Spanish language social networking site Sonico is the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of before today. If you haven’t you wouldn’t be alone, it has zero hits in Google News as I write this post.
Buenos Aires based Sonico from FNBox launched in August 2007 with the usual social networking mix of message boards, profiles and networks based on school or workplace. Nothing remarkable, until you look at the numbers.
Sonico now has over 8 million registered users, and has recently launched a Portuguese version as well (so as to cover the rest of South America). According to Alexa the site now ranks at 167, and is in the top 50 sites in Colombia, El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. 
We can only get the worldwide figures from comScore and although it’s still below the leading second tier social networking sites, it’s still placed extremely well for a site that is just 6 months old.
Targeting the South American market is in vogue at the moment with players such as MySpace and Facebook now offering Spanish language versions, and smaller players such as Wamba trying to get a foot hold in a continent that has a growing online user base. Google’s Orkut is already big in Brazil and Hi5 is also popular locally. If their current growth continues Sonico will be a site to watch.
hrmm.. http://news.goo...ar&q=sonico
everything true except for the 6 months old, somewhat.
while sonico itself is only 6 months old, it inherited a bunch of very popular portals about virtual postcards, alerts and other topics that became something.sonic.com. so sonico didn’t acquire all those users and traffic in just six months. it already had a big chunk of them, but under separate brands and domains.
kind of like if now you guys decide to group all TC sites under the TC name: mobile.techcrunch.com, base.techcrunch.com, board.techcrunc.com, your comscore/alexa/whatever ratings would go up and move up even faster…. Hey, maybe you should!
still, those are remarkable numbers for an unknown brand, then again, if you ask some latinos, they probably would go “unknown??? no amigo!!! muy well know aqui!!!”
Hi5 seems to be big for the Caribbean, in particular. I don’t know about the S. America coverage there, but my first contacts on Hi5 came from people from the Caribbean, and they continue to be the biggest users/consumers that I encounter.
Just FYI.
Aviv
The English language version of Google News.
http://news.goo...m/news?q=sonico
Soap
interesting, and I wasn’t aware of that so thx, although I’d note that comScore only first picked it up in October. If it did have pre-existing traffic, it wasn’t big enough for comScore at least, also zero on Alexa pre-August.
51.com (targetting the China market) reportedly has over 10x (ie., 80 Million) registered users according to them (and probably true) — henceforth probably better qualifies for “the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of”
You are right, I’ve never heard of it before reading your article. Looks like Facebook may be too late with it’s alternate language versions
If you are truly looking for “the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of”, you should look at China’s Internet market. http://www.xiaonei.com which is essentially a clone of facebook has more than 18 million users as of 2007-11-23, according to a letter published by the website administrator. At that time, http://www.xiaonei.com was only open for registration by college students in China. Now it is open to high school students as well as working adults. So my estimate is that it should have over 25 million registered users by now.
Well, it’s not a nice “social network” I receive a lot of spam from sonico of unknow people that want to be “friend” with me.
May be the “8 million registered users” are not real.
Well actually it is real. I know some of the people in sonico. Oh by the way I am real.
I suppose http://www.netlog.com is as unknown as sonico but netlog is about 4 times bigger. They are also available in 15 languages.
You are right, I’ve never heard of it before reading your article. Looks like Facebook may be too late with it’s alternate language versions
Great Help
Thank you
Thank you Nice Blog.
actually vkontakte.ru is probably the biggest social network you have never heard of. It is number 43 in Alexa.com and has over 7 million users, half of which log in daily. (It is the number one site in Russia, according to Alexa, and in top five in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazachstan
Your article and perspective are a classic example of your bad journalism. The US-centric tale you weave is not reality, rather your limited view of it. When you find something that was under your radar, why not ask what’s wrong with the radar, instead of expressing your awe. Spanish is the number one mother tongue in the world. Welcome to earth TC!
another crazy thing – russian school and university graduates, friends and mates community “odnoklassniki.ru” (classmates). Just crossed 10m of users and growing with rate of some 1-2m users a month. Already 49 in Alexa ranking.
Si Se Puede!
Si Se Puede!
Si Se Puede!
Si Se Puede!
Si Se Puede!
Si Se Puede!
