Wikio merges with Ebuzzing – cue controversy
[France] Wikio has announced on its blog (in French) that Ebuzzing has joined the “Wikio communication group”. You’ve probably heard of Wikio – you know, a kind’ve competitor to Digg and Technorati in France which expanded to Europe. But you’ve probably not heard of Ebuzzing, which is focused on France. Wikio and Ebuzzing are in fact two major players for French bloggers:
- Wikio, has published a Blog ranking that has become a reference in France (and of course, a very controversial reference as all rankings usually are). Wikio is also a platform aggregating content from various sources (blogs, media etc.). It recently announced having reached one million blogs referenced in Europe, and 20 millions unique visitors (I would say a big part of that comes from their very good SEO).
- Ebuzzing, is a platform to link brands and advertisers with bloggers. Although today they offer different kinds of campaigns, they started with a “loved-or-hated” pay per post offer, called “Billet sponsorisé” (sponsored post) in France.
Wikio and Ebuzzing had worked together for a long time, starting with the use of Wikio Blog ranking to assess the value of a blog post sold thourgh the Ebuzzing platform. It’s also because Pierre Chappaz, the co-founder of Wikio, had invested some money in Ebuzzing… Pierre Chapaz is a very well known entrepreneur in France (Founder of Kelkoo, sold to Yahoo) and blogger (he started blogging again recently after a one year break).
Reactions in France have been various but we can groupe them in 3 different categories :
- those who are happy to see the creation of a big media group dedicated to the analysis and monetization of blogs
- those who hope that Ebuzzing will become more professionnal by being part of Wikio (for campaigns and payments…)
- those who ask them about the credibility of Wikio and its ranking if they’re promoting too mush Ebuzzing campaigns
Wikio has also a European ranking of Blogs which is possibly worth checking out, although TCEurope is not listed, inexplicably.
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