Press Package. October 2008

Transcription

1 Press Package October 2008

2 Yoolink, moving towards collaborative information access Yoolink offers a new way of accessing online content: using friends and colleagues suggestions to help you navigate your way around the net. There is so much information circulating on the Internet, but quality and relevance vary greatly. In response to an ever-growing need for effective tools to help sift through this mass of information, Yoolink offers a simple, quick and playful way to access relevant content. Yoolink enables you to select content or add it to your favourites, recommend articles to your network of contacts, and search thematically for information that interests you. Yoolink offers two services : Yoolink.fr, a free service, enabling everyone to discover and share Internet content with their friends. pro Yoolink Pro, a paying service for companies, enabling essential information to be easily accessed, circulated and archived. 2

3 Yoolink.fr, share and discover the best online content The Internet is a space for exchange, and the number of files shared videos, music, articles is increasing exponentially. Yoolink facilitates this exchange of information and offers a service dedicated to sharing and discovering the best online content. Easy to select and share interesting online content Using the best features from social bookmarking and social networking, Yoolink enables you to select content video, sound, text etc and share it with your friends in just one click. All the content is filed and tagged in your personal space, so that you can easily locate your favourite content in just a few seconds. Discover online content with Yoolink Through their network, Yoolink users can find online content in a number of ways: You receive relevant suggestions and recommendations from your own personal network Through the Feed you can follow the content selected by your friends and colleagues The Feed and the suggestions are available in RSS format and therefore fully compatible with Netvibes, igoogle and Facebook. This service, accessible from any terminal, is optimised for use with the iphone. Collaborative search engine The selections made by the whole group of users creates the first collaborative search engine. The relevance of articles is therefore not simply computer-generated, but is determined by the community of users who tag and save the best content. The search engine is another way of discovering new content thematically, according to the subjects that you are personally interested in. This search engine also allows you to find other people with similar interests and to identify experts in specific fields, thereby enabling you to discover relevant and useful content. 3

4 A Community-driven service It s easy to invite new people to join your network: either by recommending articles to them, or simply by importing your address book from Gmail, MSN Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. More than just sharing content, Yoolink enables you to communicate with your network in a variety of ways: A messaging service to chat and send short messages to friends By commenting on selected content By personalising your recommendations, depending on the recipient The Community page also profiles Yoolink users, especially those most interested in a particular subject. This enables users to expand their own network of contacts. Distinct linguistic communities Many social bookmarking services are defined by their language, or by a theme. Whereas many sites simply translate the same interface into a number of languages, Yoolink is offering a separate platform for each language community. It therefore becomes easier to find relevant information on topics of interest, in the language of your choice. Yoolink.us is already available for English speakers. Yoolink.es, Yoolink.it, Yoolink.pt and Yoolink.de are soon to be launched. Towards an ecosystem of services Yoolink is developing an ecosystem of tools and partnerships to enable users to select, share and access the best online content in a simple and intuitive way. Content providers, such as ZDnet or l express, integrate the Yoolink button onto their webpages, enabling users to share or select articles directly from the site. Social bookmarking toolbars regroup different services for sharing content from various online content providers. Yoolink is already integrated into Addtoany, Propulse.ca, Wordpress (Via Sociable) and is currently being integrated into other available services. APIs enable users to download dynamic content URLs or tag clouds directly to the site of their choice (e.g. blog). 4

5 Thanks to Yoolink Pro, Web 2.0 is now available to businesses Private users have adapted quickly to the web 2.0 revolution. They re communicating in a brand new way social networks, video sharing and blogs are all part of most people s daily life. Now it s time for businesses to benefit from the opportunities offered by collaborative Web services. October 21st, Yoolink launches a new 2.0 service for small and middle-sized companies in beta test. The service will be fully available early Get a journalist access on yoolinkpro.com This new service will make it easier to share and access information within companies or to keep up with industry news and updates. It is an easy solution to knowledge management issues. Sharing and building a unique knowledge base for companies Within a company people often share common interests, but their knowledge and what they read will differ. When users select and share content, they build a unique and permanent knowledge base which benefits the whole company. Content selection is sorted by team, author and/or keyword. Everyone can access important information and keep up with their colleagues center of interest. Each new staff member can access corporate knowledge and culture from a single interface, which contributes to the retention and communication of information among staff members. Your company is your first social network Communication is a key aspect of knowledge management in any company. Yoolink Pro provides a comprehensive toolbox to facilitate exchanges: it allows you to comment on selected content, send messages, or view workmates individual profiles and content selection. Yoolink brings people back into knowledge management. It makes the company itself more human! Web 2.0 helps businesses. Not the other way around The knowledge base does not involve any technical requirements: you can select information from the Internet as well as from your Intranet. Users can access information from any device: PC, cell phone, or any other online services they use, like RSS readers. Yoolink is a Web 2.0 service which does not need to be installed or maintained. Updates and backups are included in the subscription fee and do not alter the quality of service. 5

6 Company History Dec : May 2007 : Nov : Jun : Sep : Oct : The Yoolink concept is created Launch of the private alpha test version of Yoolink.fr, the open-access platform Launch of the public beta test version of Yoolink.fr The Yoolink company is officially created and 500k seed capital cap is raised from private investment Launch of the public beta test version of Yoolink Pro, the service designed for companies Official launch of Yoolink Pro at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin The Yoolink Team: Yoolink was created by Sunny Paris, ex-ceo and co-founder of Weborama. Weborama has consistently been highly-rated on Alternext : 2000 : 1998 : 1997 : 1996 : Weborama is launched on Alternext 3.5m Francs of investment raised from institutional funding sources Weborama is created (Executive Director and R&D Director) Experiments with high-speed internet connection via satellite (For Groupe Canal+) Masters and Doctorate in Theoretical Physics (ENS) Sunny has also been Member of the Scientific Council at IREP (Institut de recherche et d études publicitaires) 7 people are currently employed at Yoolink. Every single one of them has a strong expertise in various fields relevant to young innovative start-up companies: Development, Software architecture, Design, Business Development. 6

7 Technology Yoolink uses mostly Open Source technology. With such technology in mind, the creators of Yoolink hope to promote and share their experiences. Ruby on Rails The Yoolink services have been developed within the Ruby on Rails Framework, chosen specifically for its technical potential and highly-structured approach. The developers also use extensively the excellent Dmoz, and hope in the future to contribute to this directory by publishing an open source database of websites and key words. According to Sunny Paris, Yoolink s founder, Getting started with Rails is probably not the easiest of choices, but once you have mastered the framework you can really appreciate the beauty of it - its power, and above all its simplicity. You almost feel as if you gain in intelligence when you use Rails! Yoolink also uses the following 2.0 technologies: Perl and Ruby Xapian for fulltext search Mongrel Ruby on Rails Prototype & Scriptaculous 7