etnobofin

En attendant l’atterrissage définitif du Failwhale* franco-français…

Using Twitter in France is a bit of a lonely experience. I only know of 2 other people in Montpellier (@jcverdie and @missexpatria) who tweet. We miss out on the fun that twitterers can have in cities like Birmingham, where a swarm of local tweeps can bounce ideas off each other, meet up and compare notes on the weather.

Twitter remains a low-profile service in France, barely known outside the media/I.T. sector (who tend to speak/understand English). On the occasion of the first Paris Twestival (February 2009), wearesocial.net estimated around 18,000 users in the whole country**.  That’s a little less than the population of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (no I hadn’t heard of the place either).

By contrast, Facebook is growing exponentially here, and its trigger point for expansion was availability in French language.  Facebook in French arrived just 12 months ago in March 2008. At that point, there were less than 2 million French Facebook users, (who were using it in English). A year later, Facebook accounts in France have grown by more than 400% to 8.6 million. Ah, the magic of localisation.

“Ne me twitte pas” by Jérôme Choain

The only real barrier I can see in France for Twitter is language. To break out of its current media/tech ghetto, Twitter’s UI, tools such as Tweetdeck, Tweetie and the rest of the ecosystem will also need to be localised in French. This will take time.

Some French commentators are sceptical: Jean-Dmitri Dewavrin at goopple thinks that Twitter can’t work in France (citing, notably a lack of SMS interactivity agreements with local operators, and an unclear utility-value proposition compared to Facebook). In addition of course, Facebook has reoriented its UI to emphasise real-time status updates – it remains to be seen what effect this has on Twitter.

Likewise Cédric Deniaud can’t see a future in which Twitter is a “mainstream” tool. Perhaps this scenario is more realistic: Twitter works best for user who are permanently connected and who can take part in near real-time conversation. By contrast, Facebook is something you can use for just 10 minutes a day. Is Twitter is destined to be social media’s equivalent of the Mac to the Facebook PC?

Perhaps it would take a particular event to launch the service to the wider French public. For example, the astute use of Twitter for race and team updates during the Tour de France could see user rates soar this summer.  @lancearmstrong already has almost 400,000 followers (but mostly anglo-saxon I imagine).

I see no a priori reason why Twitter can’t become a raging success here. France has a remarkably large and active blogosphere, and a strong culture of public debate and conversation. Lack of SMS connectivity in the UK and elsewhere has not prevented Twitter’s uptake (most mobile users have passed straight to mobile apps running over 3G), and the French are just as human as the rest of us – they like to talk.

*Failwhale, n. “Baleine-échouée” or “Baleine-erreur“

**This is an extrapolation of the numbers from June 2008 survey by Twitterfacts, based on global growth rates for Twitter.