Amazing! Today, one of my "3As" favorite brands (for Apple Armani and Audi), is about to launch what is probably about to be the product of the year 2007.
As you understood, I'm talking about the iPhone, the new Apple Ipod, which is also a cellphone, camera, etc...
Amazing! I said.
Look at this phone, nice, small, 8go for musicphotos and videos on a wide screen, picture and movie camera, web browser, etc...
Looks like a blockbuster. But still, I'm not happy with the iPhone coming.
How comes?
- First of all, the iPhone has a 2 MP camera. Like digital cameras 20 years ago. How can you sell a cameraphone for US$ 500 with a 2 mega pixel camera? nonsense.
- secondly, it's not 3G. who cares in North America? Well I live in Paris and a 3G phones allows you to have video conferences anywhere, and to surf the web easily and correctly.
- You can't change the chip! Even if I doubt that this kind of abuse can happen in Europe, I still think that this idea is scandalous.
- 4 and 8 Go... what can you do with 8 gigs? save the cookies for my last 24 hours of web browsing?!?
- No GPS. While most of its serious competitors (Nokia, Samsung) have it.
- Safari only. As a website editor, I can't be happy when a device is only Safari compatible. As Apple's browser is not efficient and easy to work with.
These are the reasons why I don't like the iPhone as Apple is about to launch it in just a few hours. It won't be a good citizen reporter device: It's a good device to play, but not to act.
But I guess that the "New user experience" of the wide tactile screen needs to be tested to be understood. And I've heard that it could be released with 3G technologies in Europe.
It still needs a 5 megapixel camera, a possibility to integrate firefox and a 20 GO hard drive.
Well it was almost 10 years before the big partnership 'fashion' in the media industry... And the ad is so good that just for this we will remember it for a long time!
One year, that's what it took to Scooplive to become the biggest amateur newsworthy photo/video agency worldwide. Thousands of members, hundreds of photos and videos received everyday, dozens of sales every month, Scooplive became one of the essential tools for editors around the world, to keep in touch with their audience.
A quick success
"For the first weeks after launching our website, we just aimed to test the website and see how things were going on. The amazing press coverage and all the documents received during the first days have attracted lots of editors. They just wanted to have a look at the kind of content we received. Our first transaction was made after three weeks only though. We sold a series of pictures to a French magazine, and started selling again and again week after week." Says Matt Stefani, co-founder of Scooplive.com.
"The video application had the same success" adds Philippe Checinski, his partner. "After 10 days online, we sold our first video to an English magazine and its website and confirmed this first transaction with sales to different Television News across the world, thanks to our members contributions".
Scooplive has received newsworthy documents such as the arrest of a suspected kamikaze in Casablanca (Morocco) video, after April Bombings, amazing series of pictures of riots in Paris "Gare du Nord" train station, published by different magazines and newspapers across the world, a boat sinking off the French coasts video, and so on. Celebrities and politicians also had a good part of the news coming in, from pictures of Bruce Willis, without security in a Rolling Stones concert in Paris, to the new French president Nicolas Sarkozy, laying down on a swimming pool while racing for the presidency as the "Workers candidate"!
New technologies for a new profession
"Scooplive amazing success compared to its few competitors throughout the world rests on its technological value" entrusts Matthieu Stefani. "We are not considered solely as a photo/video agency. We're an Internet "pure-player" and that's why we have developed the best tools to improve the relation between amateur or professional photographers and video makers, and the editors. That's where the value is, if someone has a great document, he will earn more by sending it to Scooplive than trying to sell it directly to his favorite newspaper!".
That's one of the reasons why the website became famous up to the Silicon Valley, where the most read veil websites such as TechCrunch talked about it as soon as it went out of Beta.
In addition to its in-house developed video solution, Scooplive proposes several RSS newswires, for professionals as well as for all its members (General, News, Celebrities and Sports wires are available). Scooplive also proposes a growing number of community tools such as different ways to share contents, or live images newswire to share its latest news with partners and members.
With all those tools, Scooplive aims at optimizing the time it takes to a photographer or video maker, to get in touch with the potentially interested media.
