I recently over heard someone saying of MySpace – “It used to be dirty, underground, seedy and successful. Now it’s prom at a private school.” The company is struggling to reinvent itself. But traffic continues to plunge. Comscore says they had 80 million worldwide unique visitors in December. They had around 90 million in October before the big redesign. A year ago they had 120 million uniques, says Comscore.
So it’s no surprise they let half their staff go, some 500 people, in early January.
Another, smaller, social network has apparently found a say to be relevant in a Facebook world. San Francisco based Tagged logged revenues of over $30 million in 2010 and are profitable with a staff of 50. We reported on that in late 2010 when I interviewed founder Greg Tseng. They’ve been profitable for the last three years.
And now they’re hiring. In an email to Tagged staff that we’ve obtained, Tseng gave an across the board 10% raise to every full time employee. And he let them know that they intend to double staff from 50 to 100 employees.
How are they doing it? They’re focusing on something Facebook has ignored for the last several years – letting users meet other users on the site. Facebook wants to mirror your real world social graph and doesn’t provide many tools to meet new people. Tagged is all about that, something we discussed extensively in our interview last year.
The email is below.
Dear team,
As announced at today’s team meeting, we have delivered another record year in 2010, increasing revenue to over $30 million and completing our third straight year of profitability!
Who made this happen? WE ALL DID.
So, I am delighted that these results allow me to announce that Tagged will be awarding a 10% raise — across to the board — to every full-time employee effective January 1, 2011. Congratulations!
When the company does well, we all do well, so this is a well-earned reward for everyone. It is also in anticipation of big 2011 plans which will require all of us to contribute 110%.
This year, we aim to increase revenue to over $50 million, double our team from 50 to 100 full-time employees, and have our most productive year ever in product development. These are all important steps toward achieving our mission of enabling anyone to meet and socialize with new people.
I hope you are as excited as I am about 2011 and congratulations again on a record 2010.
Best,
Greg
Tagged is a social network designed for meeting new people. The company was founded in October 2004 by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith. While other social networks focus on existing relationships, Tagged has established the category of social discovery. Tagged has over 300 million members in 220 countries. The company’s service is designed to enable anyone to meet and socialize with new people through social games, customized profiles, virtual gifts, advanced browsing features and more. Co-founders Greg and Johann met at...
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