Archive for People from France

Le Web: Q&A with Google VP Marissa Mayer on the future of search

by on December 9, 2009 at 7:19 pm
December 9, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler

mayerMarissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search and user experience is on-stage at the Le Web conference in Paris. I’m live-blogging as we go:

Michael Arrington asks about the search announcements earlier this week (namely Google Goggles, local search and real-time search). (more…)

Niklas Zennström at LeWeb

by on December 9, 2009 at 10:05 am

Niklas Zennström at LeWeb

By Karsten Lemm at LeWeb 2009 – “If you want to be successful, swim against the stream, follow your own path.” That was Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs at the LeWeb conference in Paris. The serial entrepreneur, who initially gained fame and fortune with file-sharing service Kazaa, pointed out that none of the potential investors that he and co-founder Janus Friis approached wanted to put money into Skype. “The VCs in Europe felt that Skype was way too risky” and had little future, Zennström said. The Internet phone service became a big success, of course, and was sold to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion.

LeWeb: Chad Hurley, CEO of YouTube

by on December 9, 2009 at 9:15 am

LeWeb: Chad Hurley, CEO of YouTube

Chad Hurley spoke a few moments ago at LeWeb in Paris and told us that now YouTube streams over one billion videos a day! Although he did not want to disclose the revenues, he shared that Youtube’s top users (only a handful) earn about a million dollars each. Chad Hurley briefly talked about the YouTube Formula 1 project, a blog from where Formula1 events videos are available. Chad has another pet project, the clothing brand Alaska, and he plans to open two new stores, one will be located in San Jose, California.

Parrot’s new Wi-Fi Picture Frame and Wireless Speakers

by on December 9, 2009 at 9:14 am

(This post is part of the Traveling Geeks tech tour of Paris. David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions and a tech journalist that blogs at Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio and on John C. Dvorak’s “Cranky Geeks.”)

At a visit at phone-accessory and gadget maker Parrot in Paris, I interviewed Parrot’s CEO, Henri Seydoux, about a couple of new products: Grande Specchio, a wi-fi picture frame that just came out a few weeks ago, and some giant wireless speakers. (more…)

How Dell handles customer service and sales through social media

by on December 9, 2009 at 8:46 am

David SparkAt the Le Web conference in Paris, I spoke with Richard Binhammer, better known as @RichardATDell on Twitter. Three years ago Richard, who was and still is working in public affairs, was told by his boss to start getting engaged in blogger relations. It appears that Binhammer’s move into social media was one of the many responses to the 2005 Dell Hell outburst initiated by social media consultant Jeff Jarvis, who wrote an open letter to Dell complaining about Dell’s customer service. At the time, Dell’s response was, “We don’t respond to bloggers.”

(more…)

Le Web: Chris Pirillo’s pillars of community

by on December 9, 2009 at 6:29 am

Chris Pirillo, founder of Lockergnome, is a philosophical and passionate person. He’s a humble guy and a funny, engaging speaker. He’s someone who loves technology, community and gadgets — and is a great speaker. At Le Web he gave us some original thoughts about “community”. It’s a bit fluffy (and if you’re a cynic, you may say “vacuous”), but if you think about every one of these points below carefully, there’s quite a bit of insight and deeper truth to them. It makes a difference from the many business-oriented slides we see that tend to be literal and practical.

So, what is the essence of community? Community…

…lives inside us. Where I go, community goes. We create it based on our preferences, like dislikes and the people we link up with.

…is becoming increasingly distributed, as we distribute our ideas and thoughts across social networks.

…requires tools that can’t be built (so don’t try), ie if its us, we can’t scale ourselves.

…is a commodity, but people aren’t. It’s easy to set up a website or blog, but the people and voices behind it are what makes it unique, special.

…cannot be controlled, but can be “guided”.

…is no longer defined by physical boundaries. You probably have more in common with a geek living on another continent than your next door neighbour.

…grows its own leaders. the best leaders come organically out of a community, and is not an appointed one. It’s crucial that communities grow it’s own leaders for credibility and respect reasons.
…is the antithesis of ego. Community is myself and everyone else, not just me or my Twitter stream.
… is everywhere, inside you. It’s what you share, your passions — and it’s this that will spell success. tags: Chris Pirillo, community, lockergnome, pillars of community

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MySpace Suite of API’s Leveraging Real-time Updates

by on December 9, 2009 at 5:02 am

MySpace Suite of API’s Leveraging Real-time Updates

[LeWeb] Today, Mike Jones, Chief Operating Officer at MySpace, spoke at LeWeb to announce the new suite of open API’s that include: (more…)

Travelling Geeks in Paris: The pictures

by on December 9, 2009 at 12:15 am

tgs

The Travelling Geeks are: Eliane Fiolet, Tom Foremski, Robin Wauters, Kim-Mai Cutler, Frederic Lardinois, Matt Buckland, Sky Schuyler, Jerome Tranie, Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty, Cyrille de Lasteyrie, Renee Blodgett, Amanda Coolong, Beth Blecherman, Robert Scoble, and Phil Jeudy.

tags: Traveling Geeks

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Geeks on a Train

by on December 8, 2009 at 12:18 pm

The Traveling Geeks can’t stop recording their every movement, especially on the Paris Metro

David SparkI am still highly amused by the volume of photography and video that’s going on at the Traveling Geeks event in Paris (explanation, silly video). There is an endless number of photos that have been taken so far (full screen), and we haven’t yet arrived at our key event, Le Web, which starts tomorrow. (more…)

Scobleizer: First #tg09 startup is Cedexis CEO is @juliencoulon — I have to introduce him to @rackcloud because he found way to save money with CDNs.

by on December 8, 2009 at 2:12 am

Scobleizer: First #tg09 startup is Cedexis CEO @juliencoulon — I have to introduce him to @rackcloud because he found way to save money with CDNs.