Badoo - Multi-Lingual Social Networking Website

Badoo is a multi-lingual social networking website, managed out of a London headquarters, but owned by a company in Cyprus. In a Cambridge University graduate student report, it was given the lowest score for privacy among 45 social networking sites examined.
History

Launched in May 2006, the site now claims to have over 68 million registered users. It is one of the top 150 most-visited sites on the internet, according to Alexa Internet.

In January 2008, the Russian investor Finam paid $30m USD for a 10% stake in Badoo. The funding will be used to build Badoo in Russia, where the social networking market is beginning to grow.

Reception

According to TopTenReviews Badoo is "like a chat room, dating site and picture rating site disguised as a social network." It was noted Badoo did not offer any group or other type of community to facilitate users meeting similar people.

As of January 2010, access to Badoo in Iran is blocked by the Iranian government.

Revenue

Badoo generates income through a "Rise Up" feature which allows users to pay to have their profile given more prominence on the site for a limited time. In the end of 2007, it was reported that 20% of Badoo's 22 million users accessed this function once a month.

As of late 2009, certain features, particularly viewing profiles from "Extended Searches" as an Super Power User, now require payment.


Badoo Review

Badoo is an interesting social networking site that unfortunately made us feel very uncomfortable. Badoo is like a chat room, dating site and picture rating site disguised as a social network.

Although users are required to 18 years old we felt the site focused too much on chatting with strangers and not about building your personal network of friends. Within moments of creating a profile we were braided with instant messages from people all over the world.

Although you can set your security options to be as public or private as you want, we felt the best way to get a representative feel of the site was to keep our profile as public as possible. This just resulted in an abundance of spam messages from random people. One or two of these messages is normally acceptable, but we had more than a dozen in only a few days.

Additionally, members are encouraged to participate in a member photo rating game. Users judge other users with a rating of 1 to 10 based on their attractiveness.

We found that Badoo does not have groups or other types of community that allow you to meet people with similar interests. Additionally, you can’t add videos and Badoo doesn’t have a video section or music section like you’d find on most other social networking sites. It seemed like Badoo was more like a personal blog with an instant messenger.

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