Should write about nasza-klasa.pl as well, same story but they are huge, 2nd in ireland and 37th in the UK! Started in march it seems.
I like the site, and met the guys who have created it, very smart and good guys, running also other popular websites down here in Argentina,
keep up the good work !
Mariano.
Popular in Cuba? I visited that country in the end of 2005, and back then, Cubans weren’t allowed to use the (international) internet. Has that changed since Raul Castro took over from Fidel?
Just an FYI: there are three countries in South America that don’t speak Spanish or Portuguese: Guyana (English), Suriname (Dutch) and French Guiana (French).
Poor journalism. It took me all of about a minute to discover the true story behind Sonico “the biggest social networking site you’ve probably never heard of”. Ummm actually try.. an already wildly successful Latin web incubator with MASSIVE traffic with numerous successful brands starts to combine them under one brand, Sonico. You blog about it like they came out of no where. Obvious PR puff piece which you half read this morning and got suckered into TechCrunching. Score 1 Sonico.
Hey Duncan, it’s great to see some coverage of sites targeted to spanish-speakers in TechCrunch. There are great web projects on this side of the world but the coverage about them on english-speaking news site is very low, unlike it was back on the bubble-times when projects like Starmedia, Terra and QuePasa made it to the headlines very regularly.
The Social-Network market for spanish-speakers is very fragmented right now: hi5 is very big in south-america, Orkut is huge Brazil, Netlog and Wamba are big in Spain. The are also some projects gaining traction in the US-Latino community like MiGente.com and vostu.com . QuePasa.com (one of the Web 1.0 poster-childs) has also been revived as a Social-Network and is fighting also for the us-Latino market.
Facebook is also gaining traction here, although I think is still quite behind MySpace in terms of user base.
In general the spanish-speaking market kinda late to the Social-network game, so I guess there’s still room in the market since there’s no a clear leader right now (although there’s a lot of competitors).
BTW… I’m trying to take my portion of that market also by launching a social-network in the coming days, although I won’t be starting from scratch because I’m basically transforming an 10-year-old chat and forums network with an existing user-base, into a full fledged Social-Network.
Well, I am glad that Sonico.com finally got coverage on Techcrunch.
One of the main problems that non english websites have is that the international coverage is really poor.
Sonico.com has been working hard to stablish as the biggest social network in spanish, facing a big challenge agains myspace, hi5, orkut and now also facebook.
Sonico.com merges social utility and social entertainment to create a trusted and safe platform of real people and real-life connections from school, university and work.
One of the main differences of Sonico among other social networks is that their users are verified by hand allowing them to protect their privacy by choosing what to share and with whom.
Regarding the “spam” that a users was suggesting, Sonico.com never spam their users. Sometimes members receive some emails as some of their friends invite them to view some pics or challenge them to play some game. But all users have a full “privacy” apart fully configurable to avoid customize or disable the notifications.
Finally, i think would be a great idea to have an International Techcrunch blog to review and talk about projects like http://www.sonico.com or similars all over the world that to get much coverage and are huge in their countries.
If you are intrested in more information about Sonico, their plans for future, stats or request and interview you can contact us at pablo.sueiro at sonico.com
We’ve built our site entirely in english, somehow, probably cause of our friends, we ended up having 37% of our traffic from Brazil, and lots from the rest of latin america.
How do these sites make money when all the good CPC and CPM comes from the US?
Any google adsense like techonology where South American companies are putting their internet advertising budgeting?
Gubatron, there are lot of different alternatives to make money with a social network, its not only the “tradicional” banner impressions or the ppc model.
Sonico.com has been working on a solid and long term business plan. There are different options to monetize a project like this. Some examples are sponsored profile themes, sponsored greetingcards, dynamic layers, sponsored contests and games tournaments and some other value-added services such as ellphone instant recharge with prepaid cards, sponsored discounts from our clients, and more…
There’s a whole new way to advertise and to make a profitable social network keeping a great user experience that is our main priority.
nice
http://www.i-gu....ro/blog/Ro/en/
I always knew…the biggest social networks would come from the Spanish or the Chinese.
http://www.jhat...lerHomePage.htm
It is very important to mention that sonico has a big advantage over other social networks because operating in countries such as mine (Guatemala) they can use the data gathered from its members as they want because of the lack of legislation on that matter.
