Jump to content

Badoo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jkofron4 (talk | contribs) at 23:01, 7 June 2012 (→‎References). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Badoo
badoo logo
Type of site
Social network service
Available inDutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Slovak, Czech, Indonesian, Turkish, Hungarian, Hebrew
Owner332 Agiou Andreou Street, "Patrician Chambers", 3035 Limassol, Cyprus.[1]
URLbadoo.com
Commercialfree, but with a charge for higher prominence
Registrationyes
Users151+ million[2] (April 2012)

Badoo is a dating-focused[4] social discovery website, founded in 2006. [5] It is managed out of its Soho, London headquarters[6] but owned by a company in Cyprus and ultimately by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev.[1][7][8]

The site operates in 180 countries[9] and is most active in Latin America, Spain, Italy and France.[10] Badoo ranks as the 52nd most popular site in France and the 117th globally, according to Alexa Internet.[11] In July 2011, Badoo.com ranked as the 59th most visited website in the world with 46 million Unique Visitors per month, ahead of CNN.com in 60th position.[12] Badoo grows by 150,000 new registrations per day.[13]

In a peer-reviewed study of 2009,[14] it was given the lowest score for privacy among 45 social networking sites examined.[15]

History

Badoo was founded by serial entrepreneur Andrey Andreev and launched in London in November 2006.[16]

In January 2008, the Russian investor Finam Capital paid US$30 million for a 10% stake in Badoo. The funding will be used to build Badoo in Russia, where the social networking market is beginning to grow.[17] As of 2009, Finam now has 20% ownership of Badoo.[16]

In September 2011, The Economist wrote an article explaining how Badoo has a shot at becoming "one of Europe’s leading internet firms" and that Badoo seems to have discovered a large new market.[18]

As of November 2011 Badoo claims to have over 130 million registered users [19] of which 6 million are from the US.[20] According to their website faq, Badoo claims to employ over 200 people internationally.[21] In April 2011 Badoo was threatened by Facebook with an audit and potential removal if it didn't make its Facebook app less viral.[22] According to Insidefacebook.com, during the week of January 11th, Badoo was ranked 17th in growing facebook apps. [23]


Badoo held its official USA launch on March 23, 2012 with Nick Cannon helping to introduce the service in the US.[24]

In April 2012, the company entered into a marketing agreement with the site Hot or Not to display its members in the companies service.[25]


On April 19, 2012, Badoo announced it had appointed long-time Google executive Benjamin Ling as Chief Operating Officer to push its mobile and web platforms and US growth.[26]

In May 2012, the company announced it had exceeded 150 million registered users.[27]

Media reception

In 2008, Badoo was profiled in the PDA blog of The Guardian.[28]

According to TopTenReviews Badoo is "like a chat room, dating site and picture rating site disguised as a social network." It was noted Badoo did not offer any group or other type of community to facilitate users meeting similar people.[29]

As of April 2011 it is censored in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. Techcrunch reports that as of January 2010, access to Badoo in Iran is blocked by the Iranian government.[30]

Web of trust, the community-based website reputation ratings tool rated the site as trustworthy but with a risk of spam and phishing.[31]

Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reported that numerous Badoo profiles have been created without people's consent, and that people have reported Badoo's actions to the police.[32] The same article states there are images of women in hospital just after giving birth, raising suspicions about whether one would willingly upload such images to a dating service.[32] It also states that Badoo may use several Facebook applications to automatically gather Facebook users' personal information.[32]

This article has been the object of edit wars. Criticisms of badoo cited from online media sources have been regularly deleted and replaced with optimistic predictions. Newspapers, blogs and webpages alleging spamming, datamining, spyware and premade profiles stolen from other data sources are usually deleted/discredited as personal point of views by self described badoo public relations staff or unregistered users whose only wiki edits are badoo promotional views. See the link to a talk page or page history for more information.

In April 2011 Wired magazine carried a feature on the website and its founder.[8]

Open source

Badoo has released several pieces of software under an open source licence, including various improvements to the PHP scripting language, the Pinba real time statistics server, and the Blitz template engine.[33]

Michael Keane, Head of Legal for Badoo, stated "Over the next six to 12 months the changes in cookies will be big for us, and we've also had a geo-location facility set up. Facebook did a check-in facility which allowed you to work out people's behavioural patterns, but we're more concerned about the safety of our users."[34]

Revenue

Badoo is a Freemium web site and generates income through a "Rise Up" feature which allows users to pay to have their profile given more prominence on the site for a limited time. In the end of 2007, it was reported that 20% of Badoo's then 22 million users accessed this function once a month.[35] Lloyd Price, Director of Marketing for Badoo, stated "We expect to hit 140 million users by the end of 2011, continue to generate USD $100m + in gross consumer spend per year and expand worldwide." [36]

