iYomu, Social Network for Adults, Launches With $1 Million Prize
A New Zealand-based social network, iYomu, is launching globally today with a US$1 Million challenge. iYomu is branding itself as a "social networking website for grown-ups" and the site is restricted to those over 18 years old. The name of the site, iYomu, stands for "I, You, Me and Us". Its aim is to provide a social networking space for the older generation, who may be turned off by teen hang outs like MySpace and Facebook.
To celebrate its global launch, iYomu.com has announced a competition where its online community will choose one member to receive US$1 million in the iYomu.com Challenge. More on that below.
What is iYomu?
I met the iYomu founders recently in Lower Hutt, New Zealand - my home city. It's not often I meet a kiwi web startup going after a global market, so this was a pleasant surprise.
iYomu is specifically targeting an adult audience, because their research indicated that there were few social networking sites specifically targeting a "mature" audience. iYomu founder David Wolf-Rooney and director Frances Valintine told me that successful social networks like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo did little for adults - apart from self-confessed geeks like me obviously. Valentine said that "there are lots of benefits for grown-ups in social networking, such as staying in touch with family and friends around the world, storing and sharing important documents and photos, or finding advice".
iYomu homepage
Initial online communities that have been created on iYomu.com include communities about the lives of working mums, property investment, golf courses and book clubs. The company says this is a change from the socialising or entertainment categories usually found in social networks for younger audiences.
Features
iYomu is free and features one gigabyte of storage for photos and documents, search tools, a personal homepage, email account, personality test and other "easy to use tools" aimed at older internet users. People can also purchase additional storage space for their iYomu vault - and I discovered in my meeting with the founders that this is the primary business model. Also the founders confirmed that iYomu will be a global product, with the US being a major target market.
One interesting feature that iYomu has is a Flash-based personality test, called iYDNA. It uses a slick slide bar concept, making it easy to select a personality type - which you can then use to find other people who have the same interests as you.
Another neat feature is a visualization of which communities are related. For example choosing 'Information Technology' showed the following connections (i.e. which other communities IT people belong to):
$1 Million Challenge
The iYomu.com Challenge involves completing a series of puzzles and tasks to earn points. The top 10 points earners will be interviewed by iYomu and three grand finalists selected. Those 3 people will "explain why they should receive US$1 million and how it will change their lives". The ultimate decision will be made by an online vote of the iYomu community in February 2008. The winner will receive US$1 million in 12 monthly instalments.
The iYomu.com Challenge begins today and runs until midnight on 31 December 2007. Users will gain points for completing a range of online activities, mostly designed to get people using the site. For example points are gained for referring friends, completing their user profiles in full and correctly solving 12 cryptic puzzles featuring locations from around the world. People must be over 18 to join iYomu.com and participate in the Challenge.
Conclusion
Overall, iYomu is an interesting new social network and beautifully designed. The Flash touches are especially impressive. However, it takes some effort to get started - with the personality test and profile requiring a fair amount of information. So to get the most out of the site, it will require initial time investment and effort from the user.
It will be a challenge in itself getting adults to use social networks, simply because they don't spend anywhere near as much time socializing online as teenagers. However it is a relatively untapped market, so if iYomu takes off then it could be a very big success. And the $1 Million challenge is a great idea, to entice people to use the site and complete their full profiles; but also as a publicity stunt that will probably get mainstream media coverage.
What do you think of iYomu's chances? Would you use a social network for grown-ups?
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It's great to see this kind of quality coming out of New Zealand!
I'm not sure how Facebook doesn't target the 'mature' audience. I'm 34 and have most of my friends on FB and most of them are not technical in any way. I don't even see the yoof on the site and I can join groups which are around lots of different topics.
In terms of usability I have a few issues with the site:
- The colour is pretty bad - 'peach' I guess would be the best word.
- The use of Flash is over the top. Instead of being used to enhance the site it has been used everywhere and it gets in the way of actually socializing.
- The pages take ages to load (because of the Flash...) which gets annoying.
- There doesn't seem to be a global search tool. I guess this because all of the data is hidden behind a Flash interface.
All in all I just don't think I would use it. I'm sticking with Facebook, all my friends are there. Sharing photos is really easy and staying intouch with FB's News Feed Just Works(tm).
Yea I agree with Glen re facebook ... and the level of information that iYomu asks for is unsettling.
I agree with Glen. Most 30 somethings are finally tuning into facebook or MySpace along with LinkedIn.
Although I am somewhat impressed about iYomu's approach with a Million dollar offer.
However I don't think I need another social network. I already have my data all over the place.
