The Montreal media company Consultations Amabilis has just launched Kakinews, a french news aggregator website aimed at women. You can also call it a digg clone, with a different template and a different audience. For those not acquainted with digg, users can register and submit a webpage. Highly voted news land on the homepage. The model is very popular, as it gets easy traffic for bloggers and publishers, free content and advertising money for the website owners, and an easy way to know todays’s hot news for users. The model is also very scalable, as webmasters can in theory launch the website and go out have fun.
The question is, can they pull it off? One immediate reaction is to say no, because there is no innovation. The technology used is not new, the template is so generic I know the exact adress where they downloaded their icons; overall, it seems of one of those ideas you get during late afternoon coffee breaks. The beta in the logo just makes me laugh.
However, I also know that there is a dire need for content geared at women in Quebec. One of the most visited websites visited in Québec is aufeminin.com, according to our statistics, even if it is published in France. And because there is no articles or news aimed at our dear Québecoises, aufeminin is loosing steam slowly.
Amibilia, on the other hand, has slowly put their foot on this market. They have blogs, a large user base at their forums, and are heavily involved in the advertising industry. And I am quite sure they can leverage their readership and transform kakinews into a reference portal in Quebec. Even if those don’t follow, there are lots of blogger girls out there who will subscribe and push their content on kakinews.
Overall, I would say then congrats to Marie-Christine Copti
