Social networking service Tagged, Inc. announced it has acquired the social game network hi5 today, doubling Tagged’s monthly active users to 20 million. The combination will also increase the total number of registered users to 330 million, up from 100 million.
According to The WSJ’s report, the deal’s terms were not disclosed, but include the hi5 website and user base. → Read More
Tagged, the San Francisco-based social network that is most notable because of its ability to grow profitably during the Facebook era, has closed its first acquisition. dotSyntax, the corporation that created the popular Digsby instant messaging and social client, is now part of Tagged. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but all seven dotSyntax employees will join Tagged.
Tagged CEO Greg Tseng says that they intend to keep the Digsby software as a standalone product, and also incorporate features into Tagged over time. Says Tseng: “They have expertise and technology in real-time communications which we want to use to push into instant messaging, group chat, video chat, etc. IM is our most requested feature on Tagged.”
Digsby has 3 million registered users today (Tagged has over 100 million), and the company has raised $500,000 in funding. → Read More
“Tish Whitcraft recently joined MySpace as SVP of Customer Care responsible for delivering a world-class user experience to the 250 million + MySpace users,” the company said in mid 2008 when Whitcraft, a seasoned big company executive, joined the team. Now, three years later Whitcraft joins countless other MySpace execs, and about 190 million of those 250 million users, and leaves.
She’s joining Tagged, a social network that has somehow survived, and even thrived, in a Facebook world. Her first day at Tagged as Chief Customer Officer is on Monday morning.
Part of her job will be what CEO Greg Tseng is calling “onshoring” of a bunch of customer service jobs. Fifty customer service reps working with Tagged in India as contractors will be let go, and the company will be replacing them with new full time employee hires in San Francisco. → Read More
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. → Read More
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Greg Tseng, who co-founded Tagged in October 2004 and has served as Chief Executive Officer since its inception. He has been a driving force in creating Tagged.com with his partner, co-founder and long-time friend, Johann Schleier-Smith.
In September, I gave a candid update on Tagged in a video interview with Michael Arrington, discussing how we’d launched one of the original social networks in 2004 and competed for three years but did not win. How in 2007 we made the decision to differentiate by pivoting to social discovery, and how since then we’ve built a great product for meeting new people, become a profitable business and now operate a leading site for discovering new relationships. → Read More
Heard of Tagged? Back in 2005 it was a teenager-only social network, catering primarily to U.S. high school students as Facebook charged through the college crowds. By 2007 they were profitable and worth over $100 million.
Just one problem though. Facebook eventually started letting high school students in, and then everyone else. Tagged responded by opening up to everyone, too. But by mid 2007, CEO Greg Tseng tells me, Tagged knew it was in trouble.
“Facebook beat us,” he said. “We were just another social network…but not in the top five.” → Read More
Social networking company Tagged.com has been awarded more than $200,000 in a default judgment against Erik Vogeler, who spammed thousands of Tagged members by sending them unsolicited messages with links to an adult dating website.
In a ruling issued earlier this week, a U.S. District Court Judge in the northern district of California found Vogeler guilty of sending messages to 6,079 Tagged users and assessed damages of $25 per violation for a total of $151,975. Court also ordered Vogeler to pay Tagged $50,000 in attorneys’ fees and to cease sending commercial emails through Tagged.com. → Read More
Harsh words from peHUB yesterday about social networking site Tagged. They took an article complaining about invitation spam and drew a line practically putting the company into the deadpool. In our opinion, Tagged is actually humming along quite nicely.
On the spam issue: Tagged has always been aggressive about “encouraging” users to add their address book and invite new users. It’s sadly a proven way to get lots of new users, as Plaxo showed to everyone’s dismay earlier this decade by turning invitation spam into an art form. Back in 2007 I noted that Tagged was very aggressive with address book imports: “Tagged is also very aggressive with signing up new users. At registration users are strongly encouraged to invite their entire address book as friends. It’s a highly viral, albeit controversial, way to quickly add lots of new users.”
The fact is though that this is largely standard practice now. Facebook, Microsoft, MySpace, Google, and everyone else encourages users to sign in to their email accounts and invite everyone they know to try out their services.
Tagged definitely went overboard this time, forcing email recipients to open an account just to see pictures. But CEO Greg Tseng told me today they shut it down almost immediately (after a few days) based on user complaints. → Read More
A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the most valuable social network.
We’ve now remodeled social network valuations based on current user numbers and Facebook’s most recent $10 billion valuation. The results are dramatically different.
Based on the original year-old model, if Facebook was worth $15 billion (their then-current valuation), MySpace, with far more U.S. users, was worth nearly $20 billion:
Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We’ve then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We’ve divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132. View the raw data and calculations here.