I write about this problem on post here
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/2007/08/12/social-network-overload-socialstream-to-the-rescue/
PS -- I also talk about SocialStream who is attempting to solve this problem creatively.
Interesting site. Certainly it's wise to target the fat wallets a more 'seasoned' demographic posess. A Business Week article, "Facebook's New Wrinkles" http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_34/b4047050.htm?chan=search
notes visitors 35 and older to Facebook doubled, from June '06 to June '07, to 11.5 million, as business-minded folks are finding Facebook's an attractive place to network.
So we 'old fogies' are apparently beginning to flock to social networking sites (I'm early 40s). All media covets the young, and of course there are good reasons to do so. But it's also wise to move some eggs to other baskets, ones that appeal to the 40-60 bracket (Generation Jones and the Boomers), which has most of the wealth in the U.S. I'm also guessing this demo is more likely to stay put if they find a decent place to hang out. Less fickle, than Gen X, Y and the Net Gen. I find myself on Facebook now, instead of Linkedin.
I have to disagree with the assessment on the few social networks for "older" people. They are there, and more are popping up:
http://www.eons.com/
http://www.myboomerplace.com/
http://www.boomj.com/
http://www.elderwisdomcircle.org/
Then there are the family sharing sites like MyFamily and all its spawn. Now we have Geni and its spawn coveting this age group as well.
iYomu is hardly alone in this space. No one is the clear winner yet so there's definitely room for some to succeed and fail, but think more research could have been done on competition in this space.
I was interested in the idea... then I spent half an hour on the site. It doesn't work well. Glen was spot on. All the flash makes finding people tedious. The UI where you browse search results by scrubbing over tiny, randomly scattered, and uninformative icons brought back bad web 0.5 memories.
For anyone that's looking to play around with it, it's worth mentioning there's no easy way to delete your account when you are done. From the FAQ:
"If you wish to close your iYomu account please use the edit functions on your profile to remove all personal content."
These items are in multiple positions on multiple pages throughout the site. Some personal information (like location and age) can't be removed at all.
I went to a pre-launch a few weeks ago. There was no group function - if you post up that you want "blueberry muffin recipes" in the cooking group, you get email from say 20 people with different recipes. But they don't see who responded, or contribute to making the recipe better. If that explanation is confusing think of it as this way - a many-to-one, not many-to-many conversation.
The limit on no under-18s means your kids and grandkids can't join and share, say, holiday snaps. If LinkedIn etc is for business adults, and Facebook etc is for "tech savvy" adults, and there are "senior" social networks, who is providing for families in the grownup arena?
As a file uploading/archiving site, its great. As a social network, enabling discussions between offline groups and online friends, it's not so cool. My 2 cents worth and now I've spent it :(
Anyone solve any of the puzzles yet? The second one is really hard. Their community forums are slight sucky also.
I'm not certain that we boomer types are looking for a Social Networking site that is dedicated to older users. This is just another one trying to take advantage of the older demographic, albeit, over 18 is a pretty darn big market.
I blogged about it Aug 10 on my site.
Good on them for selling their idea to investors but...
To me the design is quite off-putting and not professional enough. The color is strange, the header graphic is poorly optimised (jpg not gif/png), other graphics look hurriedly put together to me.
Having the tag line "Social Networking for Grown Ups" seems quite naff to me, not something an adult would say to another adult.
Watching an old episode of Seinfeld the other day, a character remarked that once they're in their 30s, they're not interested in going out and making hundreds of new friends, they're quite happy with the lot they've got. I wonder about this comment.
As an almost-30, I joined Facebook to reconnect with old friends and keep in touch with new friends. I'm not on there to say "Look at me! I have 1000 friends I don't know!" as a social status symbol like teenagers are wanting to do.
I joined OldFriends for the same reason a few years ago (now there's a social network in New Zealand which really could have gone somewhere if they'd wanted it to). I never liked MySpace/Bebo primarily because the pages were so ugly looking and I couldn't keep track of who people actually were so the lack of aliases on Facebook and the relationship descriptions appealed to me.
When I think about my parents generation (albeit a big generalisation), they're too busy to 'muck around' online. They're there primarily researching and purchasing products, emailing, reading the news. They might join Facebook to see their kids' photos. They might join a dating site if they're looking for a relationship. But is there really a need for an "adults-only" social networking site, when the point is about being social?
$1 million dollars might drive some interest to start with, but the user experience is clunky and some of the features are quite strange...like designing my perfect work workspace(!) Why do I want to do that...for fun? I don't get it.
LinkedIn and Facebook work nicely thanks.