The interactive world

Résumé du document

Le Monde Interactif is the subsidiary dedicated to the numeric editorial content of La Vie/ Le Monde group. Established in 1995, it aims to develop Lemonde.fr, the website of the daily newspaper Le Monde. Lemonde.fr is the first National information website, far ahead of the national competition. According to Xiti, it accounted for 9 million unique visitors, almost 38 million connections, and more than 105 million web pages viewed in June 2008. On this website, we can freely access a complete online newspaper which is regularly updated, offering an interactive and multimedia treatment of the national and international information. Moreover, there is a membership's "premium edition" set up in 2002 that offers a range of exclusive contents and services (newsletters, archives, analytic reports and special edition, etc) for a small fee, or included in the newspaper's subscription package. Beside the free edition, this premium offers online access to the numeric edition of the daily newspaper edition. The aim of this report is to analyze the business model, its strategy and the operational outcome, and the numeric content and design of this website.

Extraits

[...] Moreover, the reactions and comments added value to the offer. Exploiting emerging network platforms, Lemonde.fr set up its blogosphere from which it picks up and edits. There is also the possibility to edit an article you like on other networks (twitter, facebook, etc) by clicking on a link at the bottom of an article. And last, it allows premium subscribers and registers to customise their web page (moving boxes, local weather forecasts Constantly updated: Because Lemonde.fr is free from the constraint of traditional newspaper's editors (printing, closing edition on time it can constantly renew its content. [...]

[...] Competitor analysis The competition on the emerging information websites is buoyant and dynamic. The borders of the market in scope and scale are fast moving and infinite. Since the first web edition of the New York Times, actors are increasing and fighting on various strategies. Therefore the Porter 5 forces model is less relevant because of its systematic design tailored for traditional business industries. However, the classification of competitors Direct/Indirect/Substitution is relevant along the different criteria and business models we set up above. [...]

[...] The text fonts can easily be enlarged. The commitment of lemonde.fr refers to its willing to non-discrimination and to let everyone accessing information. They also established a partnership with akompas.com. Visibility and trafic Generation Traffic generation is one of the main commercial goal, because the more connection it got, the more visible and valuable is its branded website, then the more bargaining power the site get toward advertisers. First, people looking for Le Monde website will get through easily, because of: Evident url address. [...]

[...] Then its running costs are reduced to the maintenance and development of the web edition. However, if it was a pure player, the financial situation could have been slightly worst. Indeed, web-advertising revenues account only for 20% of the global revenues of Le Monde newspaper plus web edition. The direct sources of revenues are: Membership subscription to the premium access: premium accounts, half from the 130.000 newspaper subscribers (roughly a 1/3 of them activate their web account), half only web premium members[2] Pay per view and copyrights: on this issue, legal aspects are in debate especially regarding Google role and ambiguous relationships and conflicting interests' between medias and other web actors (blogs, dailymotion Licensing Commercial partnership agreements ADVERTISING, converted from traffic generation and advertising revenues various metrics. [...]

[...] This report aims to highlight the particular features of Lemonde.fr strategic business model and its web activity in order to identify successes and downturns, and look forward the different ways of improvement face to the borderless buoyant and dynamic competition. What type of Website? Lemonde.fr, the interactive part of a global media business model Lemonde.fr is the interactive support developed by the group La Vie/Le Monde, dedicated to the newspaper's web edition. In this perspective, it is not yet a pure player, “born digital”, but the extention/addition/complement of the group's offer. Indeed, it is the natural evolution of information production business, traditionally displaying on paper. [...]