Alejandro, i guess you never read facebook’s terms and conditions.. they can pretty much do anything with your data, don’t see an advantage there…
Spammico.com you mean?
There’s something very fishy about sonico, their user base seems to be made up, and i say this because i’ve seen the user interaction and site activity and it doesn’t correlate in any way with the numbers the claim to have.Also, they spam their members A LOT. BTW, what can we think about a “big company” whose PR guys can’t even write in proper english? Nice try kids.
Thank’s but i think i’ll stick with facebook or myspace.
Sorry mr. anonymous about my english. As my native language is spanish I might have some grammar mistakes.
On the other hand, It would be great if you can give me some proof about the spam you are talking about.
You probably dont know, but Sonico.com has more than 100 employees in Argentina and this month is opening new officies in Latam and Europe. I think it´s a bit disrespectful to say “what can we think about a “big company” whose PR guys can’t even write in proper english? Nice try kids.” just because you dont agree with the post or because I made a few grammar mistakes.
JP
Actually, if you have dumb enough friends that will send your email just to get invited to send e-cards, then chances are your inbox is being infested with requests that smell like spam…
I do not like it one bit and IMHO i would stay as far away from it as i can.
FYI… This is still a run-on sentence: “If you haven’t you wouldn’t be alone, it has zero hits in Google News as I write this post.”
It should read, “If you haven’t you wouldn’t be alone. It has zero hits in Google News as I write this post.”
Regarding the unknown brands, http://www.odnoklassniki.ru is the largest and fastest growing social network for the entire ex-USSR region. Just over 1.5 years they have attracted more than 12 million users. The region they cover is over 200 million people.
Hey, here is just one example of your spam. But I have many… and in many ways…
But, thats OK, I mean, it worked for hi5, for tagged, now it is working for plaxo… don’t take it personally. There are facts, and there are words… the email below is a fact. Sonico builds its user db spamming people.
Is it really Sonico’s fault? I don’t think so, Sonico and many other companies alike will continue to exist as long as people keep reacting to spam messages. You are telling us that you have 100 employees and are about to open offices around the world. Congratulations! If you sell drugs you will probably be able to do that too… if you understand what I mean…for me its about the how… and not exactly the “how many”
Ana (####@hotmail.com) es un miembro de CumpleAlerta.Sonico.com y desea saber la fecha de tu cumpleaños para recordarlo siempre
Hola!!
Te invito a ingresar tu fecha de cumpleaños en mi calendario de cumplealerta, así podré recordarlo siempre.
Haz click aquí para ingresar tu cumpleaños en mi lista:
http://cumpleal...egar_cumple/Ana
Gracias!!!
Ana
‘Thank’s but i think i’ll stick with facebook or myspace.’
You know, it’s ‘ Thanks ‘ and not ‘ Thank’s ‘. Maybe YOU should learn some English. You could also think about using commas… you know, just because your 3rd grade teacher can’t spot you in the internet doesn’t mean you can f*ck the language up.
So shut up.
That email you are attaching here seems to be a simple invite from a friend. I know that sometimes those kind of emails can be a pain, but are just invites your friends send through the web. I think there is a big difference between that and spamming.
Amén!.
Indeed, that email means Ana wants to know when your bithday is. If you do enter your bithday, she’ll receive a notification on that day so she remembers to say hi.
Hi Spammers!!!, for me it seams like Ana could have manually select or add the destination email address to request some all contact’s birth date.
I don’t see it as a spam example. Maybe Sonico is not spamming, they may be offering to their users a “contact old friend tool” and it´s the user who sends it, not Sonico.
what do you think guys?
I´m an argentinean user from Sonico and also work on the internet industry on Latam.
I must agree with “Spammers” but not in a sense that “Sonico IS making spam”… Sonico is provinding the tools for make that happen.
Those alerts arrive to my inbox everyday, and is REALLY annoying to see that you can´t unsuscribe! THey keep coming, and coming, and coming.
Also, the numbers on the article don´t reflect what’s happening in the real life, where:
- Fotolog is the bigger on the southern countries (argentina, chile, uruguay, etc)
- Orkut is THE king in Brazil
- In the caribbean and northern south america the biggest one is Hi5
I guess Sonico is gaining share from the above sites but, only taking into consideration traffic from the social network, is has a lot to grow yet.
