Jean-Marie Colombani, ex helmsman of quality French evening daily Le Monde, did not join his ex âme damnée Edwy Plenel at digital online journalism co-op Mediapart. Instead, he launched Slate.fr, a French edition of the ex-Microsoft, currently Washington Post-Newsweek owned Slate.
I suppose French versions of Slate articles will stop appearing on Mediapart rival Rue 89 (the last translation was published in August last year).
I find Slate.fr rather ugly, at least on the relatively small screen of my netbook (1024×600 pixels). But its content is somewhat attractive: it features French translations of Slate articles, but also its own original content, including an op-ed by ex-Socialist party chief François Hollande. The focus was on content, not on design or technology.
And it runs on open-source PHP content/community management system Drupal — Mediapart and Rue 89 do as well. Actually, while Slate seems to still run on its original Microsoft CMS, offshoots The Root and The Big Money also use Drupal. I suppose that if you want to get into the online newspaper business, the developments made for these sites, on both sides of the Atlantic, will be quite significant.
An interesting development: is open source changing the technology game for this market? I’m curious about the e-commerce field as well, where commercial open-source Magento is trying to compete with established players such as iCongo, Intershop or Hybris.
It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that I don’t want to pay to use software, I only want to pay to install it, customize it, and further develop it. The proprietary crowd will talk about stability, maturity, plain quality sometimes — and they may still be right at this stage, for certain situations. Also, open source is not always an advantage in the eyes of some managers (the debate is not always rational).
But open-source quality is undeniable, for example in a massively community-oriented software package such as WordPress, with its awesome admin interface in version 2.7. The ecosystem of that tool is quite radically different, and one could argue that the very nature of WordPress enables it to benefit from a community development process, in ways that e-commerce systems simply can’t.
The installed customer base, for starters: how many blogs out there, running their own WordPress install? They are all generating motivation for developers, most are generating useful feedback and use cases, some are generating a flurry of plugins, a few are generating developers (interface designers, back- and front-end coders, etc.).
E-commerce software, on the other hand, has a much more limited customer base, with a measurable financial risk which makes potential users less prone to experimentation, and more willing to pay a premium in exchange for a feeling of security.
WordPress is also serving a much simpler need: handling time-oriented content publishing, and a basic community around that content. There’s a certain amount of symmetry between producers and users, and a relatively easy path from content usage and production to software development. For those who can’t be bothered to program, hosted versions of the software are available everywhere. The software is also quite independent, relying on commodity stacks (LAMP for WordPress) and not needing to interface with other systems.
By contrast, e-commerce has many stakeholders with wildly diverse concerns (sales, marketing, logistics, finance, IT). Merchandizing (ensuring your store is and stays attractive) is done by people who typically want to stay far away from the technology they use. Hosted commerce solutions (Amazon’s marketplace, eBay, etc.) aren’t available for download. And it is obviously vital to interface an e-commerce “storefront” to other systems (inventory, payment, fulfillment), or at the very least to their content (via manual operations).
All in all, I would guess that the complexity of the e-commerce picture is keeping existing vendors safe for now. However, while open-source online shops have existed for a while, it would seem that Magento is pushing the envelope, and a Dutch integrator was a major sponsor of a trade show a couple of weeks ago.
Back to the digital news business: Mediapart, Rue 89 and Slate.fr are serious contenders in a crowded market. Their web presence relies on open-source software. The companies and people who set them up technically have decided to make their money in consulting, not in licensing. While that market is probably simpler, conceptually, than e-commerce, and benefits from significant existing open-source developments, I take the technology behind this launch as a good sign for future online shops.
Slate.fr, blog software, e-commerce and open-source development
Jean-Marie Colombani, ex helmsman of quality French evening daily Le Monde, did not join his ex âme damnée Edwy Plenel at digital online journalism co-op Mediapart. Instead, he launched Slate.fr, a French edition of the ex-Microsoft, currently Washington Post-Newsweek owned Slate.
I suppose French versions of Slate articles will stop appearing on Mediapart rival Rue 89 (the last translation was published in August last year).
I find Slate.fr rather ugly, at least on the relatively small screen of my netbook (1024×600 pixels). But its content is somewhat attractive: it features French translations of Slate articles, but also its own original content, including an op-ed by ex-Socialist party chief François Hollande. The focus was on content, not on design or technology.
And it runs on open-source PHP content/community management system Drupal — Mediapart and Rue 89 do as well. Actually, while Slate seems to still run on its original Microsoft CMS, offshoots The Root and The Big Money also use Drupal. I suppose that if you want to get into the online newspaper business, the developments made for these sites, on both sides of the Atlantic, will be quite significant.
An interesting development: is open source changing the technology game for this market? I’m curious about the e-commerce field as well, where commercial open-source Magento is trying to compete with established players such as iCongo, Intershop or Hybris.
It’s long been a pet peeve of mine that I don’t want to pay to use software, I only want to pay to install it, customize it, and further develop it. The proprietary crowd will talk about stability, maturity, plain quality sometimes — and they may still be right at this stage, for certain situations. Also, open source is not always an advantage in the eyes of some managers (the debate is not always rational).
But open-source quality is undeniable, for example in a massively community-oriented software package such as WordPress, with its awesome admin interface in version 2.7. The ecosystem of that tool is quite radically different, and one could argue that the very nature of WordPress enables it to benefit from a community development process, in ways that e-commerce systems simply can’t.
The installed customer base, for starters: how many blogs out there, running their own WordPress install? They are all generating motivation for developers, most are generating useful feedback and use cases, some are generating a flurry of plugins, a few are generating developers (interface designers, back- and front-end coders, etc.).
E-commerce software, on the other hand, has a much more limited customer base, with a measurable financial risk which makes potential users less prone to experimentation, and more willing to pay a premium in exchange for a feeling of security.
WordPress is also serving a much simpler need: handling time-oriented content publishing, and a basic community around that content. There’s a certain amount of symmetry between producers and users, and a relatively easy path from content usage and production to software development. For those who can’t be bothered to program, hosted versions of the software are available everywhere. The software is also quite independent, relying on commodity stacks (LAMP for WordPress) and not needing to interface with other systems.
By contrast, e-commerce has many stakeholders with wildly diverse concerns (sales, marketing, logistics, finance, IT). Merchandizing (ensuring your store is and stays attractive) is done by people who typically want to stay far away from the technology they use. Hosted commerce solutions (Amazon’s marketplace, eBay, etc.) aren’t available for download. And it is obviously vital to interface an e-commerce “storefront” to other systems (inventory, payment, fulfillment), or at the very least to their content (via manual operations).
All in all, I would guess that the complexity of the e-commerce picture is keeping existing vendors safe for now. However, while open-source online shops have existed for a while, it would seem that Magento is pushing the envelope, and a Dutch integrator was a major sponsor of a trade show a couple of weeks ago.
Back to the digital news business: Mediapart, Rue 89 and Slate.fr are serious contenders in a crowded market. Their web presence relies on open-source software. The companies and people who set them up technically have decided to make their money in consulting, not in licensing. While that market is probably simpler, conceptually, than e-commerce, and benefits from significant existing open-source developments, I take the technology behind this launch as a good sign for future online shops.