Spam

Badoo reportedly sends spam messages to all email addresses it can find through its users, without user consent. The messages have the following content:

Firstname Lastname left a message for you...
Its sender and content will be shown only to you and you can delete it at any time. You can instantly reply to it, using the message exchange system. To find out what's in the message, just follow this link:

References

  1. ^ a b Badoo – Terms of Use Accessed August 2009.
  2. ^ Meet New People on Badoo, Make Friends, Chat, Flirt. Badoo.com. Retrieved on 8 May 2012.
  3. ^ "Badoo.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2012-06-02.
  4. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/04/badabing-badaboom-badoo-hits-150-million-users-boosted-by-mobile/
  5. ^ http://eu.techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/hey-tagged-badoo-has-been-around-as-long-and-has-bigger-revenues/
  6. ^ "Another Russian IPO?". paidContent.org. Retrieved 2010-11-18.
  7. ^ Badoo Privacy Policy 28 Aug 2009.
  8. ^ a b How Badoo built a billion-pound social network... on sex by David Rowan, Wired Magazine, 06 April 11. Accessed April 2011.
  9. ^ Rooney, Ben (2012-01-24). "A Very Social Network". The Wall Street Journal.
  10. ^ "Google.com". Retrieved 2010-08-31.
  11. ^ "Alexa Internet report on Badoo". Retrieved 2010-05-17.
  12. ^ "Top 1000 sites – DoubleClick Ad Planner". Google. 2011. Retrieved 4 October 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  13. ^ Rushton, Katherine (2012-03-04). "Badoo - the matchmaker from Russia with love". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  14. ^ Bonneau, Joseph; Preibusch, Sören (2009), "The Privacy Jungle: On the Market for Privacy in Social Networks" (PDF), WEIS '09: Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security.
  15. ^ Social networks ‘failing users’ The Daily Telegraph 21 Jul 2009.
  16. ^ a b "Project Portfolio – Badoo". Finam Capital. 2009. Retrieved 2011-02-10.
  17. ^ Butcher, Mike (21 January 2008). "UK's Badoo pulls $30m for Russian launch, ahead of a home push". Techcrunch. Retrieved 2009-08-29.
  18. ^ "Social networking: A nightclub on your smartphone". The Economist. 19 September 2011. Retrieved 4 October 2011. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  19. ^ "World's largest meeting network passes 130m user milestone". Badoo press release. 3 November 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-07.
  20. ^ http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57383368-250/badoo-social-experiment-or-hookup-site/
  21. ^ "Badoo". Retrieved 2011-03-23.
  22. ^ www.businessinsider.com/badoo-facebook-2011-4.
  23. ^ Calderon Inés, Sara January 11, 2012. “Spotify, Yahoo, Bing, Badoo and more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU.” http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/01/11/spotify-yahoo-bing-badoo-and-more-on-this-week%E2%80%99s-top-20-growing-facebook-apps-by-dau/
  24. ^ http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/badoo-us/#55251Badoo-Project-in-New-York-City
  25. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/has-dating-site-badoo-found-a-love-match-in-the-form-of-hotornot/
  26. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/badoo-hires-google-exec-as-new-coo-to-push-its-platforms-and-us-growth/
  27. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/04/badabing-badaboom-badoo-hits-150-million-users-boosted-by-mobile/
  28. ^ Kiss, Jemima (March 5, 2008). "Elevator Pitch: Why Badoo wants to be the next word in social networking!". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2010-08-31.
  29. ^ "Social Networking Websites Review – Badoo". TopTenREVIEWS. 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-29.
  30. ^ Butcher, Mike (January 5, 2010). "No flirting! Social network Badoo is banned in Iran". Techcrunch. Retrieved 2009-01-06.
  31. ^ "WOT Reputation Scorecard". Web of Trust. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
  32. ^ a b c "Treffipalvelu varastaa profiilitiedot: Varo tätä sovellusta Facebookissa" (in Finnish). Iltalehti. 21 January 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-25. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  33. ^ "Badoo Developer Zone". Retrieved 2010-08-31.
  34. ^ "Social worker: Michelle Kennedy, Badoo". The Lawyer. 12 September 2011. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
  35. ^ Elevator Pitch: Why Badoo wants to be the next word in social networking, Mark Sweney, The Guardian, December 24, 2007 , Accessed March 2008.
  36. ^ "Badoo, Not Just For Teens Who Want To Hook Up, Hits 122 Million Users". BusinessInsider. 25 July 2011. Retrieved 19 October 2011. 
37. http://www.actian.com/newsroom/press/badoo
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Badoo&oldid=496516755"