Letter from OWNI’s CEO: The media paradox

It has taken more than a year and two rounds of fundraising[FR] for us to achieve our goal of 1 million euros.

Over the last year we have gained 16 “sponsors” (representing 20.96% of our capital) who are joining us on our editorial, technological, and economical adventure. It has taken more than a year to find our “partner,” (covering 20% of the capital) who we will walk hand in hand with towards sustainable development. We are proud to announce this partner is Avenport Investments, led by Eric Series. On July 22, 2011, this young entrepreneur formally contributed the necessary assets towards our fundraising efforts.

Funding an innovative media model – what a challenge!

After this transaction, the cofounders (Nicolas Voisin and Franz Vasseur) hold 40.45% of SAS 22Mars’[FR] capital, the parent company of OWNI and OWN Inc. In parallel, we’ve included employees at OWNI – 35 staff members (28 of which are regular employees) are associated and hold 18.5% of the capital. At the end of this fundraising round, nearly 60% of the shares (valued at 3.5 million euros) are held by the people whose hard labor and creativity have built our enterprise.

This is shown in the data visualization below, created by Marie Coussin and Loguy.

Our strategic plan for August: Version 3 + OWNI’s return

It’s summer! While the weather is beautiful, we remain fixated on our ultimate goals – its an essential moment to seize this opportunity and start thinking about tomorrow’s projects. Throughout August, Owni.fr’s editorial line will switch to “summer mode” and publish only two or three articles per day – a change that will mostly go unnoticed in the height of summer. Strategically, this allows us to concentrate on bigger issues of our return: Version 3 of OWNI.fr, a well needed update from our current version which debuted in April 2009.

Our upcoming projects are abundant: ebooks, bookapps, topicapps, and webapps. The OWNI shop opened in June with our first ebooks, and the following projects will surely be equally – if not more – impressive. We released the second version of Influence Networks, our crowdsourcing and investigative platform dedicated to journalists, developers and citizens of the Internet age. As the OWNI team is steadfastly focused on these projects, in September our competitive advantage to innovate news and technology will be exponentially strengthened. It’s not our colleagues who will tell you otherwise!

Augmented convictions

We hold the conviction that we seek an augmented journalism, injected with good practices of the web, in real time, on social networks and blogs. It’s a form of augmented journalism that taps into developpers’ competencies (notably with HTML5) along with the skills of designers. This is a strong and solid response during a time that the media is in crisis and underfunded. Yet the issue at hand is much larger: the creation of a digital democracy, both agile and informed, never looking to the audience for complete financial support, nor monetizing certain ideas systematically.

No paywall? Disconnecting all or even part of the audience from the business model is appropriate for several reasons, and we have daily proof! There should always be a guarantee that projects can be sustained. We need to know we have the luxury of making mistakes, correcting them, and returning to business as usual.

To reach this objective, we will increase our output on the basis of what we were founded upon. Yet this task will require several weeks of heavy labor, but we are up for the challenge!

Tomorrow’s digital objects

We strive to be tomorrow’s “digital publisher” (apps, webapps, ebooks, bookapps), which will prove to be a sustainable solution for the delicate monetization of information in our knowledge economy and exploding sharing culture.

Our strategy:

• be digital producers and consumers,
• take advantage of technology’s mobility,
• adapt to the expectation and user experience on tablets and smartphones.

Our augmented web objects:

• contextualize,
• links to sources (data, documents, etc),
• can be shared AND personalized (persocial),
• can be sustained over time (platform).

News, Augmented by OWNI & News.us.org

Over the last three years, we created an incredible number of editorial augmented digital objects, included “non-identified web objects” for articles – themselves designed from rich text and nonlinear production, diffused by a URL.

We are not far from thinking that the future and the creation of value will be within this paradox of fundamental elements:

The end of the “article,” as we know it: A product that is finished, fixed, and perishable?

The end of text as the essential foundation of journalism?

A possible return to linearization, animation, and contextualization of content

Without the constraint of rhythm, and towards more radical cadences (from real time to extended time)?

Diffusion via the web, completely mobile, and on social networks (optimizing narrative platform solutions for tablets and mobile devices, equally accessible via Internet browsers and social spaces – truly fitting the meaning of “multidevices”)?

A hybridization of know-how, ambitious, and disruption than what we (all?) haven’t dared do – until now.

ProPublica? HuffingtonPost? Wired? Geek news? Not at all: that would be false and too simplistic. Our ambitions are to invent, innovate, and stand out from the crowd. Three years after its creation, on June 15, 22Mars SAS launched OWNI Inc, proof of our ambitions (if such proof was needed). Check back in a few weeks to learn more /-)

Palo Alto, we are here! In September, we’ll take the next step.

July gave us a run for our money, but we emerged stronger.

A splendid August to you, my favorite geeks!