Comments on: MyYearBook Gunning For Facebook Market

By: Erica Cruz Perez

Erica Cruz Perez — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:42:08 +0000

Hey can i see my class mates picture and stuff of class of 2007 from blythe ca please i relly abousated thank You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: valene

valene — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:07:18 +0000

hey thiz valene andd heyyyyyyy

By: shkayla moore

shkayla moore — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:35:35 +0000

my school has blocked your site and every one is mad. we love my year book and whant it back can u help us??

By: sufe

sufe — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:34:54 +0000

I love MyYearbook.com.

By: txmama

txmama — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:37:07 +0000

MyYearBook is not a site for pre-teen or teens but for adults. The quizzes are structured to as not to sound pornographic in nature but are.
They give a general this site is for 13 years and above or a freshman in high school but the site allows a 1 year old to sign up.
Age does not count and adults have continuously contacted my child.
Microsoft Vista is proving to be a useful tool to lock my child from unsafe sites such as MyYearBook.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:35:56 +0000

I have been a member of Yearbook for a few years, trust me they have the worst customer service I have ever dealt with. They shut down accounts and lock people out of them without giving reasons. Then they complain about space but they have all these deleted accounts sitting there taking up space. Please they need better programmers and a customer service department that actually will answer you.
They need to make it so ppl cannot steal your pic, like other sites do, but on here you can take what you want. I am currently locked out of one of my accounts, as to why,,who knows, they have not answered me.
People who think this is a teen site, need to rethink, this is far from a teen site.

By: Simply Gadgets » Blog Archive » Teen Social Network myYearbook Gets $13 Million

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:24:52 +0000

[...] million unique visitors in June, versus 5.2 million for Bebo and 6.4 million for imeem). When we last wrote about them, there was speculation that the site may have more high school users than Facebook. This [...]

By: Teen Social Network myYearbook Gets $13 Million

Teen Social Network myYearbook Gets $13 Million — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:00:22 +0000

[...] also makes the questionable claim that it is the third largest social network in the US. When we last wrote about them, there was speculation that the site may have more high school users than Facebook. This [...]

By: Sam

Sam — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:28:22 +0000

john must work for facebook. what are you talking about…info sold to porn sites? that’s bull…do you think a top venture firm like USVP would invest $4m in a site doing something sketchy like that?…I’ve been a member of myyearbook for a while and it’s a great site with a lot of great features. I think some of the people making negative comments on this forum have an ax to grind or work for a competing site.

By: john

john — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:22:39 +0000

MyYearBook is CRAP. Once you sign up, your information gets sold to porn companies. You will start getting a LOT of crap from websites that you never visited.

By: socnut

socnut — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:18:11 +0000

http://gigaom.c...och-er-goliath/
had an interesting position on myyearbook.com, but more interesting were some of the replies. copied one below. it’s kinda outdated (and a little angry) but does have some relevant history.

Jason L. Baptiste11 on March 5th, 2006 at 12:35 PM – Permalink
Look, this myyearbook boondoggle is getting out of hand.

These kids did not launch a succesful social network by any means. The site simply took over another domain name that had a lot of traffic already by doing dating/”what kind of person am I” tests.

If you look at the wikipedia entry, you can see that it “merged” with zenhex.
http://en.wikip.../MyYearbook.com

If you look at the traffic, you can see that the switchover from zenhex to myyearbook did not dramatically increase traffic. And given that there a lot more pages to look at on myyearbook than zenhex, if the number of users stayed consistent, traffic should have gone up more than this.

Anyone that has anything to say about myyearbook should really look at this graph first:

http://www.alex...=zenhex.com#top

When you take into account all of the mainstream press myyearbook has gotten, it is clear that the real traffic growth from real users has been a dramatic failure. Look at all of the people linking to them. Where is the real usage on there?

So let’s see, they switched a succesful site to a crappy social network and their real traffic went down. And people are suggesting they can take down MySpace and Facebook. Ha.

I think this is a perfect example of reporters/pundits that are too old to “get it” knowing that they don’t “get it” and just buying into the hype without digging too deep. Could a wireless networking startup get away with this kind of crap?

So the moral of the story is: build a succesful site doing something simple that people will like, such as free dating tests. Them find a hot/flavor of the month space to get into, and switch the domain name to point from the original site to the new one. Your alexa for the new site will go through the roof and you will hoodwink a lot of people that should know better.

By: pippen

pippen — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:26:30 +0000

I am still confuse about how they are making money.
Does anybody actually know how much money myyearbook.com, myspace.com, and facebook.com are making from advertising? What type of advertisments do they use and how much do they charge?

By: Patton

Patton — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 04:44:52 +0000

“myYearbook is free to register. For every registrant you refer, we will pay you $1.00. Because the site is free, and easy to sign up, we convert 30 – 75% of the clicks that come to the site. To get started making money, join the affiliate program here.”

http://www.myye...nJlZmVycmVyPTA=

Wonder how much they paid out to date?

