End of the road for 2Xmoinscher.com
After 11 years in business the French small ads site 2Xmoinscher (‘twice as cheap’) has given up the fight against its rivals, including Ebay, PriceMinister, and Leboncoin. The Trois Suisses group, owner of the platform, said it had been making a loss for the last six years.
In a media statement 3Suisses said: “Given the current economic difficulties, we regret to have to announce the forthcoming cessation of activity on the site”.
Since Ebay is American, Leboncoin belongs to Norwegian firm Schibsted, and PriceMinister was bought by Japanese group Rakuten, the closure of 2Xmoinscher means that all the major C-to-C portals in France are now foreign-owned.
Spir Communication goes into the red
France; Spir Communication’s share price fell by 4.8 per cent to 26.5 euros yesterday on the news that the owner of car (LaCentrale.fr and Caradisiac.com), generalist (topannonces.fr), and property portals (logic-immo.com) had suffered a net loss of 53.5 million euros in 2011 compared to a profit of 119.7 million euros the previous year.
The losses were mostly associated with the company’s parcel delivery division and the costs of restructuring to focus more on the net.
Earnings before interest and taxes, however, were 13.3 million euros – up over 35 per cent and the company attributed this to “the dynamics of its web sites” as it divests from some of its more traditional media businesses.
Le Bon Coin and Pages Jaunes most visited French sites
The official French auditing body, the OJD has released figures for January that show the most visited French site to be classifieds portal Leboncoin.fr with a total of 231 million visitors. Second was Pagesjaunes.fr a long way behind on 87 million and further down the listings (composed mostly of TV and media sites) came housing portal Seloger.com in 16th position with 17 million visitors for the month.
Major players back five-year ban for counterfeiters
Major French classifieds portals Le Bon Coin, Marché.fr, VivaStreet.fr and Trefle.com have signed an agreement to ban for a period of five years any advertisers suspected of proposing fake branded goods.
The move is an extension of the Hadopi law aimed at protecting intellectual property. The new charter is the brainchild of industry minister Eric Besson, who hopes to combat counterfeit goods with it. The above portals signed the above agreement banning suspected counterfeiters from posting further ads for a period of five years. The move sparked some controversy with news site Numerama, which objected to the fact that the charter requires no proof of passing-off counterfeit goods – a mere suspicion is enough to slap the ban on advertisers.
The charter also proposes the pre-screening of adverts before publication and collecting of information to identify the user, including IP address, online history, postal addresses etc. The proposal will come into force in six months for a test period of a year and a half, when it will be re-evaluated.
Acheter-Louer online turnover up 55 percent
French property portal and free magazine publisher Acheter-Louer reported that it’s overall turnover was up 16 percent on last year, but that the online side had risen 55 percent and now accounts for nearly a third of the company’s income. By comparison the press side of the business saw only a 3.6 percent rise.
In part this is a reflection of general trends in the market, but it is also the return on the company’s efforts in the digital sector, including digital direct marketing services for real estate agents.
According to the company, January 2012 is already looking good with 146 new contracts signed for clients online. Acheter-Louer is looking to expand its services this year notably with mobile products, but the full (and verifiable) figures won’t be published until the end of April.
First French portal for building sites
In France SNAL (National Union of Planners and Developers) launched Snalterrains.com, the first French portal dedicated to available building sites.
According to SNAL (short for syndicat national des aménageurs-lotisseurs), the portal “is a unique location, where all sites on offer are brought together in a targeted way”. To help navigation, users have geo-locating functionality, which displays all listed sites on Google maps in plan and satellite view.
The portal was needed, because building sites are not normally listed on traditional real estate portals, SNAL said.
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