Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

Surfing the crest

The internet boom may have begun in America, but when it comes to the next generation of e-commerce, Europe is clicking ass says Cliff Rockwell

Richard Jones, Felix Miller and Martin Stiksel might not stand out from the other retro-dressed and asymmetrically groomed media workers in the Prince Arthur pub near London’s Old Street but, chances are, they are €85m richer. Last month the three founders of Last.fm – an internet site where people can access each other’s music lists – made €28.3m each by selling their company for €208m to CBS, the US television network. Last.fm is merely the latest European online venture primed to break ground.

Although the most recognisable names in New Media – search engines Google and Yahoo, and auction site eBay– are as American as Coca-Cola, it is Europe that is regularly setting the bar for innovation and creativity. Jaap Favier, an internet analyst at Forrester Research’s Amsterdam outpost, muses: “Europe is often better at product design and working with people to create things they actually want.”

It was Sweden’s Niklas Zennström and Denmark’s Janus Friis who co-founded Kazaa, the consumer music file-sharing sensation that was the world’s most downloaded internet

software in 2003, and which panicked the entire music industry into completely rethinking online delivery. That year, the Nordic pair launched the even more audacious Skype, a peer-to-peer internet telephony (VoIP) network, from Tallinn, Estonia. Millions of Skype users around the world now speak to each other for free via the internet service, which was sold to eBay in 2005 for €2bn.

Aiming for a hat trick, Zennström and Friis recently launched the even more ambitious Joost, which aims to ‘take entertainment to the next level’ via the ‘first online global TV distribution platform that brings content owners, advertisers and viewers together in an interactive, community-driven environment.’ Signalling the potential blockbuster dimension of this convergence, Joost recently signed with Creative Artists Agency – which represents Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt – to secure content.

The Multimedia Research Group predicts that the number of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) subscribers – those watching digital TV via broadband – will reach 63.6 million worldwide within five years. In a significant move last December pay-TV outfit British Sky Broadcasting bundled its fledgling broadband services with Google, the eventual aim is to deliver tailor-made ads to viewers’ set-top boxes. Europe is the biggest market for IPTV, with France easily leading the growth spurt. In Asia, IPTV expansion is especially strong in China, Japan and Hong Kong. The US, on the other hand, is bringing up the rear.

A decade ago Europe had already revolutionised TV and internet entertainment worldwide with a project that deliberately eschewed star names. With Big Brother, Dutch company Endemol created an interactive programme that could be recreated in practically every country in the world and distributed via TV, internet streaming and mobile phone updates.

Of course Big Brother looks almost quaint against the global explosion in social networking sites following the purchase of MySpace by News Corp for €430m in 2005. However, while MySpace continues to lord it over social networking sites in the US, several challengers are growing at a much faster rate, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. British upstart Bebo, which has nine million UK users – and which recently tied up with Skype to provide free phone calls – saw year-on-year growth of 109% in April 2007. It is widely believed that Yahoo is poised to make a €740m bid for Bebo, which could catapult the relative minnow into one of the world’s three biggest online destinations.

Accompanying the rise in social networking sites is the video-sharing phenomenon. While YouTube, which was bought by Google for €1.2bn last autumn, is the undisputed champion, it was actually preceded by Paris-based Daily Motion (dailymotion.com) which now attracts 9,000 new videos each day, and daily page views surpassing the 16 million mark. Its site enables uploads directly from webcams and draws heavily on local content, such as highlights of local sports events.

“It would be foolish to claim we can compete directly with Google,” says Philippe Collombel, a partner at venture capital firm Partech International, who sits on Daily Motion’s board. “We want to do something different, more European, more creative.” The company recently struck a deal with leading French TV station TF1 to launch a website called Wat TV, where users can post and view videos. The best clips are broadcast weekly, thus linking online and traditional video in a way that YouTube hasn’t done internationally.

Daily Motion aims to do just that, despite the emergence of rivals such as Germany’s MyVideo or Israel’s Metacafe, and is now available in six European languages. It also opened an office in Berlin late last year.

France also is the world’s biggest blogging nation, largely thanks to Skyrock, the most popular radio station for 13-24 year-olds, which combined radio with blogging very early on – something the rest of the world is just waking up to.

When it comes to how the internet is accessed, Europe is years ahead of the US. In a recent study conducted across five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) and the US, analyst comScore found that 29% of European users regularly access the internet from their mobile phones, compared to only 19% of US users. The highest mobile web penetration was in Germany, Italy and the UK (at 34% each), followed by France and Spain.

