It may seem like the last thing the web needs is another parenting website, but you wouldn’t know that by the impressive growth the new website CircleOfMoms.com chalked up over the past couple of months. The site, launched in October 2008, has already grown to over 850,000 registered users. Seventy-five percent of the users are US-based.
Circle of Moms is what you would expect from the name. It’s a community that lets moms connect with friends, talk about their kids, and join topical Q&A communities. Users have created over 1,000 such communities for topics like parents with toddlers, special needs children, and even recipe swapping. Many have tens of thousands of members. This holiday season the site will also be turning on a gifting widget to let moms recommend the best gifts for kids by age group and gender.
Brand advertisements, beginning next week, as well as affiliate revenue from gift purchases are the main modes of monetizing the site in the short run.
But the story doesn’t stop with a site that’s struck a chord with mothers; Circle of Moms has grown its user base with a unique multi-pronged approach. The site has a standard web presence plus a Facebook application. The combo allows moms to interact with each other through both the main site and Facebook. The Facebook application itself currently has over 840,000 monthly active users.
Founder Ephraim Luft says that the Facebook application and website have helped re-enforce each other, with mothers on Facebook pulling in friends on the website and vice versa. He plans to continue integrating with other platforms in the future to ensure mothers can continue to access the services regardless of where they are on the web.
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Finally some good news coming from TC in a long time. It’s very inspirational to see someone succeed as a startup.
Agreed, also in these tough economic and political times globally, it is nice for people to get together and share ideas and conversation about the things that affect their lives. What a great concept!
How does a site that is 1-2 months old generate 850,000 users, seems too good to be true.
I agree, lets do some math.
Lets take 850k users visited 1 page on average, it needs to be 850k visits. If you see alexa or any other statistics which even not showing 500 users per day (see one month graph) !!! i am wondering how come so many visits are not recorded with Alexa and other traffic rank sites!!!
All they went wrong with moms
Chandra
http://www.myjil.com
Clear bullshit. 1 million on Alexa? I know they aren’t accurate, but lets all be real.
There is no way they have that many users, or even a 1/10th.
I can’t believe this…
Neither can I.
facebook allows for astronomic growth, that is the key.
Compete shows about 140K uniques - impressive but still not sure how that amounts to almost 1M users. How in the world could that be possible - moms especially? I can MAYBE understand 800K geeks signing up for a service but moms?
Compete? Compete has the worst numbers on the internet - worse than Alexa even. On sites I have actual figures for, Compete is low by between 300% - 8,500%. That’s not an exaggeration.
Zach - Compete’s numbers are as accurate as any other measurement company, however, your veiled attempt to discredit them makes who you are more apparent and who you work for.
As for circleofmoms.com if you look at incoming referrals from yes, compete’s data, you will see that over 87% of referrals are coming from facebook.com. I am sure that the 850k number is almost all facebook app installs and facebook members.
I run multiple relatively small websites, and Compete’s numbers are far more accurate than Alexa, or any other free service.
Compete is definitely more accurate than Alexa, and seems to be very accurate for my site. It is in the mom/parenting area and gets 200-500k visitors a month. I am very interested to see how Circle of Moms pulled this off (if this is accurate) in such a short time. Seems improbable to me.
Anyone know the core differences between them and say http://www.mamasource.com/?
Uhm… from the terms of service, it says to send abuse to abuse@bantr.com…
http://www.bantr.com/
Looks like a facebook rip.
I don’t want to be painful (since I’m a fan of good news as well) but when you look on any measurement company, this figure of 850k is way off.
ComScore: not reported (i.e. under 50k UVs)
Quantcast: 42k US UVs http://www.quantcast.com/circleofmoms.com
Compete is 140k UVs http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
So maybe there’s a catch up effect (clearly, if the growth is this big, it’s going to take 30 days to be reflected in the likes of ComScore) or maybe that’s internal numbers and include a lot of international traffic?
Where is the CircleOfDads? Equality, suffrage, all that crap… and for what? So sexism could re-manifest itself and target the single dad… what a load of bull.
