Cannes, 12 February 2001
Jean Marie Messier, chairperson of Vivendi Universal, looked very confident on the riviera last night when he announced the launch of his new baby, Education.com, expected to break-even before the end of 2002.
The multilingual website aims to be a global resource for the educational community, with
highly localised level of content, including curriculum based stuff, that will be accessible through different subscription models.
“We have the potential to reach over 170 million schoolkids worldwide. Education.com will be a giant dedicated portal. The teachers’ room for example, will connect at different levels teachers to other teachers, as well as parents and children”
The revenue model, said the executive, will be 45% subscription, 45% direct sales and 10% advertising.
He also hinted at the forthcoming launch of the ‘education schoolbag’ a 1 kg portable device designed for kids that will contain all human knowledge from dictionaries to history tables, and anticipated details of a joint venture with Sony that will enable virtual video on demand (VVOD), a consumer service that will allow downloads of movie length features online onto a massively powerful hard drive.
“The strategy for Vivendi Universal for the next few years will revolve around five key content areas, each of which we aim to lead: education, games, news, music and sports”
Another important investment for the conglomerate is Flipside.com, a games portal that is expected to break-even before the end of this year, according to the executive.
Messier placed great emphasis on multilingual activities “We have a great advantage, in that we are already a multilingual company. Our overheads to run a multilingual online operation are minimal, but its scope will bring great rewards in terms of global market presence. Globalisation trends are fundamental in such intense times of internet communication, but it would be offensive to disregard the local heritage of non English speaking cultures. I personally do not believe in cultural uniformity, and all of Vivendi Universal operations will encourage true globalisation, that can only happen through the promotion of cultural diversity”.
Paola Di Maio

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