Early Years

Once our server was up and running and accessible through the address France.com , we started looking for media companies, government entities, startups and members of the Francophile and Francophone community in the United states to build rich and useful content.

As a French expat living in the US I knew how important information from the Consular services of the French Embassy were. Our first source of daily news was, in fact provided by the Press services of the French Embassy in Washington DC.

In June of 1994, we received the confirmation from the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles, that it would work with France Online to provide its readers information ranging from administrative to cultural, even a digital mailbox to allow a dialog between the Consulate General and subscribers of France Online. This marks the first time a French consulate was present online.

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France Online became the natural outside contractor when, in 1996 the French Embassy in Washington needed to build its first online presence.

We had the knowledge and expertise to bring build and maintain such a site. We were under contract from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a couple of years.

Here is correspondence from the French Embassy dating attesting to the work we were contracted to do:

and an email from the same time:

As well as an invoice paid to France Online by the French embassy in Washington:

Our early initiatives also bought support from other branches of the French government. Such was the case for Les Webs d’Or.

By December of 1995 the Web was prominently English-speaking. We came up with the idea of developing a web contest to promote French-speaking websites. Anyone could vote for their favorite website, divided in 12 different categories:

The contest took the French-speaking web world by storm, and made, for a few weeks, France.com the most French-speaking website on the Internet.

Both France’s Ministry of Culture as well as the Delegation pour le Francophonie (the government’s arm for the promotion of the French-speaking worlwide) enthusiastically supported the project and participated in it.