June 13th, 2010

Meet the new MySpace, it’s called Badoo

Ever since Inc. Magazine wrote that profile on Plenty of Fish, I have found dating websites totally intriguing.  They take one of the life’s most difficult and unscientific problems and apply the web as a band-aid. They’re sometimes money-printing behemoths, and on occasion people do really find love through these sites. The market is insanely crowded, but the market for l-o-v-e, it would appear, can support nearly infinite entrants.

When my friends Bryan Muir and Alex Hsi told me they were doing some “research” on dating sites, I was all about it. Digging around in the world of dating sites is fascinating. I saw sites ranging from the high-brow-nerd-friendly (OKCupid) to the more sketchy borderline-porn-hookup sites like WouldYouHitThis.com. Many are derivations of earlier giants like HotOrNot and Match, but there are a lot of interesting and original concepts floating around as well.

However, I have yet to find someone who can adequately argue against the assertion that the real rulers of the online dating world are Facebook and MySpace. It seems that MySpace (and before that Friendster) is/was really the best dating site, mostly because it never defined itself as such, and thus escaped a lot of the stigma attached to calling yourself a “dating” site.

But the crop of borderline-digital-natives that built MySpace up to the giant it is (was?) I believe made a more deliberate distinction between the way that “flirting” functioned in the online and offline worlds.  Remember – the MySpace power users were not the nerds who had been BBSing since back in the day, but mostly a bunch of normals whose offline life was probably more exciting than their online one (come to my concert! look at the club i am promoting!).

I think, though, that the tastemaker/power-user profile has changed. The new influentials in the world of social networking are the 18 year-olds whose sexting habits garner much attention, the ones who are the subject of histrionic laments about the effects of the internet on social development.  For these true digital natives, the line between online and offline existence is much less discrete than even 5 years ago, and the idea of “socializing” on the web has become a huge blur of friending, connecting, poking, messaging, gifting, voting-up, etc. What happens when the “like button” appears next to people’s faces?

Since most people agree that MySpace is kinda done (erm, sorry MySpace), I was passively wondering about what will be the next MySpace-type site to emerge.

Enter Badoo (not to be confused with Baidu, the Chinese search engine).

Full credit to Bryan and Alex for finding it, and for telling me almost nothing about it except that it was “the best.” Although TechCrunch describes it as “a social network popular in emerging markets like Russia and Brazil”, I think it’s much more than that.  A summary:

-  Badoo has 60+ million members in other countries, only a tiny fraction are in the U.S.

- Their customer acquisition emails are incredible.  Imagine getting an email like this:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Badoo <noreply@badoo.com>
Date: Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:22 AM
Subject: You promised Badoo
To: XXXXX

- They have, from what I can tell, implemented a lot of Zynga-like strategies to make their product appealing and addicting. They make good use of location and FB connect, and have an auto-bot that starts and contributes to conversations for you. The bot sends messages that look like they’re coming from other people, but really it’s just Badoo. No wonder it’s stuff that simultaneously improves the service.  Example: “Hey Amanda! Are you really hiding from the police?? If not, please add a photo ”.

- They are rolling in cash. Raised a $30m series A back in 2008. Who raises a thirty million dollar series A?  Yeah.

- Their business model is crazy interesting. Basically, you can pay to have your profile listed under “featured profiles”. Except you never enter a credit card, you just put in your cell number and they charge you through your mobile bill.  Obscuring the flow of funds = sketchy but likely very effective. And having a featured profile does lead to a spike in profile views which creates a nice little ephemeral dopamine boost. “I’m blowing up on Badoo!”. That said, I am done with the featured profile section – the experience of females on any sort of social networking site, especially a borderline-sketchy one, is another post for another time.

So why is Badoo the next MySpace?  I think their particular set of features is the right combination of appealing/compelling to a group of influentials who will propel more widespread adoption. While the site has started to get some traction in the U.S. my gut is that it will really spike in the near future. Could it be possible that a social site popular in a place other than the U.S. could make waves here?  I think yes. Or at the very least, the site will continue to get clicks from me with its clever emails and temptations of short-lived fame.

Badoo, you’re the best.

June 12th, 2010

First Post. OK not Really.

Can you really call it a “first post” when it’s simply a new blog, and not actually your “first post” in the world of blogging? Up for debate. Until today, I wrote a blog called “Save Me From B-School” about, well, my experience at business school. The trials and tribulations of a startup-junkie in an MBA program makes for riveting reading. You should probably check it out. I have recently graduated, and while I wondered if I should continue with the other blog, sometimes fresh starts are necessary. And nothing like that first bill from the U.S. Government Direct Loans department to remind you “you’re in the real-world now, kid.”

So welcome to my new blog, Mom (and others?). Looking forward to hearing from you.

June 1st, 2010

Hello, B-School Graduation

First of all, I’m moving my blog. I oscillated quite a bit – right when I’m starting to get the right Google juice I give up?  Yes.  I have always been a huge fan of clean slates – how else are you supposed to know if you can build yourself back up again?  So after graduation, my blog will be the much-less-witty http://amandapey.tumblr.com.  See you 7 readers over there.

Right, graduation. The last one I experienced was 2005 from undergrad and I can’t say I am any more sure now about my future than I was then.  I certainly had no job then (what employable skills does a 21 year-old History major have, exactly?) and spent the summer following graduation lying around my parent’s house wondering how I could take over the world while still watching 3-4 hours of daytime television.  Not so successful.  This is when I learned an extremely important life lesson: nothing productive EVER happens when you’re living with your parents.  So I headed to Beijing to stir up some trouble.

After some time in Beijing figuring out how to do basic things like eat and buy train tickets, and a stint in Austin, TX I found myself at MIT in August 2008, ready to drink some more academic kool-aid.

Two years later, and I’m not dreading graduation like I was before. Maybe it took an extra two years of school (some of us are slower than others), but I am pretty excited to land in the startup world with no structured “career path.”  Instead, this summer I’ll be living in a rental house near Stanford working on cool web stuff.  It is going to be amazing, and it will be nice to get back to “survival mode,” academia was beginning to spoil me.

But there’s something about putting on a cap and gown – it’s one of the few American traditions that people still keep pretty sacred.  As my third graduation, this may be the first one I am actually excited about. Not because I have any more of a plan than I did before, but because I have finally learned that uncertainty is something that should be cherished.