« Puzzler Winners - VC History Buffs | Main | One Day MBA For Software Entrepreneurs in Paris »
October 08, 2007
Mojowatch : DxO, Meetic, and Proximic
Our Mojowatch search of newswires and online publication this weekend, reveals several insights into how three European tech ventures are getting their products into the US market and capturing some so-called mindshare to boot.
Mojo won
Lady-killing accountants and Simoncini on Meetic's Go to US strategy:
BW has a report on French dating site company Meetic. Its lede is almost like and ad for the wonders of online dating using Meetic, describing as it does how the site turned a shy, brainy French student into a lady-killing tax accountant (That is the first time your a:c euro reporter has been able to put those two words 'lady-killing' next to 'tax accountant' ... another stereotype busted.)
It begins: "When Etienne joined the Meetic online dating site nearly three years ago, he was a shy, 22-year-old business student at one of France's prestigious grandes écoles universities. Now he's a tax adviser at an auditing firm in Luxembourg—and an accomplished ladies' man".
He estimates he dated 40 women..and has met "industrial quantities of girls", enabling him to refine his repeatable 'technique'..
The article has some discussion of Meetic's 'technique' too: manages multiple brands and targets multiple segments (teens, over 40, marriage-minded and the like). Rather than fold acquisitions into its brands, it leaves them be.
Growth rate in profits of 69% versus 20% by Match.com in 1H07.
Meetic's strategy for US market penetration is 'meet Europeans', rather than a pitch that would put it head to head with US market leaders. "We're ambitious, but we're not fools," Simoncini told BW. "If a few million Americans meet Europeans through our site, that will suffice."
FYI, there were 14K people online at 7am this Monday morning in the German version of Meetic, according to its site meter.
DxO Digital Photo Mojo
The private equity-backed French photo editing software company is getting some coverage from the pro photo trade press for the release of its latest version, but also Wired blogs, gave it positive coverage. (It is backed by Apax - see our earlier report.)
We don't know what "demosaicing" means, but it seems to be a 'technique' this software company has mastered. It might not users ladykillers, but from what the reviews say the software has some potential to do a little competition-killing, at least in the niches that it has defined for itself.
Interesting to note is that one publication uses DxO's software to run tests on the quality of new camera optics products, which is a smart way for a software company to get some so-called mindshare in its target market.
Read - Eat it RAW with DxO
Read - Lens Test Sigma (popphoto)
Read - Giving Digital Photos a Polish With Optics Pro (technewsworld)
Proximic Smart Text Analysis
In a sign that there is pent-up market demand for good content 'monetization' adware, despite the growing number of solutions already on the market, several online publications picked up on the launch of Proximic in the US.
The San Jose Mercury News did some research and found that European VC-backed Proximic, is seen as having has some GoogleAds threatening technology.
The thing is it is potentially threatening (note the SJ newspaper's question mark at the end of its headline). We say potentially because when we scooted over to Proximic's site to get the publisher's widget, the version that lets you earn money is billed as "coming soon".
If it was availabe, we'd be trying it right now. What Proximic does have is a widget that you can download to roll-related articles, product catalogues, for example, from other sites on the Web that fit with your content.
Alternatively, if you have an ecommerce site or online service and want to generate a potential new stream of visitors, you have the chance to add your feeds to the Proximic source database.
For content only sites, it is about syndication and not yet about earning new ad income. We'll be watching Proximic for the ads widget though.
Read - Tiny Startup to Rival Google?
Posted on October 8, 2007 07:40 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/6100
