How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex | Hacker News Reader

How Badoo built a billion-dollar social network on sex

wired.co.uk

131 pointsfufulabs63 comments

"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.

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.

"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]?"

Agreed. I hope I'm not alone in believing that the success of facebook---and myspace before it---heavily depended on leveraging this advice. They're definitely not bad examples to follow.

This is all I could think of when reading this.

Targeting males only is a great way to end up with a sausage fest...

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".

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.

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.

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.

>but some company will be able to win big by helping people meet new people.

I'm finding Google+ is oriented around that. It's basically Twitter, where you can meet people on the network without knowing them IRL first, but with longer more substantial conversations.

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.

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.

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

'There's one message waiting for you!'

I was spammed with so many of these emails that I never really cared to check what Badoo is. I just created a filter to delete them as soon as they hit my inbox.

And I don't think I will ever try. I'm still pissed at it.

Almost all of this reminds me of OkCupid.

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.

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.

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?

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 online dating company for 2 years.

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.

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

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

No, not in US, in Norway.

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?

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)

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.

| 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.

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 Facebook a bit differently in these cultures than in the West.)

>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 have an idea for improving society which violates most American's (I am American) sense of privacy.

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).

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.

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".

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

77.8 million internet users as of November 9.

That 14 million number is very questionable. Facebook has around 30 million users. I bet 13 million of those are inactive profiles that fell for their bait-and-switch.

I wouldn't say "fringe", but you might be on to something if you say "exclusive". From LiveJournal to orkut to Facebook and Twitter to Google+, whatever had high barriers to entry is perceived as "exclusive" and therefore "cool".

It's cool to be in a social network before everyone else. It's cool to give out invites to your friends. Lacking an invite-only system, it's cool to be in an English-only social network.

I know I'm generalising a bit (and I should point out that I'm not ranting—the whole thing amuses me more than anything else), and of course I'm only accounting for half of the issue here, wherein something becomes "cool" (how the place ends up being ultimately stormed into by the entire Brazilian population is a problem I honestly haven't thought about much). But this is really how it starts, every time.

Now, why Badoo is popular is an entirely different question. I've no idea. Then again, to call it fringe is to elect a mainstream alternative: from my understanding of the article, Badoo IS the mainstream location-based dating site, isn't it?

Badoo is big in France, Spain, Italy - how much more Western Europe can it get?

Maybe because they are fringe networks, and the first thing new users find isn´t a very large community already established around the english language?

I'm registered but never used it, I wonder if those million members are really active..

At least here in South America, yes they are (and I've used it, and it works).

The nice thing is, it's not "competition" for Facebook as they serve different needs (and markets).

I'm French and this is honestly the very first time I ever heard of this service. I'm not in the target audience, but 8 million users in France? Riiiiiight, that's more than 13% of our total population, roughly 20% of all French internet users, or one Facebook user in three. It's roughly equal to sum of the population of the top 3 to 10 most populated cities in the country along with their whole urban surroundings, or 2/3rd of the population of Paris.

This figure makes no sense to me. Even assuming it's targetting a very specific population that I share no connection to, it's still a ridiculous figure. The biggest (in revenue) dating website in France (and apparently, in Europe, too) is Meetic. It had less than a million registered users in december 2010 in total, including other companies in the group.

After a quick search on independent consumer satisfaction services, turns out there are a lot of people whose accounts were created through fishing or the likes, or even without consent. Just by reading the tons of user comments, this really looks like a major scammy, fishy, spammy and illegal service (illegal at least in France, since it refuses to comply to our Privacy & Freedom directives).

There are some satisfied comments, too, so this service probably works well enough in some ways, I just can't take these figures at face value.

I personally know multiple, sad people who maintain 10+ fake facebook acoounts in order to create fake images of themselves. I can easily imagine really high rates of those people in such a network. Especially if there is nobody trying to avoid this kind of accounts.

I don't know if there is any benefit you could get by having many accounts, but if there is, I'm really sure it is used a lot.

I know a lot of people that have multiple Facebook accounts, some are kids that want to push different updates to different people for example, or a "games" account.

Others are men with a "dating" account and a "family" account.

I guess the same happens in Badoo. Also, they must have a lot of dead accounts and count them (much like Microsoft does).

Their numbers do seem inflated, I don't know how much (50%? 100%?). I'm their active users must be at least an order of magnitude lower (my own account is inactive at the moment).

This is my feeling too.

Their 'keep up' mails are also a beauty: "Check out those 2934 females that likes your profile" ( i'm not making up the number )

This website should be down, if only for environmental reasons u_u;

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.

Single page version for the lazy: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/features/sex...

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

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."

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

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.

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.

That's what okcupid and other dating sites are for though. A huge part of Badoo is facilitating casual hookups for which it works really well.

So what's the advantage to Badoo over its free alternatives like Plenty of Fish?

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

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.

then okcupid.

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.

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.

Good for you.

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.

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...

Money, money, money.

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