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