JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Michael and
Xochi Birch could probably
have fit into the serial
entrepreneurs panel as well.
After quitting their day jobs
in 1999, they came around to
starting something that perhaps
no one here has heard of.
If you can put my podium
up on the screen, there.
There it is.
That's right.
They started birthdayalarm.com.
You've got one guess
as to what it does.
It's a site that, as I
understand it, it lets you
indicates your birthday, or
discover the birthdays of
others, and get a reminder,
which, when you got the
reminder, you have a chance to
pay money to have it send a
very thoughtful email, and
perhaps it even suggests a
template for, kind of like a
Microsoft Word wizard, you
know, it looks like you're
writing a birthday card!
Would you like help with
that? kind of thing.
And it's been profitable
from the start.
45 million members right now,
300,000 of them pay $13.95 a
year for birthday reminders.
Apparently they're primarily
women, even though it's guys
who forget their birthdays,
because guys can't even
remember to go to
birthdayalarm.
But the entire thing is run by
one guy, and as a result
they've been able to leave that
a bit on the back burner.
And in 2003, they
founded ringo.com.
I looked at ringo.com
from 2000, and this is
what it looked like.
I don't know from whom you
bought the domain name, but by
2003 it had cleaned up its act
a little bit, and their
description, ringo.com was
a ripoff of Friendster.
They sold it in six months, and
had a bit of a non compete.
If you actually look ringo.com
now, you'll see that it
is a ripoff of Flickr.
So they've changed their
business model substantially
since those early days.
They then began another social
networking enterprise, known as
BeBo.com, a late entrant into
the social networking space.
But we're familiar with late
entrants, say, in the search
engine space, who end up
being the real victors.
So in that spirit, they have
been working with BeBo ever
since, and in 2006, the New
York Times dubbed BeBo as
the next MySpace, coming
up and surpassing it.
So here to tell us a little bit
about BeBo and some of these
issues they've been taking on
are Michael and Xochi Birch.
So, curious.
How many people here are on
BeBo, have BeBo accounts?
Yeah, a few?
And this is for like,
competitive intelligence
purposes, or do you actually
use it for social networking?
Your kids are into it,
so you're on there to
keep an eye on them.
So Dad has to be a friend.
So we thought it might be
useful to start with just
getting a bit of a tour of
BeBo, and each of you has
suggested a profile, if you
want to put the podium
back up on the screen.
Tell us about this profile.
MICHAEL BIRCH: So this is
a typical member, he's a
20-year old Irish guy.
So Ireland's our largest
market per capita.
We have, I think, 1.3
million members in
Ireland, population 4.2.
So pretty much every single
teenager and person in
their twenties is on
BeBo at this time.
So this is someone who
actually contacted us.
We did a video contest--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: If you could
leave it up on the screen,
that would be great, we were
going to walk through it.
Sorry, go ahead.
MICHAEL BIRCH: --so we did a
video contest on BeBo, we
wanted to encourage
user-generated content, there's
certainly a lot of it anyway,
but we wanted to provide some
sort of we reward for
good quality content.
And this is someone who
actually entered a
really cool movie.
It's a little bit too long,
actually, it's nine minutes
to show the full thing.
But he created a video which
showed an analogy between
BeBo and the real world.
So he got about 30 people
involved from his university,
and went around with a video
camera for couple of weeks, and
filmed people posting post it
notes on one another, which was
equivalent of leaving a comment
on someone's profile, or
walking around with a quiz
book, which is very popular on
BeBo, they'll give a quiz to
someone and he'd mark off and
then score how well he did.
One of the things you can do
on BeBo is change skins, so
customization is very important
within social networking, being
able to express who you are.
So we have skins on BeBo. it's
a little different from MySpace
where it's just free format
HTML, but any user can create a
skin that they feel represents
their personality, and then
once they've created their
skin, they can share that
with any other user.
So we have about 200,000 user
generated skins, and this is
actually an example of one of
those skins, I'm not sure
whether he created this
himself, but it was created
by a member of people.
There's a few differences
between BeBo and many
other social networks.
So BeBo is about
sharing content.
It's about connecting with
friends, your default profile
is actually private, you can
only be seen by friends that
you've connected with and
confirmed, it's a two
way confirmation
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So he
happens to be promiscuous?
MICHAEL BIRCH: This man, you
could say, is promiscuous.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: But if we
try to visit with his friends
then, would they maybe not be
visible, since we're
not their friends?
MICHAEL BIRCH: Some
will, and some won't.
It's typically about
half and half.
So half the people choose to be
private, and half the people
choose to have more
accessible profile.
I mean, BeBo's designed to
be most useful when you're
connecting with the
direct friends.
But some people like to have
a broad audience, they
like to be discovered.
So the previous profile,
someone uploads a lot of
content, and they want
recognition for that content,
they want that to be able to
spread virally within the
network, and become
well-known for it.
[ANIMAL NOISES]
MICHAEL BIRCH: I didn't
ask [? autoplay ?]
a video from the page--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: That's
coming from my computer,
because we're just on the page.
And now in panic, the engineers
have turned down the volume,
because we have no idea
what's going to happen next.
