Agence France-Presse (AFP) Takes Shareholding in Scooplive



    Scooplive goes international and becomes CITIZENSIDE.COM

    Agence France-Presse (AFP) and IAM, a company founded by Xavier
    Gouyou Beauchamps and Pascal Josephe, reported this morning that it
    had taken minority shareholding in Scooplive, renamed CITIZENSIDE.

    Scooplive, a company founded in 2006 by Matthieu Stefani, Julien
    Robert and Philippe Checinski, gives individuals the opportunity to
    sell their pictures and videos on current news, in return for a small
    commission. The company now takes a step forward and becomes
    CITIZENSIDE (www.citizenside.com), a site which enables the media to
    use the platform that has been developed for two years as a white
    label. The media will thus be able to cultivate nearness and
    interaction with their readers or audience, and to obtain from them
    news documents to complement their own or agencies production.

    Committed to its clients, the media, AFP aims at helping them to
    develop a privileged relationship with their readers or audience, and
    to obtain from the public valuable news by holding the platform
    CITIZENSIDE at their disposal.

    "For us, this gives us the opportunity to conduct a commercial and
    technologic experience in the world of the web 2.0, for the benefit of
    our clients, mainly in the media sector. We intend to offer them the
    possibility to use the technological platform under their own brand.
    AFP will not be involved in the editorial process of selection and
    validation of the documents available on the platform" said Pierre
    Louette, AFP Chairman.

    With contributors from around 90 countries, citizenside.com is a
    site pursuing strategic aims: acceleration of its international
    development, widening of its community, increase of the documents
    received and of the number of partnerships with the press, TV, web and
    mobile media.

    CITIZENSIDE wants to emerge as a global leader of qualified
    participative information by developing a favoured relationship
    between amateur and professional media.

    "CITIZENSIDE will capitalize on the experience gained by its
    founders and its new partners" says Matthieu Stefani, a founder of
    Scooplive.

    AFP, the first news agency in the world, was created in 1835 by
    Charles-Louis Havas, its current President being Pierre Louette.
    Today, it operates in 165 countries and has over 4,000 employees and
    7,000 clients.

    Citizenside (www.citizenside.com), launched as Scooplive is a
    pioneer in citizen reporting. Launched on June 20th, 2006, by Julien
    Robert, Philippe Checinski and Matthieu Stefani, Scooplive enables
    amateurs and professionals to sell their news documents (events,
    celebrities, sports, etc.) to the media worldwide.

    Xavier Gouyou Beauchamps is a former adviser of Valery Giscard
    d´Estaing and was chief of the press department at the Elysee Palace
    from 1974 to 1976. He is also a former president of Sofirad,
    Telediffusion de France (TDF) and Sofipost. He was the CEO of France 3
    from 1994 to 1996 and then chairman of France Television from 1996 to
    1999.

    Pascal Josephe is the chairman of IMCA, International Media
    Consultant Associes, a company specializing in consultancy in the
    world of communications and media that he founded in 1994; prior to
    this, he was in charge of different TV channels programs.

    Philippe Checinski is a former trader at Refco Trading Services.
    He was also in charge of marketing studies at Banque Bipop.

    Julien Robert graduated as an engineer (SUPINFO Paris) and
    obtained a Master in Web Technologies (Oxford Brookes University) with
    distinction. He also received the B.O.C.C. award for developing the
    W3C (World Wild Web Consortium), an application dedicated to the
    research regarding daltonism.

    Matthieu Stefani is one of the pioneers of free daily newspapers
    in France. He worked from 2001 to 2005 for Metro France and Metro
    International. He is also a founder of Stobacco (www.stobacco.com), a
    community site helping its members who want to quit smoking.