WebProNews » Wikio

Top Tech Blogs in The UK During August

Neville Hobson — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:23:38 +0000

Next week, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing the rankings for August 2010 of their lists of the top blogs in the many categories under which they’re classified.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been posting an advance look each month at the top 20 or 30 technology blogs in the UK from the data my friends at Wikio have let me see. Last month, that advance look also included the top 30 online marketing blogs in the UK.

I’ve just received the latest details for both categories:

Top 30 Tech Blogs in the UK: August 2010

Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Technology Blogs in the UK

Top 30 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK: August 2010

Full list at Wikio: Top 100 Online Marketing Blogs in the UK

If you want to suggest others blogs for inclusion in Wikio’s tech or online marketing lists that aren’t there already, either let me know or apply on the Wikio website.

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Wikio Receives $5.3 Million In Funding

Doug Caverly — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:58:35 +0000

Wikio, which is basically a European version of Digg (more on that later), just received a considerable amount of funding to continue its growth. Reports indicate that Lightspeed Venture Partners and Gemini Israel Funds have endowed the company with $5.3 million.

In terms of what the company does, Pierre Chappaz, Wikio’s chairman, posted a relevant comment on TechCrunch (someone using that name did, at least). And while his grammar may not exactly meet the standards of “Standard English,” you have to applaud anyone who can pick up a second language – and any chairman who is willing to respond in the “Comments” section.

“I invite european users to do a quick benchmark between Google news, technorati and Wikio for their own country and make their mind,” Chappaz wrote. “We are aware that we have a lot of work in front of us, but I’d appreciate an honest feed back as we are here to listen to users and offer them the best information service.”

Despite those name-droppings, don’t expect Wikio to declare war on its American “competitors,” – Wikio is most interested in the European market. “There’s a huge vacuum in Europe that the company wants to fill,” according to Yoni Cheisetz, a partner with Lightspeed Ventures. Cheisetz spoke to the Red Herring’s Mary Lisbeth D’Amico, and “said the bulk of Wikio’s users are in Europe, many in France.”

The Red Herring also detailed Wikio’s Euro-centric expansion. “Since it launched last year, Wikio has released versions of its site in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain and, most recently, the United States,” wrote D’Amico. With a fresh $5.3 million in its pockets, it’s quite possible that several more countries will soon see their own version of Wikio.

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Le Web 3: A Tragedy?

Neville Hobson — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:12:40 +0000

An extraordinary event took place in Paris this week, one that I was due to be part of as a presenter but could not make it.

Le Web 3, the third in a series of Web 2.0-ish events organized by Loic Le Meur, attracted nearly 1,000 people from over 35 countries, all of whom showed up expecting to be part of two days and nights of stimulating discussion, learning and socializing.

While it looks as though the socializing was a success, it seems that you can’t say the same for the conference itself.

Some quite astonishing accounts of how the event was hijacked by French politicians. A lot of anger is being expressed in blog posts by bloggers across Europe, directed at Loic for allowing this to happen.

The photo here by Ben Metcalfe probably sums up those angry feelings.

German blogger and podcaster Nicole Simon (who I know well) has a damning indictment:

I did not go to a conference to have to show my id to get in. I did not intent to go to a tech conference and find myself having barred out of the big room because some security wants to search it.

I do not tolerate that a lot of my friends who are supposed to be speaking for 20 min got told the day of the speaking that oh they have to make it in like 10 minutes to make space for some “last minute changes” while as the same time it was possible to organize translation headsets and translaters for those french politicians. I will not tolerate that for another politician questions are cut off of people coming to this conference for a totally different thing.

I will not get taken hostage being part of an audience where the headline actually can be “politician in front of 1000 of europe’s top technology attendees.”

While I did get a free pass for the conference I still have expenses of several hundred dollars in travel expenses plus my time. This event was set up to be a great conference. But nearly everybody I was talking to was disgusted, disappointed and especially personally disappointed with Loic in this. French too btw.

Plenty of others, too – Dieter Rappold in Austria, for instance, whose post includes a long list of links to other bloggers’ commentaries. Shane Richmond, news editor of The Daily Telegraph, says:

[] I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Like many here I can’t help feeling robbed of what I came to see. Today’s topics were far more interesting than yesterday’s but I don’t think the rearranged schedule has done them justice.

I’ve heard that the session about Second Life I was due to present on was cancelled at the last minute, I guess to make way for a politician as Nicole mentions.

And I’ve not seen any positive commentary about the conference from anyone, all overshadowed by anger.

That’s not to say that nothing positive happened. On the contrary, a couple of interesting products and services were launched at Le Web 3:

Luxembourg based Wikio, a user-contributed news company, launched Wikio.com, Wikio.de and Wikio.es, aimed respectively at the US, Germany, and Spain.
US wiki company Socialtext launched Socialtext Unplugged, a tool that lets you download pages from your wiki and work on it when you’re not connected to the internet.

Guillaume du Gardier has some good video interviews.

Still, wow.

Clearly Loic’s reputation and credibility are firmly on the line. Looking forward to seeing what he has to say about things.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

Blogging Slow to Take Off in Europe

Steve Rubel — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 14:41:52 +0000

Neville Hobson breaks down a new survey of 1,500 business leaders from Europe’s top 15,000 companies. It confirms that blogging is slow to take hold in Europe. Here are the key stats…

* 42% have heard of blogs but don’t read or contribute to them:

* 37% are not aware of blogs

* 11% said they read blogs

* 7% monitor blogs

* 7% find blogs useful as source of business information

* 2% write blogs

On a related note, Web 2.0 is alive and well in Europe, at least as far as innovation goes. Ouriel Ohayon writes about Wikio, a Swiss company, that will combine digg, Technorati and Google News into a social search engine.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.