The big news in online services this year was the announcement that TA Media, the country's second largest newspaper and magazine publisher, decided to step down from an industry alliance called Pressweb (the other partners are Publicitas, NZZ, Basler Mediengruppe and Edipresse). Pressweb hosts a classified advertising site that includes real estate, jobs and other classifieds. (Both, the TA Media and the remaining partners of Pressweb have put aside over Euro 30 Mio. for what promises to be an exciting and extremely competitive landscape).
TA Media will started a new web site that will ? in Zehnder¹s words - "melt publishing and e-commerce. Besides offering content, the site will sell products and services. The newspaper company aims to convert traffic to transactions."
So maybe the separation was not caused by a difference in attitude on
how fast Pressweb should move Û but in which direction.
FRANCE
Nanne Bos, Business Analyst, France
The past year was year one for the Internet in France. Minitel use
is slowly decreasing but one shouldnÌt expect Minitel to disappear any
time soon. The French are still generating 80 million hours a year on the
text based network and it's a market that is worth Euro 1 billion a year.Their
numbers are small, but all content providers on Minitel are profitable.
The number of Internet users doubled. The number of national domains increased dramatically. Ad sales tripled and venture capital started to flow freely to finance startups in the Internet space. Some examples are the established capital rich companies such as Vivendi, LVMH, Pinault, and France Telecom. Vivendi launched Viventure with Softbank--- they are mostly investing in US sites with European ambitions. LVMH has launched a venture fund of Euro 500 million.
The French government goes on and after the net. It has a five point action plan to address security issues, copyright, and personal data protection.
A special mention for the launch of the web phone in France. This is
a single device that integrates Internet access, minitel, and of course,
the telephone. Nowhere the device has made big splashes so far, but with
France's Minitel past this might change.
Send your comments and suggestions to
nspecker@interactivepu
blishing.ch
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