MICHAEL BIRCH: I'm sure it's
a perfectly clean video.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: You want
to put money on that?
But it looks like part of--
they've turned it back up, in
a fit of pique at us-- But
I gather, this is part of
the Madeleine McCann skin.
Is that right?
Somebody who's been missing, so
it's a chance for the person
who owns this profile
to kind of--
MICHAEL BIRCH: This was
actually completely unplanned.
But yeah, this is, as you
may well have known,
a case at the moment.
And people use BeBo for
promotion, but not only of what
they're doing, but anything
they want to promote.
And because we've built it for
content to spread so virally
within in the network, this is
something that's spread
phenomenally within
the network.
So I don't know how many people
have used this skin, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it's
in the hundreds of thousands.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And there's
no way to search it to
say, show me everybody who
has chosen to adopt the
Help Maddie, skin, or?
MICHAEL BIRCH: You can go to
the skin charts and it'll tell
you how many people are using.
because there's 200,000 skins,
we have to have charts which
rank the popularity
of different skins.
And you'd be able to work
out how many people have
actually adopted this skin.
But this message has
spread throughout BeBo
in a phenomenal way.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Fascinating.
Now what else should we
know about life on BeBo?
What do the people who
are on here doing?
They spend a lot of time
on their own page kind of
nesting, and furnishing it?
XOCHI BIRCH: Well, we can't
stop people from flirting, but
there's a lot of other uses of
a social network than,
as you said, flirting.
A lot of people use BeBo to
share content, to talk with
friends and family, photos
is obviously a very big
feature on our site.
And what people are doing
is the profile page.
This page is probably the most
visited page on BeBo, and
probably for a lot of
social networking sites.
It's about the members, it's
about people, being creative,
showing their individuality,
and also sharing amongst
friends, content.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And if I'm a
company wanting to somehow get
into the space I have something
that kids might want to buy?
A pack of cigarettes,
or gummi bears?
Is there an office I can go to,
that's the BeBo office, where I
can say, I'd like to give you
some money and see my gummi
bears work their way into BeBo?
MICHAEL BIRCH: We do happily
accept money from people.
It does depend what it's for.
See, cigarette advertising, I
mean, morally we wouldn't do
it, but legally we're probably
not allowed to do it either.
But certainly you can advertise
on BeBo, and we keep it fairly
minimal, you notice, on this
page, the profile page is by
far the most popular page on
BeBo, and there's actually
no advertising on it.
So we actually downplay
it quite significantly.
The advertising that we
try to encourage is
engagement marketing.
So we try and get people
to interact with a brand,
rather than just forcing
a brand in front of them.
And if we can get users to
opt into the brand, so
we have sponsored skins.
So the skins you've seen so
far have not been sponsored.
But you could have a Nike skin,
and we'll feature it a similar
way that Google do with
sponsored search results.
So it's identified as
sponsored, but people
can opt into it.
We don't force it upon anyone,
but typically tens of thousands
of people will use sponsored
skins on their web profiles,
and now tens of thousands,
potentially millions of people,
actually get to see it.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: And can
a brand have its own page?
Could the Coca Cola
bear have a page?
MICHAEL BIRCH: It can, and the
skin can then actually link
back to the brand's page, and
then people can actually
interact and comment
with the brand itself.
And we've run competitions
on those pages, and
all sorts of things.
XOCHI BIRCH: A lot of brands
also use the site to poll
members, to try to get a feel
for certain issues,
or something that's
important to them.
It's variable to communicate
with the members.
And that's where
it's most useful.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Josh is
our brandvertising expert.
Give them a free consultation.
XOCHI BIRCH: I think
he should pose.
JOSH SPEAR: I mean, I think
the way they do it with
BeBo is actually great.
They, you know, sponsors--
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Yeah,
but that's not going
to get you the check!
They want to hear something
they haven't heard before.
MICHAEL BIRCH: He's got
to get a check, so.
JOSH SPEAR: Well, had a
deal before, so it's good.
No I haven't, the problem is I
haven't spent much time on
BeBo, but it's good to hear
that things are engaged on
base, and that there's no
Jack-in-the-box style
pop-ups or adverts that
infiltrate in the space.
I'm in meetings all the time
with people that talk about
marketing to social networks,
and actually use the
word infiltrating.
And they say, we're
going to infiltrate.
I'm sure you've heard
it, too. it's like,
infiltrate the user base.
And I'm like, what?
You're going to do, what?
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: You
don't like infiltrate.
It sounds, too--
MICHAEL BIRCH: Taking
advantage of.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Tricky.
JOSH SPEAR: Yeah.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: Up
front, authenticity.
We preach, integrate,
don't infiltrate.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN:
That sounds profound.
And is it basically the idea of
sincerity, that's the most
important thing, if you can
fake that you've got it made.
XOCHI BIRCH: We'll
quote you on that!
JOSH SPEAR: That
was really good.
JONATHAN ZITTRAIN: So why
don't we add another
person to the mix here.
I'm very pleased to
introduce [? Yat Su. ?]
He grew up in Vienna,
Austria, the son of new--
