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The American giants have long dominated the race. Innovation, unicorns, technological nuggets, essential platforms, emerging trends… In short, things were going from the US to France rather than the other way around. And yet, things are changing. A handful of French entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge and coming to titillate the leading applications of Silicon Valley. Passion Media explains it all to you!
The Zenly application leads the dance
Against all odds, France has become a key player in social platforms and networks. The one that leads the dance? Zenly. This startup offers a mapping system with a very advanced technology to save the maximum battery of phones, having been bought by Snap for 250 million euros in 2017. Since then, the application continues to operate and grow. According to Apptopia, Zenly’s monthly downloads would have even increased from 1.75 million in January 2020 to 4.7 million in September 2021.
France, the ideal ground for social networks
According to Antoine Martin (CEO of Zenly), the appearance of these new successful players is far from being due to chance. France is a social country, where interactions between people are essential and part of our daily life. We like to exchange, discuss, debate and share. This makes it an ideal country to launch new tools to a receptive and demanding target. France also has a history of access to craftsmanship and design, two elements he believes are essential to building the applications and tools of tomorrow.
5 flagship social networks launched by French people
Since then, other applications have appeared on the market. If some of them disappeared after a few weeks, others have managed to make a name for themselves. Discover 4 stories of French applications that have made their mark on the sector.
The record growth of Yubo, a social video network
As far as Yubo’s history is concerned, there were a few misfires at first. The application has actually been around for more than 10 years, but has not yet broken through. It was only recently, when it repositioned itself as a live social video chat tool, that it found its target and finally took off. Since then, the company has raised €40 million to deploy its model on a large scale. The company also recently introduced a virtual currency (YuBucks) and now has over 55 million users.
The roller coaster ride of the Yolo application
We’re talking about success stories, but in the mix, there are also failures. One example is the Yolo app, which was launched in 2019 and very quickly became number 1 in the Apple app rankings in the UK and the US. It had less than 12 months after its launch, more than 10 million active users had raised $8 million. And yet, the fall was as fast as the rise. The reason? A major controversy. The application allowed a young target to post questions on Snapchat and receive anonymous answers. A strategy that was not accepted by parents, who quickly pointed out the limits of this system. The blame? Promote bullying, harassment … And the response was prohibitive. Snap has simply cut the access of the platform to the application. Continuation and end.
Powder, the social network for gaming and virtual life
You don’t know yet? It’s an application that allows Discord users to record, edit and share the best moments of their video games. Simple features that hide a bigger ambition. According to the founders, the idea is to position Discord as the key player in virtual life sharing. A message that largely echoes the arrival of the Metaverse, and the emergence of virtual reality.
Coppin says he was struck by how easy it is to create a social enterprise in France, whereas eight years ago the Mindie team moved to the U.S. for funding. The first version of Powder was launched in April of last year, with 88,000 downloads, according to Apptopia. By February of this year, that number had grown to 251,000 and stabilized at 158,000 by September. The company raised $14 million in February to expand its team and partner with gaming companies.
BeReal, the app that’s taking the opposite tack from Instagram
Tired of the superficial side of Instagram, Alexis Barreyat (former product manager for GoPro), launched the BeReal app in early 2021. The concept? Encourage sharing and spontaneous exchanges. To do this, the app has a unique way of working: it sends an alert at a different time each day for a user to take a photo and share it. Users then have two minutes to post the photo. Why this timer? Simply to avoid staging and fake formats. Then, to see what friends are sharing, you also have to post a photo. A concept that seems seductive since the application already has more than 300,000 downloads and a fundraising of 30 million dollars.
Mym, the French platform dedicated to content creators
This is the platform that is rising (at an impressive speed). Mym offers a concept that allows you to subscribe to your favorite content creators and enjoy exclusive formats developed by them. In short, a place where the relationship is key. And since its creation in 2018, the platform has largely seduced its audience. Today, more than 8 million people use it on a daily basis. And the founders of Mym do not intend to stop there. We talked about it in a dedicated article, many projects seem to be in the cards.
