THE NEXT WEB – July 17 - For microblogging, there’s Twitter, whilst Facebook is where you keep in touch with friends. LinkedIn is best kept for business acquaintances. Google+ seems to straddle a line somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn and it’s too early to say on which side it will eventually fall. What about SNS for people you don’t know? This is where the story of Badoo begins. Badoo was launched in London in 2006 by Russian serial entrepreneur Andrei Andreyev. His other ventures include SpyLog, Begun and Mamba. There’s a good chance you associate Badoo with dating, but this is an image the company is feverishly attempting to rid itself of. There’s two reasons. Online dating still has some negative associations. And secondly, not everyone is necessarily interested in dating – some people simply want to meet new people. You go to Badoo and connect with others in the area. It could be for drinks, dancing or a game. Today Badoo has 121M members in 180 countries, a turnover of ~$100M.
Category: Badoo
Badoo Is Facebook’s Fastest Growing Application
ALL FACEBOOK – June 26 – Badoo is claiming the top spot on this week’s fastest growing applications list. Dating applications make a tremendous impression on this week’s countdown.
The Week’s Fastest Growing Dating Apps On Facebook
Name Daily Active Users Monthly Active Users Weekly Growth
1. Badoo 3,095,520 33,156,471 5,794,887
6. Amor 679,127 8,369,702 1,904,952
8. YouLike 321,740 3,454,530 1,560,244
14. Cupid 497,183 8,788,709 921,046
by Brian Ward
The full article was originally published at All Facebook, but is no longer available.
Badoo Built A Billion-pound Social Network… On Sex
WIRED.CO.UK – Apr 25 – – Apr 25 – Badoo is a 120M-member social network that's adding ~300K users a day. Its Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570K new daily users, making it the 3rd biggest app, after FarmVille and CityVille. Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free network is a mass phenomenon in Brazil (14.1M members), Mexico (9M), France (8.2M), Spain (6.5M) and Italy (6M). Andrey Andreev founded Badoo and highly profitable Russian internet businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Badoo launched in 2006 in Spain, where Andreev was living, as a photo-sharing site. The site wasn't generating revenue, but was growing sharply. In 2008, Andreev refocused the site on meeting new people. He introduced premium services. You could pay a dollar or euro to "rise up" the search results. In 2009, the site had 48M users and 20% were paying to boost their profile. Badoo Mobile launched on the iPhone and Android and was downloaded 1.5M times in 8 months. Forbes Russia put Andreev in the top 30 successful businessmen in Russia.
by David Rowan
See full article at Wired
Mark Brooks: $2 billion! Kthud! (fell off chair). There's hope and money and prospects left in the idating industry yet. 😉
A New Kind Of Love Story
AD WEEK – May 3 – Not so long ago, you’d assume that a girl alone at a bar on a Friday night, furiously thumbing her smartphone, had been stood up. Now, thanks to apps like meetMoi NOW, SinglesAroundMe, and Skout, she could just be planning her evening’s assignation. While dating sites sift and sort according to compatibility, apps pre-screen for something else: instant availability. There’s another name for the inefficiency these apps eliminate: courtship. They might dance around it, but what the apps are really offering is the ability to order up sex on demand. One of the pioneering location-based apps is Grindr. Launched in 2009, it allows gay men to locate other nearby users. It claims ~1M users. The developers of Badoo, Facebook’s fastest-growing third-party app, liken its ambiance to a club. Friend.ly makes the search for love a more convivial experience by quizzing users about friends and interests. It has ~4M monthly active users. Among the newer apps is Singlesquare, a Foursquare offshoot launched in Jan.
by Hephzibah Anderson
See full article at Ad Week
Mark Brooks: Finally, location aware apps are gaining significant traction. Facebook has driven people to be more willing to share private info. The tech is now mature. Apple has driven the smart phone into ubiquity. iDating will morph considerably now.
