SNW INTERVIEW -- July 11 --
Tagged.com is doing well
again. They’ve nearly double their traffic in a year. Compete.com says
the social network is pulling in 4.7m uniques a month. We talked with
Steve Sarner and Louis Willacy, VP’s at Tagged. - Mark Brooks
How long has Tagged been in existence?
Louis: Tagged launched in 2004 so we’ve been around for almost 5 years now.
What is Tagged?
Steve:
Tagged is the 3rd largest social network in the US according to
Comscore in terms of total monthly visits – over 63 million in May. We
also have some 6.5 million uniques. We’re also quite large globally –
more than 30 million unique monthly users.
We’re a social network that focuses on not just keeping in touch with people you know but really social discovery. That means meeting people with similar interests whether it will be for friendship, online pen pals, flirting or dating.
How did that growth happen?
Steve:
The press is focused on the horse race between MySpace, Facebook and
Twitter. In the meantime, Tagged continues to grow and add new members
by hundreds of thousands every week. We’ve tuned the site to be super
fast and really easy to interact with. And again we focus on social
discovery and meeting new people. That has really made the difference
and it’s popular in America.
What about it made it such a draw for so many people?
Steve:
There are a number of things. We spent a lot of time analyzing what our
users like and also making sure that our site has a complete level of
features that load very quickly and allow a lot of flexibility. We are
very flexible in terms of the amount of things you can do on the site,
how you can arrange your profiles, what you can add to it and how you
can connect with people. We allow people more freedom to express
themselves.
Is there a particular region in which you’ve got more users?
Steve:
We are worldwide but by far the majority of our users are from English
speaking countries and fully a third of our audience comes from the US.
How do you generate revenue? What is your model?
Louis:
Tagged has been consistently profitable now for well over a year and we
have a diversified revenue stream. We serve 7 billion or so page views
per month which makes us very attractive to the numerous ad networks.
We’ve partnered with some of the best names in the business and that’s
an excellent source of revenue.
We also offer very customized and unique brand sponsorship opportunities. Furthermore, we’ve had some great success in the area of virtual gift or subscription products that allow Tagged members to become a VIP member which gives them access to extra features.
We are also involved in the social gaming area. We work with some gaming partners to provide access and interaction with popular online games such as poker.
Is there an affiliate program associated with this so your members can make money?
Louis:
At this point, we do not have an affiliate program for our members. We
do allow our members to do some fun things. They can design their own
tags, which is like a small badge that they can build and send around
to their friends. We’re soon going to be launching a virtual gift
generator. Users will be able to make their own gifts.
How much is it to become a VIP member and what do you get?
Steve: The VIP subscription is currently $19.99 a month. With the VIP subscription you can label your photo and show you are a VIP.
You can see who has viewed your profile. It also gives you additional
Gold (our virtual currency) per month that you can then exchange for
gifts on the site.
You also mentioned that social gaming is getting strong. What trends are you noticing?
Louis: We found that gaming is one of the most popular activities on our site.
Are you creating your own games?
Louis:
Currently we partner with some gaming companies and we’ve built some of
our own. We’re open to either way but we think that our partners have a
good knowledge and they do a nice job of giving a nice user experience
and also monetizing the opportunity. So we work both with partners as
well as develop some of our own games, too.
Steve: By the way, there is no gambling in here whatsoever. It’s the opportunity for people to increase their chip balance and continue playing by taking up offers that might be available or by purchasing Gold.
Louis: Yeah, in the poker game in particular, a big source of revenue is the option to buy virtual drinks for other people playing the game.
What do you have in the pipeline?
Another new feature that we’ll be releasing in the near future is Tagged Groups.
