The Praized Blog

LeWeb’s official bloggers got a personal tour with Loic Le Meur of Le 104, the venue where the conference is being held. Interestingly enough, the building used to host Paris’ morgue but is now a beautiful expo/conference hall. Loic showed us every public and private rooms (including some secret ones I can’t mention!) and the backstage section. The organizing team was still busy putting the final touch on the venue but we were allowed to take a few pictures. Here are the best from the ones I took. It starts tomorrow and it should be very good!

This morning, I had the chance to sit down with Gilles Barbier, CEO and co-founder of TellMeWhere (Dismoiou in French), a Paris-based European social Yellow Pages service. As with any ratings/reviews service, people can find places (see Le Louvre profile page for example), read the basic information, see the map and pictures, rate/comment on the place, see what others have said and discover related places. So far, although well executed, it’s not very different feature-wise than a lot of ratings/reviews sites like Yelp or Qype.

Mobile as a differentiator

Where it gets really interesting is with their iPhone application (they also have an Android one). The beautifully designed (both from a user interface and user experience) app is where the rubber really hit the road for the young startup founded three years ago. Launched in July, the mobile version has been downloaded more than 400,000 times (on a total of 2 million iPhones in France).

Features include:

• Location-based business search
• Ability to rate/comment places and broadcast your comment on Twitter/Facebook
• See feedback from other users and your friends
• See recommendations based on your tastes
• Great integration of Facebook Connect with instant account creation based on your Facebook information
• Push of your activities to your friends’ phone and possibility for your friends to answer you back via SMS
• Integration with Google Maps
• Integration with the iPhone camera allowing users to take a picture and upload it right away to the place profile page

The release of their iPhone application has created a lot of user traction. Barbier asked me to pick a small town in France just to prove the breadth of usage. I chose Venasque, a small 1000-inhabitant village in Provence where I stayed last spring. I think there are only a dozen businesses in the village. TellMeWhere had two votes in their system. They even had a few activities in smaller towns in Canada. And now they’re on the verge of releasing version 2.0 of their mobile application of the iPhone and it will include check-in functionality (like Foursquare) and an activity stream of everything your friends are doing to enable real-time discovery. You can see a video of the new application here.

Barbier shared with me that they’ve now realized their mobile applications (built in-house) have become strategic for the small 7-employee company. The combination of mobile + local + social (utilizing an existing identity system like Facebook Connect) is a winning formula.

Mobile will be disruptive

And this is where, in the future of local search, mobile wins (as opposed to the Web). I finally see the light and now realizes that mobile will probably be the great disruptor it was always supposed to be. Why? Because, as Barbier said, mobile usage is real. It’s grounded in real life, with your day-to-day local usage and your social graph. That’s how you build usage. In web-based local search, it’s all about search engine optimization (SEO) these days as it’s very expensive to build new brands. It’s traffic coming from Google and other search engines from users with little loyalty. And with the Mountain View goliath hosting more and more content on their own site, I suspect that strategy will soon go off its rails.

Real-time business model

As for TellMeWhere’s business model, they’re monetizing using “special offers”. Merchants can claim their listing and submit deals/coupons/special offers (the best way to monetize real-time local as I’ve often said). It’s a pay-per-action model (or as Barbier coined it “pay-per-visit) where merchants only pay when the user displays the coupon on their phone on location. With geo-location, it’s easy to verify if the user was really on premise or not when he displayed the coupon. Barbier told me he can charge 4 euros to restaurants each time someone uses a coupon. Sounds like a good model.

I think TellMeWhere has everything to become Europe’s Foursquare. The application is beautifully executed and is easy to use. Current usage seems to show a very positive trend. They have traction in France and other francophone countries and want to go after the rest of Europe and the English-speaking world. You should definitely check out their iPhone application if you want to see a great social/local mobile app.

Update: Gilles Barbier tells me version 2.0 of his application has been approved by Apple and is now available for download.

I’m now in Paris for LeWeb ‘09 conference where I’ve been invited as an official blogger. 2000 people are attending the event! My schedule is quickly filling up but if you’d like to meet when I’m here, feel free to send me an e-mail at sprovencher AT praizedmedia.com

Je suis présentement à Paris pour la conférence LeWeb ‘09 où j’ai été invité comme blogueur officiel. Si vous désirez me rencontrer cette semaine, n’hésitez pas à m’envoyer un courriel à sprovencher Arobas praizedmedia.com

LeWeb, the major European conference (the equivalent of the Web 2.0 Summit in North America), just released their complete schedule for the next event happening in Paris on December 9 and 10. The theme of the conference is the real-time Web.

As I wrote about a month ago, I’ve been selected as one of their official bloggers. Here are the speakers I’m most looking forward to:

• A fireside chat with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s creator. Will be interesting to hear his vision about where Twitter is going.
• Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform, Twitter. His background as a “local” expert makes him an interesting speaker for anyone interested in local media.
• “The Platform Roundtable” with representatives from Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, Ustream, SixApart, MySpace and Twitter. Expect the discussion to revolve around APIs and open ecosystems…
• A fireside chat with Robert Scoble. Always interesting perspective as a good observer of the Web scene.
• Niklas Zennstrom (of Kazaa-Skype-Joost fame). I want to hear more about their new venture in the music industry Rdio.
• The Money Roundtable with a group of very interesting VCs including David Hornik and Fred Wilson. Expect them to say they’re still cautious but that 2010 should be a good year.
• “The rise of emotional Web” by Yossi Vardi. Should be a fascinating session.
• Gillmor Gang Live. Always explosive!