(Full Disclosure: Friend.ly is a former client of Courtland Brooks)
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Badoo: Global Online Dating Sensation
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK – Apr 12 - Badoo, the social network that replaces the supposed romance of online dating with instant hook-ups based on physical attraction, is now gaining some ground in the UK. Although the service is run from London, its current membership of 113M consists predominantly of users in Brazil, Spain, France and Italy and 300K people join daily. The site was founded in 2006 by now very rich Russian businessman, Andrey Andreev. The killer feature driving Badoo's success is location.
Badoo: Fastest Growing App On Facebook
FINANCIAL TIMES – Mar 20 – Badoo, a “social dating” service that helps people to meet new friends online, has become one of the fastest-growing apps on Facebook, this week overtaking Zynga’s popular Farmville game in terms of user numbers. The service is little-known in English-speaking countries, but has become very popular in continental Europe and Latin America, where millions of people use it for online flirting, often leading to offline encounters. “Facebook is about my friends. Badoo is about meeting and discovering other people,” says Bart Swanson, a former Amazon executive who joined Badoo as its COO in September. Badoo, founded in Spain in 2006 by Andrei Andreyev, a Russian entrepreneur, now has its headquarters in London. Badoo's Facebook app now has ~50M monthly active users, according to AppData, adding 1M people every day.
Athens Ranked As Most Flirtatious City By Badoo.com
REUTERS – Mar 1 – Athens topped a “World Flirtation League,” which ranked cities by the number of online flirtations initiated per month by the average user in each on Badoo.com. Moscow came second, while Rome placed 8th and Madrid 31st, Paris 38th, London 57th, Berlin 79th, and New York 89th in the study of nearly 200 cities across the world in which Badoo analysed 12M flirtatious contacts made during a month, with 108M users chatting and flirting in 180 countries.
by Paul Casciato
The full article was originally published at Vancouver Sun, but is no longer available.
Does Online Flirting Predict Offline Revolution?
PR NEWSWIRE – Feb 17 – While researching something else entirely, Badoo has discovered evidence of a striking correlation between online flirting and offline protest. "We were compiling a league table of the most flirtatious cities in each continent," explains Lloyd Price, Badoo's Director of Marketing, "ranking cities by the number of online flirtations initiated per month by their average Badoo user." Interestingly enough, the most flirtatious African city Tunis. Cairo was Africa's third most flirtatious city. And Africa's 2nd most flirtatious city is Algiers. One answer might simply be age. Badoo's users in North Africa are predominantly "Generation Y", in their twenties and thirties, like those spearheading the protests. And these protesters are wired.
The full article was originally published at Business Insider, but is no longer available.
Social Media Sites May Be Ready For Romance
CNBC – Feb 8 - Dating has always been a “social” activity, but could social networks win over the dating crowd? “To some degree the answer is yes,” says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at the NPD Group. Social networking could solve many of the complaints of traditional dating sites he says. “It can be almost like a full time jon", says Cohen. “People need to weed through the potential matches and that’s a big investment of time.” Facebook could have an advantage over dating sites, because love can be found when you’re not even looking for it. And then there are the companies that are adding the love element. The Facebook app Are you Interested reportedly has ~13M users, which rivals the number of users for Match.com and eHarmony. This month Badoo.com announced that it has passed 100M users, mixing social networking and online dating. FULL ARTICLE @ CNBC
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Badoo Has Reached The 100 Million User Mark
MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT – Jan 26 – Social dating company Badoo has reached the 100 million user mark with 300,000 new users per day. The four year-old start-up is a global, multi-lingual, location-based, social dating network, focused on chatting, flirting and meeting new people. Badoo is available in 180 countries and its site receives 7 billion page views per month. Badoo's Facebook app is used by over 23 million people per month and ranks seventh in the top 10 of all Facebook apps. “The first and biggest shift is from ‘marital dating’ to ‘social dating’ or casual dating”, says Bart Swanson, Badoo's COO.
The full article was originally published at Mobile Entertainment, but is no longer available.