Russians Invest $30 Million in Social Networking Site Badoo
Erick Schonfeld
24 comments »
International social networking site Badoo, just got a $300 million valuation from new Russian investors. TechCrunch UK has the details:
Russian investor Finam has put $30m into UK-based social network Badoo for a 10% stake. The money is to build the service in Russia, where social networking market has reached around 10 million users in January.Badoo’s social networking site with photo and video sharing has 12.7 million registered accounts, mostly in Latin America and Continental Europe. Badoo was launched from London in November 2006 and was the number two fastest rising search term on the Google Zeitgeist list for 2007. It will go up against several other russian sites including Odnoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte.ru and Moikrug.ru which have all attracted several million users each. And now the Russian version of MySpace, which launched only last week.
Badoo’s main pitch is that it carries no advertising, avoiding the kinds of issues Facebook had with Beacon. Instead, Badoo derives its main revenue from offering users the chance to pay to be popular. Instead, Badoo derives its main revenue from offering users the chance to pay to be popular.
comScore shows erratic swings in worldwide traffic, peaking last June at 11.2 million unique visitors, and now at 5.7 million as of December:
(Quintura CEO Yakov Sadchikov has more here).
Social networking services outside US getting attention starting 2008…
little typo: you put $30mil in your title, but $300mil in your body… which is it? heh
$30M investment, $300M valuation
It’s not a typo. “Russian investor Finam has put $30m into UK-based social network Badoo for a 10% stake.”
whether its 300 or 30 author should make clearer statements.
a more valid query point is, why the sentence of
appeared twice…
Pay to be popular? Do people really need attention that badly?
i think this site is FULL of fake profiles. i just did a search now and was suprised to find:
1) Same profile pictures appearing on people with different names. And I’m not talking glamour shots here, actually normal people head and shoulders. These two lovely ladies are almost identical, except for their weight:
http://096504732.badoo.com/?r=Z_99&p=90
http://096546328.badoo.com/?r=QyZ4&p=37
There are *lots* like that if you look closely. May be good idea to screenshot a few before they start changing them.
2) Many of the little descriptions seem templated.
“The one thing I would like to say is I love going outdoors and camping. Everything smells so fresh! Drop me a line sometime.”
“The one thing I would like to say is I’m shy at first, but once you get to know me, I’m a really fun person to be around. Message me if you wanna talk :)”
“The one thing I would like to say is I love going out and having fun! I especially like having people around while going out. Emails are appreciated :D”
This basically looks like a tactic from them to make it look like there are more users than there really are.
No, seriously, there is something fishy going on here. Spend a few hours, I’m quite sure I could find hundreds of these. There are no links off to 3rd party websites, so it’s certainly not spam - all I can imagine is that these guys are creating fake profiles.
Some more examples:
Morgan and Christian
http://096379080.badoo.com/?r=QyZ16&p=153
http://096412061.badoo.com/?r=QyZ14&p=139
Kara and Susan
http://096472810.badoo.com/?r=QyZ13&p=122
http://096472716.badoo.com/?r=QyZ13&p=124
Melissa and Britney
http://096379007.badoo.com/?r=QyZ16&p=159
http://096379054.badoo.com/?r=QyZ16&p=158
are we censoring our comments now on techcrunch?
i made two comments relating to the fact that many of the profile listings look fake as display pictures appear numerous times for people with different names and there seems to be a very templated description being used across most of the profiles. and when i say fake, i don’t for one minute believe that every profile on the internet is real - but these looked particularly suspicious as in badoo-generated to make the network look fuller.
leave the office, get home and both comments are removed.
what gives?
my bad, must have missed the word ‘valuation’ when i read it. :p
$300million valuation - for what? Finam will have to wait a while to get their $10m back - unless of course AOL, Google or the Dark Side give them an exit.
mike bartlett, youre not being paranoid.
we’re just all out to get you.
Badoo is some sort of Facebook for poor people in Latin America
http://www.khaces.com
obvious use case:
pretty girl profile convinces her male friends to pay badoo to make her more popular.
you guys have obviously missed the point: that hot blonde in the picture!
seriously though, look at the profiles on Badoo. Mostly all women, many in model type poses or even in swimwear.
Looks like an adult spam site to me.
seriously though again, someone find out who that blonde is!
Badoo Comment
Badoo is aware that an incident has recently occurred where multiple fake profiles have been placed on the website. This is a common tactic used by outside parties to draw members of social networks to their alternative websites for commercial benefit. These parties have no connection with Badoo. As members of TechCrunch have noticed – these profiles usually feature an attractive photo which tends to grab people’s attention. One particular company has been attempting to use Badoo in this way during the past 48 hours.
Authenticity is key to Badoo; the website would never create fake profiles in an attempt to increase the user base.
We appreciate that this is annoying for our members and we’re doing all we can to resolve the problem. As well as antispam software we have a unit of moderators who work 24/7 to delete inappropriate profiles of this nature. Our developers are constantly developing new software to help eliminate this issue.
I’m colombian and user of badoo , I’ll explain you all how badoo works apparently you just know about your english speaking world.
First of all Badoo is not a facebook for poor people in latin america, that title belongs to Hi5. I see Badoo as a more dating focused service even if they don’t mention it anywere, this is how the site is mostly used, and let me tell you something it’s great at it!!! free, elegant interface, and plenty of people from your country (obviously if you are in latin america or latin europe). The site is not created with the aim of provide an extremely complex way of interaction as facebook does, but it does provide you some excellents and easy tools that allow you to meet the next girl you probably will add as a friend in facebook.
This is how it works: you go to search ,add some basic criteria and click search. The page shows you the girls that recently have used the ‘bring my profile to the top of the list’ option (you need to paid to use this option in some countries) , this basically means that they ARE interested in being found!, you check some girls pics and left them a comment or send them a message through the online instant messaging service, and done, just wait for them to reply and you may find a date for your next weekend.
femme de russie ou ukraine