Let's not call a site that gets 2 million unique visitors a month a billion dollar social network. I know it sounds sexy and it makes for good journalism, but let's reserve the "billion dollars" for companies that truly got over The Dip to make themselves a billion dollar company.
How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
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Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#52I'm reminded of Reid Hoffman's quote: "Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins."
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#53Wonder how many of those 14m brazilians are actually users. Almost everyone I know has received, at least once, an email from badoo saying everyone else is there (e.g saying I am, which is not the case). Fishy, very fishy...
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#54Are all users listed real? (That is, not generated by Badoo?) It just feels kinda fake when looking through the list of accounts in my city (with a somewhat "small" population of ~50k, 814 Badoo accounts) that there is a lot of users. More than I anticipated for a service which I, as a person very interested in technology, did not even know about. Some of the pictures look very legit (with car-plates matching the cou…
No. Not all the users are real. Companies employ various methods to create the illusion of activity on their dating sites. You also have to account for spammers/scammers. If you want a more realistic gauge of activity, then take any user number (currently online, total, in your city, etc.) and divide it by 10. At any given time only one tenth of the user base is active and legitimate. My source: I worked for an onlin…
I remember an article about a guy who lived in the middle of nowhere (small town, population 17) -- and some dating site claimed to have 16 singles in that town waiting to meet him.
Oops.
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#55This quote is noteworthy: "Does Andreev have Facebook in his sights? "Badoo is more of a social network than Facebook, as on Facebook you interact with your existing friends in an absolutely virtual life," he says. "Badoo is more social: it provokes you to go down on the street and meet these people."" I hope the next phase in social networking is actually centered around meeting new people. I don't know if Badoo wil…
Meetup.com - helps you to meet new people with common interests in the physical world. LinkedIn.com - after you met them, to keep track in case you are heavy networker.
Personally I've never met anyone through LinkedIn, just added them after meeting them through some other means. I'm not sure if it is especially geared towards "provoking" people to meet.
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the reason is partly cultural. South Americans, like South East Asians, are less privacy conscious that Anglo-Saxons and Europeans are. Badoo and Hi5 are examples of less private social networks that grow more easily in these cultures. (Though Hi5 is dying down because of its inability to design and implement software properly--people flocked to Facebook for its coolness and niceness, even then they use Fac…
>South Americans and South East Asians are less privacy conscious that Anglo-Saxons and Europeans are. Very interesting. Did you learn this from someone you trust to be right or from observations of the relevant populations? If observations, were they mainly observations of online behavior? And can you give any sort of example? (E.g., how exactly do they use Facebook a bit differently?) The reason I ask is that I hav…
Anecdotal examples: Brazilians upload lots of pics, have tons of orkut/facebook friends, "chain-like" updates ("blablah, if you agree with this post it on your wall"). are not uncommon, etc. Meanwhile, many of my Japanese facebook-friends don't even have a real pic of themselves as their profile pic, they usually don't add coworkers, etc. Americans might be somewhere in between.
You could probably find data that quantifies those anecdotes. If you want to talk more about it feel free to send me a message (my email address is in my profile).
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the reason is partly cultural. South Americans, like South East Asians, are less privacy conscious that Anglo-Saxons and Europeans are. Badoo and Hi5 are examples of less private social networks that grow more easily in these cultures. (Though Hi5 is dying down because of its inability to design and implement software properly--people flocked to Facebook for its coolness and niceness, even then they use Fac…
>South Americans and South East Asians are less privacy conscious that Anglo-Saxons and Europeans are. Very interesting. Did you learn this from someone you trust to be right or from observations of the relevant populations? If observations, were they mainly observations of online behavior? And can you give any sort of example? (E.g., how exactly do they use Facebook a bit differently?) The reason I ask is that I hav…
It's from my observations among my South East Asian's and South American's online friends. Nandemo's anecdotes on Brazilians agrees very well with mine.
One group I don't have much data on is Eastern Europeans--whom I'd love to know more about. If anyone cares to share about their culture, please feel free to.
I am very curious about your idea on improving society with some privacy issues and would love to discuss with you if you feel comfortable to. My email is in my profile.
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#58If you've never used Badoo, I would encourage you to sign up just to see what tactics they use to encourage users to pay, how they do account retention and also how they encourage you to add profile information and photos. Interesting stuff.
Yeah, thanks for that comment... it wasted me some money and sleep time ;).
I actually went there, and somehow in 2h I filled in ~80% of my profile data, uploaded some photos and paid for additional features. Not that I was fighting with myself, or something, but those tactics do work. They seem well optimized, attracting one to act without being too annoying.
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#59I don't believe in these numbers. Badoo's strategy is scraping other social networks and spamming you and your friends with emails, pretending they sent messages to you and you to them. It's the second worst spammer on the web I know.
Re: How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex
#60I signed up today. I found an incredible girl whom I'm going to a date with next week, over some sushi! :) Lives 10 min away from our university as well. I like this site! Disclaimer: I'm 23.
Good for you.