QUEBEC CITY – Without fanfare, and hoping it’s not too late to carve out a niche in the social networking web space, Quebecor Media’s Canoe news site has launched a home-grown equivalent of the spectacularly popular U.S.-based sites MySpace and YouTube.
The site, www.espacecanoe.com, went on-line earlier this week, the first step towards creating a new social community, accessible to both French and, within the next year, to English speakers, said Martin Aubut, Canoe’s director of “communities”.
“We were looking at what’s going on and said ‘Wow!’. I really believe strongly in sites where the users are at the centre. I really believe in social journalism and I believe this is the present and the future,” Aubut said in an interview.
For the moment, the site allows visitors to create their own personal page, with text and photos. It will soon be adding videos and a search engine so members can easily find others with similar interests. Once that is done, Aubut said, there will be a formal launch of the site.
It comes not a moment too soon. MySpace, owned by News Corp., has just added to its international roster with a French-language site based in France. It now has 10 sites in six different languages and multilingual users can drop in on any of them.
It will compete with the established France-based Skyblog.com. There are also other growing English-language competitors, such as facebook.com or ning.com, which provides the tools to create a customized social web site.
But Aubut is convinced EspaceCanoe will succeed because there are no other major Canadian sites where French-speakers can gather, share their interests, and show videos.
“Sure, (MySpace’s expansion) is a drag because it’s a competitor. But our goal is to create local content and that’s how we think we’ll win the battle," he said.
There are a handful of interest-specific sites in Quebec, including Justepourrire.com (Just for Laughs), an offshoot of the comedy festival and in both French and English, but none that might appeal to a broad range of social networkers.
“I’m not surprised by the success of sites like YouTube,” Aubut said. “More and more people are spending more time on the Internet and they’re interested in what’s called ego-casting, where everyone can become a star on the web.
“I’m also responsible for reseaucontact.com (another Canoe site) which is the biggest site in Quebec for single people, with a million users. It’s to bring people together, and we saw that 15 to 20% of people are on it not just to connect but also to share their passions and interests in different forums. So we decided to work on the social aspect.
“People want more and more to meet. It’s like a bar, in fact. And to work, you need a good social platform that is well produced. And I think it will work because we know the Quebec market well and Canoe is one of the most visited sites.
“The world is changing,” Aubut said. “I believe collective intelligence comes from users. So we’re laying the foundation for a grand trip.”
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor, based in Quebec City.