By: Pdawg

Pdawg — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:33:18 +0000

Here’s a better chart – http://www.alex....com+tagged.com

Hi5 is seeing alot of international growth. bebo.com and tagged.com are moving solidly along. bebo strong in the UK. tagged mostly going after myspace users. myyearbook.com, as good of a site it is, and i do feel it’s superior to myspace.com, has flat growth. it appeals to a very narrow spectrum. their marketing is probably week due to their ‘white knight/no ads’ philosophy. this must kill their bottom line as well.

By: Rajeev Vashisht

Rajeev Vashisht — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:16:02 +0000

Capital used judiciously can grow dramatically, hope more entrepreneurship results in more economic growth of US.

Cool Info.

http://blogs.ib...echnicalJournal

By: Darren

Darren — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:57:03 +0000

Kinda unrelated but is the word MY replacing r at the end as new in thing to add to a start ups website address?

By: Drama 2.0

Drama 2.0 — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:45:06 +0000

O: Of course it’s good they got funding. Now they’ll be able to afford continued advertising on your sites.

Whatever happened to the good old days of social networking when these things (allegedly) grew with $0 spent on marketing? One of the key points people often make is that Web 2.0 companies, unlike their Web 1.0 counterparts, have little to no marketing expenditures and grow virally. MyYearBook is buying advertising, paying affiliates for generating signups, etc. Seems like their marketing strategy is more Web 1.0 than Web 2.0. Maybe it can work, but given the fairly ineffective monetization most of these sites have been able to achieve, there’s a real risk that if the cost of user acquisition is much greater than $0 you might lose money fairly easily. We know MySpace has monetized fairly well, and Facebook to some extent too, but those are first-tier social networks and all the data indicates that MyYearBook is not in the same class.

By: O

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:17:03 +0000

I’ve sold the guys at MyYearbook advertising space on one of my site and I’ve negotiated with the younger brother on it. I had to get his older bro to sign the contract so it’d be legal, but the younger bro is definitely involved. It’s quite impressive what these two kids have made in such a short time. It might not be as good as Facebook (or even MySpace), but their target audience really likes it. Good for them getting funding!

By: Drama 2.0

Drama 2.0 — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:52:40 +0000

Yeah the numbers on these things are often suspect and you hear different “rumors” all the time. I suppose that if they’ve been around this long and are now taking $4.1 million from somebody other than rich older brother, they’re not making huge amounts of money. It appears that they run an affiliate program that pays $1 for every user that you get to sign up, so not every user is coming organically or free, and these types of affiliate programs where you can get paid for free signups are often a great attraction for fraudsters, so who knows how many registrations are legitimate, active users.

Doesn’t look a great investment when you compare it to sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc.:

http://www.alex...be.com+bebo.com

Obviously Alexa isn’t perfect but I definitely think this is probably one of those sites that’s more hype than substance and offers a lot less value to a media company as an acquisition than quite a few other social networks that could be on the market.

By: carmen

carmen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:52:33 +0000

the name paints them into a corner – branding 101

By: Harrynack

Harrynack — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:11:29 +0000

hmmm, their alexa chart is nosediving… for a site with that level of traffic i think one can assume that alexa is at least somewhat accurate.

also, the huge jump late 05 and subsequent slide doesnt suggest “organic growth” as the founder is claiming. i wonder what their real numbers look like.

By: Yakito

Yakito — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:43:48 +0000

I just don’t understand how sites like this keep coming and getting money.. they are old stuff, nothing new, there are many big ideas out there looking for funding and the money keeps always going to the same place… I really doubt they have 1.500.000 users.. and if they do, then they must be doing really good niche marketing because I have never ever hear/read of them.

By: carmen

carmen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:43:39 +0000

of which chicken and egg problem do you speak? you might as well assume the web is AOL or Prodigy’s proprietary app if you mean what i think you do – theres no reason social networks can’t span sites. this is the web afterall, not ‘highway-connected-silos’. LiveJournal and Tribe already offers their user data as FOAF

By: Brian Breslin

Brian Breslin — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:33:17 +0000

I think they needa use some of that $4mil to hire some designers. The hotpink on blue navigation hurt my eyes. I agree with Michelle’s thoughts of it being a marketing ploy. most likely right. The brother also said he threw in 250k of his own money. Thats a good amount to start something like this. using the kids as the hosts is an all around smart move. Problem this site faces, just like all the other HS oriented ones is, kids leave the site after they graduate, so there is a 4 year window there, and thats it. Facebook has overcome this challenge, but i don’t see myyearbook having this strength.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:16:04 +0000

I’m really surprised that there’s still room in the market for another major player alongside Facebook and MySpace. Especially considering the chicken and egg problem that’s so critical for social networks.

I’m pretty surprised they bagged 4.1 million, kudos to them!