P.S. Nice to see you again Nick.
I think we should team to make circleofbads.!!!!. why should we leave behind
Hey everybody. Thanks for your feedback. We’ve been really surprised by the growth, too…Circle of Moms has definitely exceeded our expectations. To respond to a couple of the questions that were raised, 75% of our traffic is in the US. Most of our international traffic is concentrated in Canada, the UK and Australia. We are not sure why the measurement companies metrics are off, but if you take some time to browse through our public communities, you will see that our user base is large and active.
As for Mamasource, there are a number of differences. First, our product is more social. Moms can create profiles for themselves and their children (all of which have strict privacy settings). We believe that this adds to the credibility of the advice and recommendations that they provide. Second, we have integrated with Amazon’s web services so that moms can easily recommend products to one another. The feedback on this functionality so far has been very positive. Finally, Mamasource seems to be very focused on providing a local service. We believe that moms need advice from other moms outside of their local geography, depending on the situation.
Please let me know if you have other questions.
Yeah, answer my question above about your bantr.com domain site looking like a facebook rip.
they have +2M monthly active users on facebook.
Hello SiliconDorks…..not everything is about online web docs, blogging widgets, video delivery sites and ridiculously named companies that are doomed from day one. Some sites simply take advantage of the *real world* and do it fast. CircleofMoms is an example of how the real world (families) function - people talking to people about things that really matter. Companies that leverage existing social graphs have everything going for them. This immediate growth is awesome!
Nick, you don’t work here any more. You haven’t worked here for more than a year. Time to move on, dude.
(good to see you, thanks for the guest post).
Great to see you too, virtually.
It’s true what they say, hard times rekindle old allegiances.
Actually I just made that up, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true
Go the Moms! The Moms can save us from the greatest economic depression that mankind has ever known!
Seriously. Yippee to this.
Ephraim you don’t appear to be using normal metrics here…are you seriously suggesting you have that many signups in a few months?
Nick are you working for CircleofMoms?
Joseph,
Facebook’s active user numbers as well as Facebook’s own representatives vouched for the metrics at the last FB garage. CIM hasn’t described what the breakdown between web and FB participants are.
OMG but their favicon looks like a shemale taking a leak in a pacman!! What the…!!!??
Hah, best comment yet!
l think this idea is true “facebook allows for astronomic growth, that is the key.” but
http://www.eskibirsaat.com
I know Ephraim. He’s actually that guy who gave birth to a child a few months ago. It makes him uniquely qualified to run a mom-focused site as he really understands motherhood and womanhood from all angles.
The guys who run this site are viral wizards. Pointy purple hats and all. Those of you who don’t believe the numbers also believe that FB is in on the conspiracy when they list 839,000 monthly actives?
Full disclosure…I’m co-founder of http://www.nesting.com a site for moms that is rather different in its scope (featured here in August) That said I will tip my hat to Ephraim and say nice job. I wholly agree that there is a void in what the web offers moms and it looks like circleofmoms has made forums more accessible and organized. I won’t comment on the numbers posted here because who knows but I will concede that there is power in tapping facebook in an effective way and even more in offering moms something that reflects the way they already live in the real world.
Circle of Moms might be the first useful FB app to get real traction and built a real business. If FB were smart they would make Circle of Moms their poster-child.
No way. I call BS.
should implement facebook connect on its website….
Looks like they’ve got facebook connect now: http://www.circleofmoms.com
The seem to buck every trend of good web design - you have to be registered to view the About Us page, their confirmation email is broken HTML, etc.
Very strange indeed.
Circle of Mom’s assertions here are way off what Adonomics claims (37k active Facebook users). Ephriam, I think you owe the group an explanation for this discrepancy and those with Quantcast, Compete, etc.?
After checking alexa rankings and other statistics looks like they dont have even 10k users.
we started our website http://www.myjil.com (started on : Oct 20th 2008), our current alexa ranking :533434 with few thousands of registered users from 34 different countries and 70000 unique visitors across the world! I am wondering how come circleofmoms have less rank then us!!! Hard to beleave there figures specially they targetted only moms!!!
