OurielOhayon

Portraited by Benjamin Boccas

Thanks to Benjamin from ZeFlog (The photo blog) who took some time to shoot a few pictures with me. I nearly felt like a model for 15 min. Those are the most stunning pictures someone ever made of me, although i am not a big fan of my own pics. Benjamin he s a professional photographer that became famous by shooting portraits in natural light of some bloggers and web celebrities (Orange CEO, ..) in France and now in the world. He will soon come to the valley to pursue his mission

This is very rare but Benjamin allowed me to shoot a portrait of him (with my iPhone camera, hmmm). i also video interviewed him on Qik (in French). I had a good time chatting with him and it was interesting to discover how blogs (once again) can change someone's life (in this cas his)





Technorati Tags: benjaminboccas photos portrait blogger

I think this is what i could call a GOOD news

TechCrunch France that i run, is probably one of the rare if not the only blog now listed in google news tech section in France. pretty happy and proud about it

Seesmic-ed

We just hit a comment record both text and video on TechCrunch France thanks to an operation i called "Killer Startup" which was about posting a 30 sec video about an internet startup idea (serious or not). More than 220 comments including 65 videos. Seesmic the partner of the operation is mentioning it today in their daily show. See below

Engagement is to me the most important form of reward as a blogger. A blog that does not engage is not really a blog. A post should provoke a reaction. A rating, a comment, an email, a trackback, a video comment,...whatever.

Silence means either that that you don't have readers (not very rare), that it is boring (not very rare), that it is not written adequately and that readers do not perceive the necessity of a conversation (not rare). It can also mean your blog post is so perfect it does not need more (extremely unlikely)

Technorati Tags: blog conversation videos comments reaction engagement

Not totally fool

This picture on the left (click to enlarge) is a fake cover i have created for april's fool for TechCrunch France. I pretended a few days ago i would launch FranceCrunch a paper magazine out of TechCrunch France and added in the note plenty of details that would make it obvious it was an april's fool (like a paper version of tetris, a hack on how to install android with the iPhone....). I expected 100% of readers to get it right away

But i was wrong. at least 50% of reactions including of people that are very advanced internet pros were buying the story and really believed it. I received a lot of emails, skype messages, twits, facebook notes, ...to encourage, support and even try to find a way to collaborate (including from some famous journalists). And if you check the number of comments and trackbacks you will realize the subject fired a great conversation. I even had to write a complementary note to explain this would not happen and probably disappointed a few.

I then realized the idea was not totally stupid, although i think it does not make sense from an economical point of view. I think what made people really excited about the idea is the possibility to find blog content in newspapers. I don't know what is the right formula but here is maybe a free good idea: creating a magazine out of blog contents.

It sounds to me that people who love blogs (and there are many) wish to find the kind of voices they are now used to read everyday, but in news papers. Maybe this will inspire someone to do something out of it

ps: FYI an american startup called blogburst is already distributing blog posts in national papers but i think the idea can become more powerful

Blogs israeli entrepreneurs should know

Thanks to Guy Grimland from The Marker for this interview (in hebrew, hope this will get translated) and article on the blogs israeli startups should know. Other israeli bloggers are mentioned too (Orli, Yaron,...)

Since i can't read Hebrew i won't be able to relate what is being said there but from the list that is made i can tell the article is pretty complete.

In one word: today startups cannot ignore any more communication with bloggers, actually it is becoming a natural channel of communication where they find responsiveness, international coverage and quality exchange that sometimes goes beyond the story written. Don't get me wrong some journalists make also a great job in doing so. But the popularity of blogs specially in tech make it necessary for a startup.

One point that i have not talked about is how different it is for a startup to deal with a blogger and a journalist. This could require a full post. i think i wrote about it in the past already, but cannot find it anymore.

Basically: avoid PR, prefer normal communication tools and establish a conversation. Do not wait the last minute even though many bloggers are very responsive and if you go for an exclusive, be clear with the embargo details

PS: One precision i also cover statups in the US version of TechCrunch when time allows.

update: here is the post i was referring to on tips to communicate with bloggers

update 2: the audience data precised in the article for TechCrunch is actually the one of TechCrunch France. TechCrunch readership is way more important (650k RSS readers and 3/4 million unique monthly visitors)

Below the orginal article

 

Congratulations to FoxyTunes

I just got an email of confirmation from Alex Sirota that Foxytunes (one of my favourite FireFox add on) has been acquired by Yahoo. Michael from techcrunch first heard the rumor a couple of weeks ago and this is now official (i wrote a note about it here). The amount is undisclosed.

