Looksmart France about to close down?

Who will survive ?

[webbie]

In French and available at this url during a few days:

[1ere-position.com...]

[Macguru]

Whew! not much info there. All what it says is that it will shut down in the next few days.

Is the site a reliable source of info?

[louponne]

wow, now aren't all those people who *paid* to get in going to be happy!?!

[webbie]

Yes it seems not to be a rumour: there was a kind of "search engine conference" today in Lyon (France) and someone from Looksmart France who was invited had to decline the invitation because Looksmart France gonna close... I'll tell you if I have more info.

[jatar_k]

I was trying to find reference to it on abondance but came up with nothing.

[Macguru]

Well, they still have the submit page up, charging €159 + VAT for inclusion. Please keep us posted webbie. Very interesting rumor.

Shoots! I got a site in last week.

[webbie]

On abondance, the webmaster, Olivier Andrieu, annouced that a search engine gonna close soon... maybe it was looksmart !

[angiolo]

"Net-Liberté, Net-Egalité, Net-Fraternité"

France is still innovative.

I hope that Looksmart.com will learn something!

[louponne]

well, it's true that they have been totally unable to "sell" their database to anyone, nor to gouge out a real place for themselves between yahoo.fr, voila, lycos, tiscali.nomade and dmoz... I think that with those 5, the directory market is "saturated" as is. aol and msn are able to "drive" their own based on their portal trafic, but anyone else has to find revenue!!

[Rumbas]

Rather bold statement. Nothing more than an rumor. There has been no other mentioning of it today.
Who are the source and can it be confirmed?

[heini]

Hmm - still no further confirmation. The impression LS starts retreating from mainland Europe is floating around since last December. Strange anyhow they recently started using Google as backfill.

[heini]

French SE site Enfin [enfin.fr] confirms LS will close down their french presence. Reason: Not cost effective.

[webbie]

News :

In Abondance's forum, someone from Looksmart says (and Olivier Andrieu confirms then)
(translation at the bottom)

"Bonjour,

Merci de votre demande de renseignements.

L'arrêt mentionné dans la presse s'applique à BTlooksmart et non à Looksmart qui poursuit bien entendu ses opérations en France. Seul le développement commercial de la recherche ciblée va s'arrêter.

Soyez donc rassuré, les services de soumission et l'annuaire Looksmart seront maintenus.

Cordialement,

Looksmart France"

Which means that Looksmart gonna close its commercial department.

And "Stratégies" magazine said this morning :
"BT Looksmart France cesse ses activités

BT Looksmart, filiale de British Telecom, a décidé de se recentrer sur ses marchés les plus rentables : la Grande-Bretagne et le Japon. La filiale française de la société, lancée début 2001, cesse donc ses activités. Elle proposait son annuaire à des portails et fournisseurs d’accès parmi lesquels Club Internet, AltaVista ou Freesurf. BT Looksmart France était dirigée par Emmanuelle Siary, directrice du développement, et comptait cinq personnes."

For those who undertand French its confirms what has been said above and that Looksmart counts on Japan and Great Britain because they are the most "profitable" (?) countries.

[heini]

Thanks, Webbie. For clarification: This means they are going to continue or cease providing results and taking submissions?

[Macguru]

I got recent info. Looksmart.fr stays up. French staff is cut (6). Operations will be maintained as usual from London. So it was a fausse alarme from our point of view.

From another point of view 6 french persons are looking for a new job, and a couple of blokes will have to take French lessons. Voilà! :-)

[heini]

>fausse alarme
well, yes and no, I guess. The most important thing: LS seems to continue providing listings to their french partners.

But closing down french offices, opened only last year I believe, is surely not a good sign for the french future of LS.
The main function of local offices usually is to acquire submissions and promote the company towards potential partners.
LS declaring they would abandon France to concentrate on other markets surely will have an impact on their french standing.

We'll see what the future might bring.