I covered a few European social networks in my previous blog: multi-lingual social networks.

This blog covers two social networks I think very nicely represent the social web wave in France. Obviously there is Netvibes with its presence felt globally and over $16m in funding. Two social networks which grabbed my attention:

LinkedIn equivalent for France, viadeo is a popular social network for business people. Viadeo raised over $6.8m mainly to expand in Asia. The site is already available in German, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch 2m members. The profiles are sort of half way house between Ecademy and LinkedIn, and seem to target entrepreneurs, SMEs and larger enterprises. In the future it has the potential to go public like Xing the German business social network and the first web 2.0 company to go public. 

The other social network is targeted at younger audience, predominantly 13 to 24 year old. The social networks is targeted around French radio station specialising in rap and R&B and has more than 4.1m listeners daily. Social network is clearly a good fit with Skyrock’s strategy. In October 2007 it had over 14 million blogs in various languages, mainly French. The site’s design would remind you of Bebo, obviously both social networks aim at similar audience.

Tags: French, Social Network, Skyrock, Viadeo