Loïc Le Meur

Loïc Le Meur
Loïc Le Meur at the LeWeb3 conference in 2006
Born	July 14, 1972 (1972-07-14) (age 37) France
Occupation	Entrepreneur, Blogger

Loïc Le Meur (born July 14, 1972) is a French entrepreneur and blogger. He served as Executive Vice President EMEA at software company Six Apart after merging French blogging company Ublog with Six Apart in July 2004.^[1] In late 2006 Le Meur became a public backer of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and joined Sarkozy's campaign team as an advisor on Internet-related topics.^[2][3]

Career

In 1996, Loïc Le Meur founded his first company, interactive agency B2L.^{[citation needed]}

In parallel he also founded RapidSite France and made it the leading web hosting company for small businesses in France.^[4] In 1999, he sold RapidSite to France Télécom where it became part of Wanadoo.^[5]

In 2000, he founded application service provider Tekora.^{[citation needed]}

In 2003, he got involved with French weblog hosting company Ublog which he purchased from its founder, fellow Breton Stéphane Le Solliec in October 2003.^[6] He then grew Ublog and merged the company with Six Apart where he became Executive Vice President in 2004.^[7] He held his role as EVP EMEA until March 2007 when he handed his job over to long-time business partner Olivier Creiche. Le Meur remains Honorary Chair of Six Apart Europe. ^[8]

Blogging

Le Meur's personal weblog has been one of the most widely read blogs in France. He is also well-known as the organizer of the LesBlogs weblog conferences in Paris, France (later renamed to LeWeb).^[9] In 2004, he became part of the team behind the official World Economic Forum Weblog.^[10]

In December 2005, he conducted the first podcast interview with a major French politician, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.^[11] While AgoraVox, a French citizen journalism site, panned the interview as "infotainment", claiming Le Meur had asked "softball questions" and criticized the podcast interview as free publicity for Sarkozy,^[12] Le Meur responded that he did not want to be confrontational, and the event was seen as an effort to stem Sarkozy's decline in popularity among younger voters.^[13] Le Meur then went on interviewing several other politicians in subsequent podcasts, including Dominique Strauss-Kahn and François Bayrou. He announced his support for Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election in September 2006.^[14] Both Bayrou and Sarkozy spoke at internet conference LeWeb3 in Paris organized by Le Meur in December 2006, as did Israeli politician Shimon Peres.^[15] He was invited by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy to come with him to the White House during his first official visit in United States in November 2007.

Bibliography

• Blogs pour les pros by Loïc Le Meur and Laurence Beauvais, Dunod ISBN 2100493957, November 2005
• La révolution podcast by Loïc Le Meur and Laurence Beauvais, Dunod ISBN 2100500597, September 2006.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Loïc Le Meur

• Le Meur's personal blog in English and in French
• Six Apart
• Loic Le Meur has a professional profile on the web.
• Interview with Loic Le Meur video
• Interview with Loic Le Meur about his new company Seesmic video