Cannes : Vivendi Universal Publishing launches education.com

The new educational portal puts together the greatest publishing houses (Nathan, Larousse, Bordas), the group's multimedia activities (Coktel, Knowledge adventure). An interactive monument !

You have to click on /www.education.com">www.education.com, the new educational portal that the group Vivendi Universal Publishing launched on Monday morning at the Milia in Cannes. By putting together some extremely rich contents on one single site, by seeking all of the possible synergies in the publishing group, education.com announces that the European web is entering the 'industrial age'. It also prefigures the content integration strategy which will concern the other entities of Vivendi Universal for music, cinema, games and sport. That illustrates the strategy brilliantly defended the day before, at the Milia as well, by Jean-Marie Messier, the group's CEO.For parents, children and teachersIn Education.com, all of the paper publishing houses of the group have made their contributions. You can find Nathan, Larousse, Bordas, Retz, etc. But the portal also puts together all the multimedia activities linked to education in VUP (Vivendi Universal Publishing) : Coktel, with stars such as Abibou, Adj; Knowledge adventure; Nathan Multimedia with abcbac.com. From the outset, the portal is multilingual. It has been launched out in French, in English, in German and, soon, it should be translated in other languages as Spanish.The model is simple, ergonomic, wonderfully structured and designed. Three spaces have been clearly defined for the three protagonist categories : parents, teachers and, of course, children. Each one of these 'universes' is treated with different colours. The children space is full of icons, drawings, games, etc. The objective is to put, at the disposal of every protagonist, some contents and educational resources which could help them during the years children are at schoolObjective : 1.5 million visitors as soon as 2001The whole site is a mix of current event articles about teaching skills, school world, education, as well as games, educational contents, revision methods, community services such as virtual classrooms, tools for collective work, intranets to link the family members, etc. And a 'reference' pole as well, with all the dictionaries, etc.By presenting education.com in Cannes, Agnès Touraine, CEO of VUP, didn't hide her ambitions : in 2001, 1.5 million unique visitors a month and an income of 8 million euros; in 2002, a turnover of 23 million euros; in 2003, the profitability with receipts coming from subscriptions at 44 %, direct sales of products on the site at 46 %, since the advertisement only accounts for 10 % in this business model. And if we don't know yet whether such forecasts will be achieved or not, at least VUP has given itself the means to do so.