BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS

Freemium Pays for Teen Social Net
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Children may be showing us the way to a future of paid content. As we outlined in the minonline story “Women on Social Nets Want It All...for Free,” attitudes about pay-to-play models for community access and services could open the possibilities for various tiered pricing models. As if on cue, the kid and teen social net myYearbook announced yesterday that its “freemium” revenue model has helped the company turn profitable, with revenue up 120% in 2009 over the same period in 2008.

The site gives teens access to games, online magazine content, interaction with charities, friend matching and video. MyYearbook tells minonline that it now has 20 million members for its free services. As part of the model, a virtual currency called Lunch Money is used to make donations, buy extra gaming levels and give gifts to others in the network. Users can buy Lunch Money with real cash or get some virtual currency as part of a new monthly subscription (VIP Club) that also provides additional features.

The VIP Club has been seeing 55% month-on-month growth and is pulling in a greater share of new and existing members. The site offers three tiers of VIP Club membership at $6.99, $9.99 and $19.99 a month. Gifting, virtual currency and subscriptions now account for more than a third of overall revenue to the site, which also runs advertising. “The freemium model has been an important part of myYearbook’s monetization strategy, and we remain bullish on the additional revenue possibilities that this model will bring,” says Geoff Cook, CEO.

MyYearbook says that the virtual currency system, rather than functioning as an alternative to advertising support, becomes a vehicle for advertisers to get more attention and interaction from users. Sponsors capitalize on the Lunch Money ecosystem by offering users credits for interacting with their brand, completing surveys, watching videos or giving premium gifts.

MyYearbook started in the spring of 2005 in a single high school and soon opened up its model to all students everywhere. It spends no money on marketing, instead relying entirely on word-of-mouth viral distribution. The site has its own online magazine with professionally edited articles. It also partners with hulu for its video content, and the company tells us it is interested in further partnerships with third-party content providers. According to Compete analytics, myYearbook typically attracts more than 3 million unique users a month.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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