Home France Web Market Overview

France Web Market Overview

Next in our
series on international Web markets is France. Other countries profiled so far have been
Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy and Brazil. France
has the 9th highest number of Internet users in the world, with 26.8 million. It has an
Internet penetration of 44%, putting it below countries like the US, UK and Germany (all
of which are over 60%). But France is similar to its neighbors Italy and Spain, which are
both in the 40-50% range for Internet penetration. Perhaps more significant is the number
of French language speakers on the Web, which is estimated to be 4.4% of all Internet
users – or 45.8 Million. However that’s only an estimated 12% of all French speakers, so
there is plenty of room for growth there.

My thanks to Thomas Ezan and Jean-Pierre Christie for the information in this post.
Both kindly sent me details about the French Web market and its most popular apps.

Overview of French Market

When I think of France and the Web, I think of Netvibes (the Personalized Start Page used by 5
million people according to recent
reports
), Kelkoo (the price comparison engine
sold to yahoo), and Jeff Clavier (not a web
app, but a French angel investor!). But obviously there is much more to the French Web,
so I asked Thomas to tell me more…

R/WW: Do most people use French web apps/sites instead of the US ones?

Thomas: Not really, except for news websites. For example newspaper websites like LeMonde, Liberation and LeFigaro. There are also many internet and IT-focused
websites like 01net. All of those sites are in french. The
typical french person is not used to reading or talking in english, unlike in Germany,
Netherlands and the nordic countries. There is also french version of Techcrunch.

R/WW: Do the big companies have French language versions of their products?
(Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc)

Thomas: Google is the number 1 website in France and the other big companies like msn,
yahoo are also very well used in France. For example their email services are well used.
They all have a french version (which they must do to target the french market). MSN
Messenger is the number 1 IM service (AIM is not very well used here). The french
versions of amazon and eBay are also very famous here.

R/WW: What are the biggest Web companies in France?

Thomas: I’m not sure, but meetic is number 1 as
far as turnover is concerned (it’s a dating site). And it’s started to spread around
Europe. There is also priceminister and 2xmoinscher, were people can sells second-hand
stuffs (it’s a kind of eBay without the auction concept). 

The biggest e-shops are Cdiscount.com and Rueducommerce, were you can find anything (buying on
the internet is now common in france, even for my mother!). Lastminute.com is the number 1 travel site. There is
also kelkoo, a “price comparer” created by Pierre Chappaz
and sold to Yahoo for millions.

Thomas’ Top Web Apps

Zlio: a kind of Loomia or MyPickList, which goes
further in enabling you to create your own shop online (here is mine). Thus it’s a “smart clone”, by
cloning and then innovating further…  isn’t it innovation ? 😉 [Richard: yes,
definitely!]

Wikio: made by the ex-ceo and founder of kelkoo. It’s a kind of digg-like in french, with many
technical and financial features. Chappaz is a “VIP” in the “net-economie”, with a weekly
tribune in liberation, a big french newspaper – so there’s been a lot of buzz on
wikio.

LaFraise: created by a guy from Ubisoft, it’s a
clone of threadless but it’s taking over and
becoming international. Personaly I prefer lafraise to threadless, which doesn’t have the
same “graphical spirit”.

Podemus: a podcasting reference founded by Bertrand
Lenotre, it could be compared to odeo but it includes video.

Jean-Pierre’s List of French Web Apps

Digg Clones

http://www.wikio.fr/: the main french digg clone
(see above)

http://www.scoopeo.com/: another french language digg
clone [update: Scoopeo is from Belgium, not France]

http://fuzz.fr/: digg clone

Photos and Videos

http://www.fotolia.fr/: photo site

http://www.dailymotion.com/:
watching/publishing/sharing videos

http://www.criteo.com/films.aspx: films
and videos

http://www.eyeka.com/: photo and video sharing

http://www.kewego.fr/: video sharing

http://www.skema.fr/: video solutions

http://www.atafoto.com/: online shared photo
book

Social Networks / Blogs / Bookmarking

http://www.6nergies.net/: professional social
network

http://www.linkedfeed.com/: automated and
customizable information social network

http://www.yoono.com/: rss reader/integrated
social book marking

http://www.widiwici.com/index/:
Sport exploits, information sharing, challenges

http://www.blogspirit.com/fr/index/:
professional online blogs service

http://www.agoravox.fr/: citizen media

Misc

http://www.i-maginer.fr/: real-time 3D web
services

http://www.netvibes.com/: personalized start
page

http://www.kartoo.com/flash/3: meta
search engine

http://www.zlio.com/:
« tupperware » like website (see above)

http://www.uneinvitation.com/: leisure
organization platform

http://www.jamendo.com/fr/: music online

http://blog.moovement.com/: jobs

http://www.bluekiwi.fr/: intranet solution?

Top visited French specific websites

http://orange.fr/: top french telecom provider’s
website

http://free.fr/: second-placed telecom provider’s
website

http://www.voila.fr/: dating, chat website

http://www.mappy.com/: road and travel guide

http://www.fnac.com/:  big French ebusiness
website

http://www.boursorama.com/: first stock
exchange website

http://www.skyrock.com/front/index/:
 Skyrock radio’s website

Summary

As always, please leave a comment if we’ve missed something or you have more
information about the French Web market. Thanks again to Thomas and Jean-Pierre for the
details in this post!

Update: based on comments below, here are some additions. Apologies to
those we missed out first time round…

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