Europe leads the curve in other significant ways. Forget Pop Idol; on 4 March, Estonia became the first country in the world to allow online voting in a national parliamentary election. To vote over the Internet, voters needed to put their state-issued ID card, which has an electronic chip on it, into a reader attached to a computer and enter two passwords.

There is also however, a downside to being one of the most wired nations in Europe. In May, Estonia’s government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies were crippled by a three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, and one causing alarm across the western alliance. Although many fingers pointed at Moscow – Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union – it should be pointed out that Europe also leads the world in one other area: computer hacking.

FR » La libéralisation du web

Même si les noms les plus prestigieux dans l’univers des Nouveaux Media – de Google et Yahoo à eBay– sont autant américains que Coca-Cola, c’est à l’Europe que revient la palme de l’innovation et de la créativité.

Ce sont le suédois Niklas Zennström et le danois Janus Friis qui ont fondé Kazaa, la plateforme de partage de fichiers musicaux qui a fait paniquer l’ensemble de l’industrie au point de lui faire repenser entièrement l’offre en ligne. En 2005, ils ont vendu Skype, un réseau téléphonique de poste à poste via internet, à eBay pour €2 milliards.

L’Europe est le plus grand marché pour les abonnés au IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) – ceux qui regardent la TV digitale via la large bande – la France se situant en tête de cette croissance rapide. Il y a dix ans, l’Europe révolutionnait la TV et l’internet avec les programmes de divertissement diffusés dans le monde entier Big Brother, distribués via la télévision, l’internet et les téléphones mobiles de dernière génération.

Bien sûr, Big Brother semble anodin face à l’explosion globale des sites de relations, et bien que MySpace soit le plus grand, ceux qui connaissent la plus forte croissance sont en Europe, dont notamment l’anglais Bebo, qui a enregistré une hausse fulgurante de 109% seulement pour avril 2007. Même situation pour le site américain YouTube, le plus grand protagoniste du partage de vidéo en ligne, mais les références les plus innovantes restent en Europe, avec entre autres Daily Motion, basé à Paris (dailymotion.com). Leur site permet des chargements directement à partir de webcams et se concentre fortement sur des contenus locaux.

Et lorsque l’on arrive à la question des types d’accès à l’internet, l’Europe se situe à nouveau des années en avance par rapport aux USA. Une étude récente, menée par des analystes de comScore, a montré que 29% des utilisateurs européens accédaient régulièrement à l’internet depuis leur téléphone mobile contre seulement 19% des utilisateurs américains.

Il y a cependant un revers à la médaille au fait d’être un continent connecté. L’Europe domine également le monde dans un autre secteur: l’intrusion dans les systèmes d’ordinateurs.

NL » Het vrije net

De bekendste namen in de nieuwe media (van Google en Yahoo tot eBay) mogen dan wel zo Amerikaans zijn als Coca-Cola, toch is het Europa dat het meest innovatief en creatief is.

Zo richtten de Zweed Niklas Zennström en de Deen Janus Friis Kazaa op, het bestanduitwisselingsprogramma dat een revolutie ontketende in het online leveren van muziek. In 2005 verkochten ze Skype, een peer-to-peer telefoonnetwerk op internet, voor € 2 miljard aan eBay.

Europa telt ook het grootste aantal IPTV-abonnees (Internet Protocol Television), die digitaal tv kijken via breedband. Daar is het Frankrijk dat de toon aangeeft. Tien jaar geleden bracht Europa wereldwijd een radicale verandering teweeg in tv- en internetentertainment met Big Brother, dat via tv, internetstreaming en gsm-updates werd uitgezonden.

Toch is Big Brother maar klein bier vergeleken met de wereldwijde opkomst van social-networkingsites. MySpace mag dan wel de grootste zijn, de snelst groeiende websites vind je in Europa. Zo is er het nieuwe Britse Bebo, dat in april 2007 alleen al met 109 % steeg. En net zoals het Amerikaanse YouTube de grootste speler is in het online uitwisselen van video’s, zijn de meest innoverende modellen opnieuw in Europa te vinden. Zo is er het Parijse Daily Motion (www.. dailymotion.com), dat uploads via webcams mogelijk maakt en vooral gebruikmaakt van lokale content.

Ook qua internettoegang heeft Europa een grote voorsprong op de VS. Uit een recente studie van comScore blijkt dat 29 % van de Europese gebruikers regelmatig surft met zijn gsm, in vergelijking met 19 % in de VS.

Toch is er een keerzijde aan de medaille, want ook op het vlak van computerhacking voert Europa de boventoon…

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