I agree with you Molis
Have you heard about http://www.Metroflog.com?
They are also growing very fast down here in Latam.
I am agree with Juan, Fotolog is huge in Argentina and Chile.
Also you can see Flodeo which is the fotolog from FNBox people.
Hey, don’t forget exiva.com!
http://www.exiva.com
share your life, treasure the privacy
As German says http://www.metroflog.com is quiet interesting, I was under the impression that the success was base on a community of the North of Mexico, but they are very success in LA as well as in Spain. It would be interesting if TechCrunch analyze it.
Well, the people behind Sonico (company called FNBox) are experts at manipulating traffic and claiming millions of registered users (anyone remember when sonico used to say on its homepage only a few months ago that it had 23 million users? it was actually really funny and so Latin American of them! wish i had saved the screenshots), when it fact all they did was merge traffic from their other sites. Here is the proof – notice how in August when Sonico launched all of their sister sites experienced reverse traffic stats (they almost died off!):
http://www.alex...amp;size=Medium
The spikes and falls in Sonico’s traffic just prove to you how reliant these guys are on search marketing and publishers getting them users and hits, all of which is a) not sustainable over the long term; b) a stupid way to grow a social network because there is no viral activity or real connections behind the people joining (ironic that that’s their motto on the front page), so over time it will all fall apart. Anyhow, sorry guys, unlike real communities out there such as FB, this one’s all smoke and mirrors. Best of luck to any investor or advertiser who buys their story/stats!
I was wondering how can it be possible to have Sonico at 40th place in the Argentinean Alexa Ranking and to have Tuenti (tuenti.com) at 16th place in the Spanish Ranking and to have such a big difference in terms of reach: tuenti is about 3 times less popular than Sonico in terms of reach.
Way too many social sites make social animals suffer by yet another site fatigue.
To socialize more and fast and stay organized,
MashedLife.com has been the heaven for me.
Sonico.com was launched in late July of 2007 after many months of planning with an amazing team that you will probably hear much about in the near future.
1) It’s no secret that Sonico has leveraged it’s former properties. It’s not traffic manipulation like “juan carlos galdos” says, it makes no business sense to manipulate anything. The team has a long story of business successes, including ecommerce… we are in for the long run, no flipping, nor creating garbage… creating useful applications for our users, period. Users of the birthday reminder and greeting card sections are not forced to register to the social network, they can continue using it separately. We know that not everyone who wants to be reminded of a birthday wants to be part of a SN.
2) Sonico integrated the leading greeting card site in Latin America and the leading birthday alarm system with 23 million users with over 170 million alerts (just like FB applications). Why? it made sense, both were about people that knew each other and were about real relationships. Might remind you how bebo.com started.. we went further. From a business point of view, these integrated sites had low stickiness (set up the birthday alarm and never come back), and we saw an opportunity to increase the stickiness and utility of our services: hence, the SN. At no point we force anyone into the social network… they are separate – but leveraged – services.
3) Sonico’s recent MEGA spikes are due to 2 seasonal events, Christmas and valentines day. In the mean time people learn about Sonico’s SN services and join in the millions. Then the virality kicks in with invitations as any other SN. The momentum is strong and as Duncan Riley put it, “If their current growth continues Sonico will be a site to watch.”
4) Sonico’s main concern is product development and reaching critical mass… many things are coming out soon to reach that goal. (Open social integrations, IM, etc)… keep an eye on us!
For those who are truly interested in knowing more about sonico, you can contact us at pablo.sueiro at sonico.com… or just visit the site, register and look for yourselves!
Hi Duncan,
as a lot of people pointed out before; Sonico is not growing as Juan Pablo Sueiro is telling you about.. it just leveraged the business of birthday reminders and greeting cards, moving it to subdomains just to claim they are growing and the biggest social network in latam etc.
And, as Pablo pointed out it made sense; what kind of investors can you get to a greeting card site or a birthday reminder site? Zero. But, what if you get all that traffic and “paint it” like a “social network”? Maybe more than zero
And Pablo, please.. dont compare your greeting cards or alerts to FB apps, because yours were not built on the community… as in facebook, a social network you might like or not, but who created the community from scratch without aquiring cheap traffic