Looks like TC is trying to give them 850k visits with this post
…
Chandra
http://www.myjil.com
Alexa is a complete PILE. I doubt many mom’s have Alexa toobar installed.
dear chandra,
the circle of moms facebook app has 839,131 monthly active users today
http://tinyurl.com/6h6y5k
next time post your comment THEN smoke crack.
I am referring to Industry standard Alexa ,quantcast and other industry standard sites.
http://www.quantcast.com/circleofmoms.com#traffic
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ofmoms.com
May be you were right.
Good luck.
Chandra
http://www.myjil.com
850k users in that short a time? Are we sure CircleOfMoms isn’t a MILF porn site?
Depends on whether you’re in their “network,” if you know what I mean. Friends of friends? Nudge-nudge!
If circleofmoms.com has about 850K users and even more if most of them are from US, than why is the Quantcast stats for them totally differs from this numbers.
http://www.quantcast.com/circleofmoms.com
sorry guys, but i think that you are just advertising them and trying to make readers have good impression about site.
thanks.
Arsen,
I’m not vouching that their numbers are real, but you can’t use Quantcast as a reliable source since the site hasn’t been ‘quantified’. I’m impressed they even show over 40k uniques without the Quantcast code on the site.
The bigger issue is Alexa. Yes, moms probably don’t have an Alexa toolbar, however I’ve never seen a site with 850k members be over 1 million on Alexa.
The reasonable assumption would be that they are giving a combination of FB app numbers, their own site numbers, and maybe even that other social network mentioned earlier to get a nice total that people would notice.
In the start up world it’s the normal Chicken Before the Egg issue. They need blog articles in order to get traffic, but they need traffic in order to get publicity.
Not sure why all the skepticism about the 850k users. The claim is not that they are attracting those #’s to their destination site, but that they have that many installs on FB. That’s impressive, but totally reasonable given the insane virality possible on FB — probably the best analog are those Colbert groups that amassed 1million+ users in a matter of weeks. People underestimate the huge populations of moms on social networking sites (both fb AND myspace).
Disclosure: We also love the mom crowd at http://www.totspot.com
Adonomics estimates that we have 37,392 daily active users. That is a low estimate and does not account for traffic to our site.
As for the About Us link, that is now fixed. You can get to it at http://www.circleofmoms.com/about_us.php.
Well, you can see 650,000 profiles from here: http://www.circleofmoms.com/me.....unity_menu
So I guess it’s real? Or fake profiles..
By this logic, the property “THEY ARE TRYING TO SHUT DOWN FACEBOOK - PETITION TO KEEP IT! INVITE ALL!” has 2.25 million “registered users”.
I think it’s safe to say that Circle of Moms has a Facebook app with a lot of installs and not a lot of traffic on its own website.
“Not sure why all the skepticism about the 850k users. The claim is not that they are attracting those #’s to their destination site, but that they have that many installs on FB.”
Because the article leads off by saying “The site, launched in October 2008, has already grown to over 850,000 registered users”, which is inaccurate. They have 850k FB installs, not 850k “registered users of their site”.
So the skepticism should be directed toward the misleading article lede…
Would be most interesting to know how many email addresses they’ve collected (an FB install doesn’t give them an email address, but I believe they prompt for it very early in the process)
The skepticism is directed towards the misleading article lede, which one would presume is a result of a misleading PR pitch on the part of Circle of Friends.
Make that “Circle of Moms”.
Bantr is / are the Circle of Friends guys.
Of course the numbers are REAL.
They are the psycho-kids of ultimate Viral nothing.
We can argue whether adding a facebook application counts as a registration or not but two points:
1) It’s not simple to get 850k facebook users to an app
2) I doubt the number is off, because I just went to the app on facebook and found 7 of my approximately 35 mom facebook friends had added the application.
