
How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex - fufulabs
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/features/sexual-network
======
JoachimSchipper
"Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in
the dorms. How will this software get him laid?" -- jwz,
<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>

Which is to say, selling sex has always been a nice business.

~~~
tomjen3
Maybe, but it is a horrible use case.

Or rather it is too limiting as people now only focus on young males rather
than, say, really sexy software for businesses. The 22 year old market is,
comparatively, over-saturated.

~~~
VladRussian
"there's a 42 year old [account|support|...] manager living in the cubicle.
How will this software get him laid [or at least not get his chops busted]?"

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mrleinad
I've been on this network for about 4 years now (maybe less, can't remember),
and it really worked for me, I've met several people there and had a really
good time doing so.

What I think provides the most value for the user is location, as the article
says. I can filter users by my location, and just interact with them. Since
this is a dating site, it's ok to just say hi to someone without a formal
introduction by someone else, and everyone acts accordingly.

What I really dislike about the site, is how invasive the business model has
become. They try to get viral with facebook apps, desktop apps, iphone apps,
but those apps tend not to respect a user's privacy. A while ago they tried to
charge users to filter by online users. If you didn't pay, you could filter by
location, but you'd have to go through all offline users to find those that
are online at the time. It rendered the basic, unpaid product, useless.
Fortunately, they rolled back that "feature".

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tryitnow
This 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 will be the winner here (I doubt it), but
some company will be able to win big by helping people meet new people.

~~~
nivertech
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.

~~~
aik
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.

~~~
gcb
I had to remove all contact info as i was "meting" too many clueless
recruiters

interestingly, the worsts were pitching good positions at google... Go figure.

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tombot
If 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.

~~~
sssparkkk
Not to mention how overly aggressive they are in their tactics to bring in new
members.

'There's one message waiting for you!'

~~~
digitallimit0
Almost all of this reminds me of OkCupid.

~~~
code_duck
How about Facebook? They've long been luring and manipulative. I'm thinking of
things like showing you pictures of friends when you're trying to close your
account, and saying you won't be able to talk to that person any longer.

------
SkyMarshal
Read the comments at the end of the article. About half of them are
complaining about Badoo being a scam of various sorts. Fake accounts, fake
female to male messages, email harvesting, can't get out once in, spam, etc.

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TobbenTM
Are 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 country standard etc), as well as
descriptions. Any thoughts?

~~~
danso
Are you in the U.S.? That would seem like a lot. I'd be surprised if there
were that many Twitter accounts in a city of 50k

~~~
ashconnor
There are many shill accounts on the likes of AFF, it wouldn't surprise me if
Badoo had them too.

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gfaremil
Unrelated question - but I would to hear what others think.

I noticed that two sites we have developed in the past (chat/dating site and
food review site) had much better acceptance in Mexico, Brazil, Netherlands,
etc. than in US.

First we thought this is just a western anglo-saxon thing, but we also have
much higher acceptance in UK.

It seems like that users in US are not early adopters. Did anybody noticed the
same trend?

~~~
ricardobeat
Yeah, internet usage characteristics vary a lot from place to place. There is
an amazing study from 2010 on internet behaviour around the world:
<http://2010.tnsdigitallife.com/> (swf)

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brainless
I used to use Badoo during 2007-9 and the only reason I can think of being
there was sleazy pics that users uploaded. Slowly Badoo restricted how much
"porn" users to display. After reading this and re-visiting Badoo after about
3 years I somehow feel funny as to how big funds are chasing it.

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archivator
| the free-to-use network [..] is a mass phenomenon in Brazil (14.1 million
members), Mexico (nine million), France (8.2 million), Spain (6.5 million) and
Italy (six million)

Does anyone have any insight as to why Brazil is such a target for fringe
social networks? I find it interesting that first Orkut and now Badoo have a
major stake in that market and practically none in Western Europe.

~~~
anonimo
I'm not sure if it makes sense to call them "fringe". Orkut is mainstream in
Brazil (though Facebook is about as popular now), just as Facebook in the US
and Mixi in Japan.

Also note that Brazil has a large number of internet users, around 40 million.
So Brazil is also a big target for auction sites, e-commerce, games, phone
apps, etc. It just so happens that people don't hear much about those sites
outside Brazil.

I'm quite skeptical that Badoo has 14 million Brazilian members. That would be
around 1/3 of the internet-using population. That said, I suppose their
success in Brazil (and elsewhere) is due to the fact they aren't really a
regular social network, but rather a site for "hooking-up".

~~~
helton
I'm also really skeptical about the 14 million Brazilian members. I live in
Brazil and never heard of this social network. (As opposed to orkut, that was
very massive here.) However, I think that orkut is dying here. All my friends
migrated to facebook because is "cooler". haha

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AznHisoka
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.

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ajays
Single page version for the lazy:
[http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/features/sex...](http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/features/sexual-
network?page=all)

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kloncks
I'm reminded of Reid Hoffman's quote: "Social networks do best when they tap
into one of the seven deadly sins."

~~~
mhartl
Max Levchin said much the same thing at Startup School '08, with s/social
networks/businesses/. "These sins are so much fun, even though they're deadly
people do them anyway."

~~~
klipt
Their deadliness is overrated. Without lust, our species would die out!

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protez
I just created an account and found that most of profiles are obvious fake.
Almost of all profiles share the same characteristic: a simple one-liner
comment and an irrelevant picture of this area, which is uploaded within
twelves hours. Kudos to the founder of Badoo, who focused on giving the "user
experience" from fake and false profiles, which are "manually curated" to hook
up the guys who lost his mind from the urgent urge uprising from his gun.

I bet this kind of service wouldn't take off in my country where lots of 18-34
are already sharing comments and photos real-time and real-location at a mind-
splitting rate using their smart phones. Lots of photoshopped pictures, but at
least, they're real and they talk back, definitely better "user experience."

As a side note, in my country, a television program features a college girl
who boasts that she didn't have to spend a penny for expensive meals and
gifts, as she has more than two hundred "SNS friends" who agreed to buy her
dinners. It's indeed not an exceptional case. Definitely possible.

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metachris
Just tried it a little. The main thing I dislike is the extreme
superficiality. On most parts of the site where you meet new people, you only
see the image and the age, but no interests etc. I mean come on -- to decide
whether I want to meet someone, the image is really saying close to nothing.

~~~
mrleinad
When you're trying to pick up someone in a bar, do you talk to every possible
girl, or just the most attractive ones?

~~~
metachris
I'm confident your opinion represents many (most?) men. Personally I dislike
this superficiality though. I'm not picking up girls by randomly selecting the
pretty ones in a bar. I'm meeting interesting women primarily through shared
passions, hobbies, sports, activities, hackerspaces and otherwise with at
least a bit of context.

~~~
baby
then okcupid.

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keeptrying
Sex is a huge motivator - duh.

The essential thing I'm learning from trying to start my own company is this:
"Understand People" - what they do, why they do it, how they do the things
that they want to do, how they interact, what motivates them etc.

If your not a people person its going to be hard to create a startup - ie a
truly innovative solution that has a real business need. You might be better
of running a small business where the cashflows are known or better yet
working in some part of someone elses business.

Bottom line - Sucessful entrepreneurs understand people.

And badoo understood that sex is a great people motivator.

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Zolomon
I 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.

~~~
Raphael
Good for you.

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culebron
I 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.

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herval
Wonder 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...

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ivanzhao
Money, money, money.

