Ouriel Ohayon, who built TechCrunch France into one of the top French blogs, actually lives in Israel.

How can a Tel Aviv-based blogger manage to dominate the French blogosphere?

While this would be impressive for a blogger outside of any country, this is especially impressive in France, which has one of the world’s highest per-capita rates of blogging.

Ouriel say he can have influence from afar because of:

1 – Many contacts from when he lived in France.
2 – Tight focus on French High Tech
3 – Constant dialogue with both his contacts and readers.
4 – Twitter allows a continuous web presence.

That said, physical presence is important: “You can always be an observer, but at the end of the day you need to create this sense of proximity and physical connections. It cannot be only virtual.”

For that reason, Ouriel comes to France at least once every 3 or 4 months for an intense round of meetings.

In other news, Ouriel has lately suffered from a fake Twitter account spoofing him. Ah, the price of fame!