Web 2.0 Startups

Tailored News

Wikio

Luxembourg

Founded: 2005
Sector: Internet News Portal
CEO: Laurent Binard

Wikio is a personalized news portal that combs media sites and blogs for stories and topics users deem interesting. That sounds a lot like successful U.S. sites Digg, Technorati, and Topix, but Wikio intends to be all three rolled into one and to tackle all topics, not just tech. Wikio is available in English as well as French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Europe is the priority market, followed by the U.S. The company's chairman is Pierre Chappaz, founder of Kelkoo, an Internet shopping comparison service that was sold to Yahoo in 2004 for €475 million ($705 million). Chappaz left his role as Yahoo's European president and co-CEO of Netvibes, another European Web 2.0 company, to focus full time on Wikio.