Loic Le Meur, the organizer, often has surprise guest speakers as well. If you want to attend and haven’t bought your ticket yet, you can get a 10% discount if you use the following code: BLOG09 .

It’s with great pleasure I learned last week that I had been selected to be an official blogger at the LeWeb ‘09 conference, the premier European Web conference. The event is happening at Le 104 in Paris on December 9th and 10th.

As the theme for the 2009 LeWeb Program is “Real-Time Web”, I think it’s going to be a very exciting and timely event. This year’s program will address such topics as:

• Who will win the Twitter vs. Facebook battle?
• How are the other giants Google, Microsoft and MySpace reacting?
• How does this impact mobile and iPhone usage and development?
• Where are the opportunities for entrepreneurs in the real-time ecosystem?
• How brands and marketing have to adapt to this new worldwide real time “word of mouth”.
• What is the new public customer service?
• How do media and news sources reinvent themselves, or embrace the phenomenon and profit from it.

You can see the list of world-class speakers here. If you’re in Europe, I think the event is a must. If you’re based in North America and you believe (like me) that the future of the Web is in “real-time”, Le Web is probably a good event for you also. You can get a 10% discount if you use the following code: BLOG09.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, transit users in Paris will be able to access the subway, bus and region train systems with their cell phones at the end of 2010. Tickets/passes will downloaded on mobile devices via short-range wireless communications (NFC). The article mentions that tickets will be transferable between phones.

via Le “téléphone-ticket de transport” dès fin 2010 en Ile-de-France – Société – Le Monde.fr.

What it means: thought that mobile devices were only about communications? Think again. As Research In Motion’s CEO Mike Lazaridis said yesterday, your mobile device will become your “wireless wallet.” It’s one of the reasons why they bought Certicom earlier this year, “to embed that kind of security in our devices to make sure that things like wireless banking becomes a reality, and to make sure that we have the rights to these security models that you feel comfortable keeping medical information on them, or your license on these devices, your passport on these devices, or your credit card on these devices, or your bank access on these devices.”

On May 17th, the Board of Directors of PagesJaunes Groupe appointed Jean-Pierre Remy as Chief Executive Officer to replace Michel Datchary, as of May, 25th, 2009. (…)

Jean-Pierre Remy, 45, graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris and holds a PhD from HEC. After having spent several years as a Partner at Bain & Company (specialized in Internet and new technologies), Jean-Pierre Remy founded Egencia in 2000, now a worldwide leader in corporate travel. Following the acquisition of Egencia by Expedia in April 2004, Jean-Pierre Remy was appointed as European and then Global Managing Director in charge of corporate travel for the Expedia group, and was a member of the Executive Committee of Expedia Inc.

via EuroInvestor.co.uk – PAGESJAUNES GROUPE: Jean-Pierre Remy Appointed CEO of PagesJaunes Groupe.

What it means: when a CEO is replaced, it’s always interesting to look at the background of the new executive that’s coming on board. It helps to understand what will be expected of the company in the next three to five years, especially when he replaces someone who’s been in that job position for a long period of time (Datchary had been the head of Pages Jaunes France for 13 years and had joined the company in 1979).

Remy (his Linkedin profile is here) comes from management consulting (Bain) where he ran the Internet practice and, according to this bio, “he advised large international companies on their growth strategies, new ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and reorganizations.” He also has a PHD in Strategy from HEC Paris. But he is primarily an entrepreneur, founding Egencia in 2000, a corporate travel startup that was later acquired by Expedia (in 2004). He had been a senior executive at Expedia since the acquisition and resigned two weeks ago. So, in terms of skill set, he has Web, entrepreneurship, strategy, growth, M&A and management expertise and he’s had the chance to work in an industry (travel) that was severely disrupted by the Internet and in a large company in that space (Expedia).

So, I suspect he will be looking at implementing strategies to properly transition Print to Online (more aggressively), possibly looking at key online acquisitions to grow. He will hopefully bring an Internet culture and an entrepreneurial management style to the company while having a good understanding how a large organization like PagesJaunes Groupe behaves to avoid sending it into complete chaos.

According to organizers, LeWeb conference is the #1 Internet event and conference in Europe. 1500 participants from 40 countries gather in Paris to listen to marquee guests (this year, it’s Paulo Coelho) and to exchange on a variety of subjects related to the Internet. This 5th edition will be in Paris on Dec 9th and 10th 2008.

You can see the agenda here and all other information on their main Website. 778 people (as I write this) have already registered.

I just received this special a discount code that I can share with my readers. Use BLOGDISCOUNT as a discount code and get 20% off the price of the conference. Until 20th of November, the price with the 20% reduction will be € 1196 (instead of € 1495), and from November 21st onwards € 1435.20 (instead of € 1794).

It sounds very interesting and I might be tempted to go. I’m wondering if any of the Praized blog readers are attending or thinking of going?