The situation is awkward though. Yahoo is announcing an acquisition as they are being themselves the target of an acquisition (that is still not done btw).

Mazal Tov to Alex and Vitaly, two great guys i had the pleasure to meet several times.

i just had the time to write a quick note on TechCrunch.com

After Quigo, Yedda, Foxytunes adds another name in the list of israeli internet startups recently acquired

 

Technorati Tags: foxytunes, yahoo, techcrunch, israel, startups

Startups: searching for more visibility? Think Plugg

It is now too late to apply to Lift Venture Night dedicated to showcase a selection of the finest European startups (no Israeli startups there, what a shame). But don't worry other events are coming up in Europe that can bring you quality visibility and networking if Europe is your plans.

Next up is Plugg that will be hold in Brussels March 19. They organize a Startup Rally whose jury i will be part of. If you are interested you can register here

Thanks to Robin Wauters for his invitation to participate

Technorati tags: internet, conference, plugg, belgium

Startups: depending on Google is risky

For unknown reasons (i contacted incredimail to find out more) Google terminated its business relationship with Israeli startup Incredimail.

According to Reuters Adsense was representing a substantial part of the revenues of the company. The impact was immediate and the stock lost nearly 41% in Nasdaq.

I really hope Incredimail can solve that issue. Actually i am sure they will (Microsoft might see here an opportunity)

Google can be a fantastic business partner but if for some reason you loose it it may impact significantly your operations. Not only from a revenue point of view but also from a distribution point of view.

A lot of startups are building their distribution strategy on Google page rank and their ability to be well ranked in search results. This SEM strategy is good and even cheap in the short term but risky if Google changes suddenly its algorithm or decides to takes you off the index. This happened recently with lots of startups and services that were using abusively internal backlinks to increase their page rank.

The real challenge is to become a destination site not staying a Google shadow

Update: Mike at TechCrunch has published a note about this too. He mentions this could have to do with fraud. But nothing is confirmed for now.

Update 2 : i just had a chat with one of the founders of Incredimail which confirmed that as a public company they cannot disclose the reason why this all happened but that this is not related to a fraud issue. Also confirmed that in a few days all will be sorted out (with or withouth google?)

 

Technorati Tags: google israel, incredimail

IsraelWebTour is coming up. Looks great

15 israeli startups have been selected to visit California for the IsraelWebTour event. The program this year looks absolutely great and a lot of great guys (Ron Conway, Saar Gur, Philip Kaplan, Reid Hoffman) and friends (Jeff, Loic, Yaron,...) not forgetting my colleague Daniel Cohen from Gemini Israel funds (who co founded this event) are going to be speaking during this week. Here are the companies that have been selected.

I know most of them personally and this is a great selection:

5min, Plymedia, AllofMe, Nuconomy, ClickTale, blogTV, Sportingo, PicScout, Qoof, 8hands, Velingo, Innovid, Semingo, PageOnce and Journeys

Mike has a good word about the event today in TechCrunch. This is great to see the dynamism of the israeli internet and their capacity to address such a challenging market like the USA.

This event is backed by the California Israeli Chamber of Commerce and I wish the French government was so active and involved in helping and promoting French startups abroad just like this

Technorati Tags: IsraelWebtour, internet, israel, startups

On the FakeBook President and fact checking

The story on the Facebook fake president made a lot of noise in France and now outside France. While i was writing the story for TechCrunch it reminded me of an excellent movie based a on true story called "The Hoax" i strongly recommend.

The movie is about a man who pretends having the exclusive rights to write the auto-biography of the unapproachable tycoon Howard Hughes. Both stories have in common that media bought a story that looked credible and so big that it was hard to believe this could be a prank.

But it was. and in both cases serious (but simple) fact checking was missing. This is a basic principle of anyone who should write a story whether this is a journalist, a novelist or a blogger. This is not the most interesting part but a sine qua non condition.

It sometimes takes time (probably the part that takes me most time when i write a story), it is boring, but it is a necessary. You can sometimes do mistakes but missing some facts or getting the wrong one. But the process is on top position of the to-do list.

Matt Hicks from Facebook PR department sent me an message yesterday about the story and was happy that users and readers eventually  realized that this was not in any way affiliated with them. But this could have been easily avoided.

Fact checking is a basic requirement and a mark of respect to your readership.

Technorati Tags: facebook, blog, journalism, president