A full integration to the international media landscape
After being seen as the troublemaker of photo agencies, Scooplive has been integrated to the information sources of most of the biggest media worldwide. "We've been working in the respect of the profession" specifies Philippe Checinski, "We offer a rough content to professionals, which must be treated by editors, iconographers or journalists that work with us. That's how we grew the part of professional photographers into our members. They're our most regular contributors".
Ambitious targets
The three young entrepreneurs have been motivated by this first year, to find the assets to grow rapidly and to keep going on these tracks to confirm their position. Main targets are now to develop the website internationally and to develop the technological basis of the platform. "Even if we have acquired an interesting popularity in French and English speaking countries, we have to develop our relationships with new European and Asian markets.", explains Matthieu Stefani. For development projects, Julien Robert, the third partner adds: "Our technological advance is important and we must comfort it. That's why we're looking forward giving ourselves the assets to accelerate these developments".
The near future: 'Scooplive Media'
The first stone of this building will be posed as of this summer, with the launching of `Scooplive Media' which will make possible to the media partners of Scooplive to benefit from the technologies developed by the company. 'Scooplive Media' aims at being proposed to the media around the world to benefit from the source of information that is their audience, with advanced technologies to manage the entering flows of a UGC (User Generated Content) which will be qualified, arranged hierarchically and classified with the best existing tools.
After a long talk with my partners, we couldn't agree about an essential question, and we had to make things clear.
Would people rather have a lead foot or a foam hand?
But how could we make sure about that? we could have sent an email to all of our Scooplive members across the world... but I guess it would have been weird and not very appropriate.
I finally found this new Facebook tool, called "polls". I had a quick look, and i saw the 5$ insertion fee. But the first surprise was when I found that I could earn up to 50€ if 500 people answers the survey! Go for it dude, I told myself.
Then I'm asking the question : Would you rather have a lead foot or a foam hand?
Fisrt trends came very quickly, and the foam hand is obviously what people prefer. I can understand that, even if a foam hand is not always very useful, it could help me cleaning my Tmax or washing myself. And at least it wouldn't be the same handicap as the lead foot, when I go surfing or swimming...
you can see the results here : http://www.facebook.com/polls.php?poll_id=2588446279
and the winner is :
Downside of the story... with my quick reading and my -not so good- english skills -I guess- Facebook didn't pay me US$ 50, but CHARGED me! Of course you will say, but I'm still a dreamer.
Actually, at the end of the day, I can't even understand how 30% of the people answered they'd rather have a lead foot. What can you do with a lead foot?
On June 20, 2007, Scooplive will be one year old... already!
We almost forgot to think about Scooplive first birthday... it's been a year now since we've launched the first official beta version of Scooplive. And believe me... it was very different from what it is now. And it's very different from what we'll offer you in one year!
That's I guess the biggest frustration I've had since I work on the web: the time it takes to have all the ideas you have online. Even if we have the best European developper aka Julien Robert aka "Robbie the brain". I can't wait to work with a big developper team... and hopefully, this could happen very soon.
But it's pretty cool already : - you can upload photos AND videos of newsworthy events / celebrities / sports share them and sell them to the worldwide media
- a good part of the pictures we've received are shown on our gallery (except, of course, the most valuable documents!), here : GALLERY
- we have an RSS feed that has been subscribed quiet a lot :
- we have a cool gadget for your blogs like this :
- We have a buyers guide to help you to buy the best devices to become a good citizen reporter! BUYERS GUIDE
- and we had an amazing media coverage about Scooplive, the idea, technologies, and... us :). And that's already cool! media coverage
In a few words... Scooplive is now the best and most advanced website to sell your newsworthy scoops and documents and sell them to the worldwide media. Prices of documents we've sold goes from a hundred to a few dozens thousands $/€. Cool huh?
My brother and I will officially launch very soon our new website to help people to quit smoking in a fun easy and simple way.
Just have a look at Stobacco : http://www.stobacco.com
I quitted smoking on april the second and I have already saved more than 200€ and 900 non smoked cigarettes!
Give it a try, it's fun, free and easy!!!
One thing to say... Stobacco is just the best and easiest way to quit smoking for free on the web. You just need a few friends, then register (only takes 5 minutes) on Stobacco.com and start a challenge!
Amazing! I said.
GALLERY
BUYERS GUIDE
media coverage
