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 Messier shot to prominence by turning a 148-year-old water company into a global media empire.
But now he needs to move Vivendi from providing content to selling digital products. By year’s end, a French subsidiary, e-Brands, expects to have technology to collect data from 18 million Vivendi consumers in Europe, including Canal Plus subscribers, SFR and Cegetel phone users and Universal music fans. Vivendi businesses will use the personal details
e-Brands collects to do cross-branding and marketing. Recently Messier has launched projects aimed at charging for digital content on PCs and TVs.
Universal and Sony have formed a joint venture, Pressplay, to sell copyright-protected digital music over the Internet using the resources of MP3.com, which Messier bought last May for $372 million. Universal, along with four other big movie studios, plans to create Moviefly, a service that will let consumers download films.
E-Brands is developing software to track micropayments for mobile data like games. Volubill, a start-up Vivendi spun out of Cegetel, is selling software so that phone operators can charge customers according to the content they use, once always-on Internet phone service is available.
The Vision Thing: "Vivendi Universal’s goal is to put a maximum amount of quality content on a maximum number of platforms and devices."
Forward Spin: No media firm has yet made money from content sold online. The trick will be to create a new role as a cash-generating layer between access pipes and consumers.
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