The U.S., by the way, is only the 4th most valuable market per Internet user, trailing The UK ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144).
What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook, the blue line, is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.
ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well. Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. → Read More
Is MySpace worth $3 billion, or $20 billion? It depends on how you value a user. It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views. I believe an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social network can get out of the user by serving them advertising and other products. That means that, for now, users in a handful of key countries are worth far more in terms of revenue potential than those in the rest of the world. We’ve begun to build out a model that looks at social network usage by country/region and compares that to available data on total Internet advertising spend in each of those countries. The model is then able to turn an apples-to-oranges comparison into an apples-to-apples comparison. The early results are surprising. The ultimate financial value of any asset is, ultimately, what the market will pay for it. We have only a few data points to help us: Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn are worth $15 billion, $850 million and $1 billion, respectively, based on relatively recent valuations (although only Bebo was actually sold completely; Facebook and LinkedIn raised investments at those valuations). The last valuation of MySpace was just $580 million, back in 2005 when it was acquired by News Corp. Which valuation is most “correct?” It’s hard to say based on the data that’s been available to date, which is mostly just aggregate page view and unique visitor numbers from Comscore and other services. Based on worldwide unique visitors, for example, Facebook recently overtook MySpace to become the “largest” social network. According to raw worldwide user number, the biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo, in that order. But when you apply the model that we’ve created below, which takes into account where users live, the rankings change substantially. MySpace is by far the most valuable social network based on available data. A competitor like Orkut is worth only 1/20th of MySpace, even though it has nearly 1/4 the number of users. Properly Ranking Social Networks Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. → Read More
Bowing to the inevitable, Microsoft took a big step today towards data portability by announcing that Windows Live contacts can now be exported to social networks and other Websites. Its Windows Live Contacts API will work with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Taged, and LinkedIn to start. Members of those social networks will be able to import their Windows Live contacts (i.e., their Hotmail address book) so that they can more easily find or invite those people into their social networks. Microsoft is also launching a site, Invite2Messenger, for importing social networking contacts into Windows Live. Right now that only works with Facebook. Although Microsoft is part of the Data Portability Workgroup, this is a separate effort, confirms a spokesperson. So much for industry standards. But this is an important step in allowing people to take their contacts with them no matter where they reside, whether in their email or social networks. Instead of startups scraping Hotmail to ingest contacts, now they have a legitimate way of doing so. In a way, this is a bit of a catch-up move. You can already import contacts easily from Gmail into services such as Facebook, Friendfeed and others. Maybe Microsoft had a touch of Gmail envy or were concerned about being left behind. At a certain point, an email service that doesn’t let you export your contacts could really be a damper on your social life elsewhere on the Web. → Read More
Today, Web-based IM and chat room provider Meebo is releasing full-fledged APIs for its Meebo Rooms that will allow Websites to embed chat functionality in an automated fashion. Currently, Meebo Rooms can be embedded on sites or blogs manually by pasting in the appropriate code, which has already led to a proliferation of such widgets. There are more than 200,000 Meebo Rooms, attracting millions of visitors a month. (See our previous coverage here and here). Explains Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg: Now, the servers of our partners can say, “I want to create a room.” It automates the creation process on a server-to-server basis. Also, we will be putting advertising into these rooms. In addition to the APIs, the company is also announcing the Meebo Network, which will serve ads inside Meebo Rooms across the Web, splitting the revenues with the Websites hosting the rooms. Since each Meebo Room is formed around a particular interest, ads can be targeted. And to the extent that sites participating in the network have demographic data on their members, that can be used for ad targeting as well. Only Meebo Rooms created through the API will show ads, not the ones created manually. The launch partners joining the Meebo Network are Piczo, Revision3, RockYou, Social Project, and Tagged. Revision3, for instance, will create a Meebo room on its site where fans can watch a synchronized loop of Web TV shows while chatting. Access to the full APIs and the ad network is by invitation only at this point. Social networks could use the new APIs to automatically add chat rooms to every group page. Rock bands or movie sites could add Meebo Rooms to their sites for visiting fans. Comparisons can be made here to Userplane, a white-label chat service which was bought by AOL in 2006 and powers many of the chat rooms on MySpace. But there are subtle differences. Most notable is the fact that Meebo Rooms can spread anywhere on the Web. Anyone can grab the embed code and put it on their blog or MySpace page as I’ve done below. Notes Sternberg: A user cannot take a room off of MySpace and throw it somewhere else. We have all our rooms networked. A user can take the CBS Jericho room, and throw it on their WordPress blog. Our chat rooms are networked versus islands within Websites. It is very hard to → Read More