Kudos to Circle of Moms
My husband just forwarded this article to me, and I had to respond since it doesn’t sound like any other mothers will read this =) I was invited to join Circle of Moms by a friend of mine in October. I have so many spam invites on Facebook, I didn’t think much of it, but at my friend’s urging, I gave it a try. The site may not be much to look at, but I found the community to be fabulous. I often worry I’m not being as good a mother as I could (graduate school didn’t teach me about potty training) and Circle of Moms helps me to feel like I’m not alone. I really like it and am thankful it was built.
There is actually a circleofdads..
Its called http://www.odadeo.com - and they’ve just won a slew of awards in the UK. Met the founder recently and was very impressed.
Ok, I think everyone can cool their jets.
User accounts via Facebooks apps are definitely different than direct registrants on a website. But that doesn’t mean the Circle of Moms doesn’t have 850k people that have registered for their site.
Jeez, no one aregues when Zynga or RockYou says they have 20mil users on Facebook, so why the questions here.
What Circle of Moms is doing is creating multiple front-ends (Web or Facebook) to the same community experience with a unified backend which is what people prefer. So it’s smart and give’m some props, yo!
Facebook lists this as having 839k monthly users: http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....8278986302
I think Circle of Moms is a great example of an application that is growing rapidly and that people enjoy using on Facebook. Seems like pretty amazing growth in just two months. Congrats Ephraim and team!
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…..Now , if you registered, please come back after 24 hours and there will be extra surprises for you, my friends.
So I’m a mom that received an invite from circle of friends from a friend/fellow mom. When you receive an invite like that on FB from a friend of course you’re gonna accept it but that’s where it ended for me. I’m not sure if I would do much more than accept the invite. I’m not saying it’s a bad product (especially since I haven’t checked it out) but I imagine there are a lot of other moms on FB like me that accepted out of guilt which could account for rapid growth.
wow from in-game ads to a mummy network, strange transition.
Ephraim’s Linked in Profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/604/494
wait, isn’t Ephraim Luft male? & the site is mommy site?
that makes (NO) sense
Kind of like WITI (Women In Technology International) being founded and run by a man.
Alexa is look like first criteria for websites but what is their criteria, just a toolbar? How can we trust them?
http://www.iamlittle.net
Do the FB users know they are being converted to members on another site? Should someone ask them? It’s a pretty interesting approach. I don’t see how the site can attract savvy mom’s let alone brands with its’ current layout, functionality and design.
The site is so new that they haven’t yet managed to secure the #1 result in Google for ‘Circle of Moms’.
Kudos for all those active FB users. Therefore the numbers are real. Talk about ‘going viral’.
PS - why do people still take Alexa seriously? Please…
Congrats, great news! Brands will love this.
Chris - CEO appssavvy
I haven’t received a Circle of Mom’s invite in Facebook yet, but I plan to give it a shot today. Thanks TechCrunch! FYI: mom’s have a constant intellectual curiosity about raising our children, especially as we try to juggle everything from our marriage, to working full-time, to being the best mom’s we can be. Being superwoman isn’t always easy!
Personally, I don’t have time to join a new community, however, having it integrated into Facebook makes it appealing.
Michele - That’s great to hear. We would love to get your feedback on our product.
Congrats Ephraim.
@chris “brands will love this”… can you enlighten us as to why you believe that to be the case? And try to add some specifics.
My feelings are quite the opposite. In fact, I think this can actually mislead brands who are still trying to figure out social media and how their brands can interact.
I see the site having trouble attracting popular lifestyle brands - Every conversation I’ve had with a brand has been about creating a genuine connection. I don’t see any of the features brands are asking for on the site except groups -
It’s pretty apparent that most of the people posting here have no ad servicing experience or else you’d be able to look at the bigger picture. Media planners/buyers handle sites across the board/scope - misleading them affects us all.
@Recipes - we are speaking with a number of brands and working with them to roll out ad products that help them engage our audience of mothers in a way that is natural and appealing to our user base. Keep an eye on us and I think that you will like what you see.
Also, if you have any feedback from brands that you want to share, feel free to post it in the comments her or e-mail me and we can talk.
Aw, nothing like catching up on TechCrunch and seeing that one of the freshmen you were once tasked with shepherding has made good. Congrats, Ephraim!