Have you heard of the taxi driver’s paradox according to Christian Jegourel, the founder of YouVox? “Everybody drives a car, but a few of us make it our job”. I don’t like to drive but i get the idea!
YouVox regroups several collaborative online web magazines built by amateurs journalists. It is French for the time being. Each magazine operates as a single editorial team which drives and controls the editorial quality of their magazine: Travel, Urban, Tech, Movies are more successful than the environmental one which has been expected now for some time.
As a business, YouVox has made a clear choice to launch ASAP and minimize all investments. They have 5000 unique visitors per day, do not pay contributors, have used open source technology and as such have no investments in a proprietory platform which they would need to maintain. It is privately financed. The company will post its first revenues from advertising in 2008. Christian has a second revenue model, but i could not get him to discuss it. It seems very strategic for him and he explains why in the interview. He does not think that advertising revenues will be enough and as such wants his company to be ready to sustain hard times. The company is ran by Laurent Esposito.
In YouVox, contributors do not make money. The company’s baseline is “Highlight your talent!” They get visibility and as a follow-up, some have secured jobs or assignements in other magazines. Their contribution is exclusive.
In France, a number of projects on the web aim at covering news or giving a new angle. Among them, the leJT2zero from Karl Zero, 89 Street from former Liberation Journalists, or Obiwi in Beta, from Julien Jacob, former CEO CNet France. For many, the reference is still ohmyNews, in Korea, which makes it necessary to define citizen journalism.
More : Jegourel interviewed by Jean-Michel Billaut on November 26, 2006
Christian Jegourel, co-founder and president of YouVox,
interviewed on May 18, 2007 (in French)