Word about social network Hi5′s $20 million financing leaked earlier today. But that isn’t it for social networking funding news. We hear it from a good source, but without confirmation by the company, that Tagged has raised its own $15 million round, on a $102 million pre-money valuation. We do not know who made the investment. This is Tagged’s third round of financing. They previously raised two rounds – $1.5 from angel investors in September 2005, and $7 million from Mayfield three months later. Like Hi5, Tagged is profitable. Back in May they were adding more new users per day – 350,000 – than MySpace. With nearly $1 billion in venture capital invested in new web startups from April – June 2007 alone, its clear that silicon valley is rolling in money again. With all the hype around Facebook, second tier (but still huge) social networks are an easy bet to get big money. Let’s all just hope for a soft landing. → Read More
Silicon Valley based Tagged was a young-teen focused social network that, like Piczo, focused on security of its users first. It is part of a vague second-tier of social networks that assemble under the MySpace/Facebook giants and includes Hi5 (which is fast becoming a first tier player), Bebo, Piczo, Orkut and Friendster. They’ve raised two rounds of financing – $1.5 from angel investors in September 2005, and $7 million from Mayfield three months later. Co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng told me today that the company has reached profitability on $600,000 in monthly revenues, and that user growth has spiked to 350,000 new users per day. That’s well ahead of MySpace, which is currently growing by 250,000 – 300,000 users per day. Comscore shows Tagged spiking nicely compared to the copetitors (the last time we compared the networks was September 2005). Click the image for a large view. There are at least a couple of reasons for the growth. In October 2006 Tagged went from an under-18 site, to allowing users of any age to join. Tagged still has tight security in place for users under 18. For example, profiles for 13 and 14 year olds cannot be viewed by the public or registered users over 16, and profiles for 15-16 year olds are private to non users and users over 18. Older users can still add these youngsters as friends, but they must know their email address or last name to request the friendship, and the younger user must also accept them. Tagged is also very aggressive with signing up new users. At registration users are strongly encouraged to invite their entire address book as friends. It’s a highly viral, albeit controversial, way to quickly add lots of new users. Lots of these new users are sticking around, too. Tseng says that half of their 40 million users are active and have signed in over the last month. Tagged is now generating 1 billion monthly page views (about half of what MySpace does in a day). Tagged is getting serious about revenue growth. The $600k/month they currently generate comes mostly from a search deal with Ask.com and low CPM display ads. The Ask.com partnership may be on the rocks, however. Tseng says the deal is “not performing.” → Read More
San Francisco based Piczo is having a media coming-out party today, with announcements on the current state of the service and key statistics. A few weeks ago CEO Jeremy Verba did the same thing in the UK – which we covered on TechCrunch UK. Piczo is adding 35,000 new member registrations per day, 75% of which are teenagers between 13 and 16 years old. Ten million unique visitors come to Piczo sites monthly, adding up to 2.5 billion page views. While this isn’t much compared to monster competitor MySpace (which serves over 1 billion pages per day), it shows what the power of the network effect can do when applied properly – Piczo hasn’t spent a dime on marketing. And unlike Myspace, Piczo is focused on safety first. It is virtually impossible to browse user pages on Piczo. There is no search or browse feature. Users must share their page URL with others for it to be found, and there are numerous ways for users, parents and others to report inappropriate behavior. Piczo has full time staff reviewing all complaints and takes swift action to protect its members. Piczo was founded in early 2004 as a paid service. Based on early user feedback it was relaunched as a free service, and founder Jim Conning sent out 100 emails to Canadian teenagers announcing the new site. That is where Piczo’s marketing efforts began and, until now, ended. The result of those 100 emails has been a massive viral spread of the product. Piczo brought in a high powered CEO late last year, Jeremy Verba. Verba was previously GM and Vice President of AOL’s Voice Services division, which he grew to over a million subscribers. In addition, he was co-founder and president of E!Online, a joint venture of CNET and E!Entertainment Television, now a part of Comcast. Piczo is well funded after pocketing a total of US$7 million over two rounds of financing from Sierra Ventures and Catamount in 2005 and 2006. The Social Networking Space I thought this was a good opportunity to look up Comscore numbers on the largest social networking players and see how things are evolving (these are U.S. numbers only). MySpace is still the king, with over a billion page views per day, 100 million registered users and 56 million unique visitors per month. If anything, their lead is growing over competitors. But that doesn’t mean there → Read More
Myspace competitor Tagworld will announce a large Series A financing by Draper Fisher Jurvetson sometime today. Tim Draper and Emily Melton will be joining Tagworld’s board of directors. This comes just two weeks after news of competitor Tagged’s $7 million financing by Mayfield was leaked and reported by Matt Marshall. My previous posts on Tagworld are here. → Read More
