Tuenti, success story of a network

For them, Facebook is just about a thing of the past. Young Spanish people are now keeping in touch through their own social network, Tuenti. With almost 7 million users and 7.6 billion pages viewed each month, this is a real magnet for 14 to 25 year olds, lurching far ahead its predecessors, the international emblem of social networks, Facebook (1.6 billion pages in August), or even the gargantuan Google (5.8 billion pages). Its secret? Proximity and the respect of intimacy, translated by significant advertising earnings, according to its founders.
Looking at its bright colourful offices and the hundred or so employees from some fifteen nationalities working there in several languages, it’s hard to imagine that this Spanish giant was born barely three years ago. And its growth continues to be startling if we are to believe its founders who claim to have multiplied their turnover by ten, going from 600,000 euros in 2008 to 6 million euros in 2009. “There were only five of us at the start,” muses Icaro Moyano Diaz, the company’s young spokesman. “This is the advantage of setting up a technology business: we didn’t need a heavy administrative structure,” he explains. Thanks to “love money” from friends and family, the founders managed to launch their project at little more than twenty years old.
The international team comprised of three from Spain, Joaquín Ayuso, Adeyemi Aja and Félix Ruiz, and two from the States, Kenny Bentley and Zaryn Dentzel.
Ever since, heavyweight investors have injected capital into Tuenti, following in the footsteps of the Director of Consumer Marketing at Google, Bernardo Hernandez. For though Tuenti may not be a pioneer in the field of social networks, it has constructed itself on values little represented in this sector, according to the founders. Information shared on Tuenti cannot be accessed via search engines, nor can Tuenti members be tracked down on them, which is not the case on Facebook. Only those invited can join, allowing network managers to survey abusive users, and allowing members’ networks to reflect their “real” entourage more closely on the Web. “The number of friends on Tuenti is much lower compared to other networks, averaging on forty or so, because the point is not to make a collection,” underlines Icaro Moyano. Friends can then be classified according to a small number of categories based on Spanish geographical and personal references: departments, universities, companies, favourite weekend hangouts… “A Spanish user is very different from a Norwegian one: he or she is probably between 14 and 30, and will not live more than 300 kilometres from where he or she is born. So Spanish users need adapted references.”
Tuenti has just launched four new versions in English, Galician, Basque and Catalan. This segmentation, into both languages and categories, is very attractive for advertisers. “From the outset, we thought that this would allow reaching out to very specific sectors of users and so ensure good returns on investment,” states Icaro Moyano. “Teenagers from 16 to 18 years don’t read newspapers, watch less and less television, and don’t go to the cinema… So where do they go? Probably on Internet, and in Spain, on Tuenti,” he explains.
Respecting privacy is a key value, according to Tuenti managers, who take care not to be too intrusive. They deliver few messages, preferring to carry out interactive campaigns where internauts can exchange with brands or win prizes, rather than be bogged down by invasive banners or pop-up screens. An Apple campaign has thus generated over 40,000 comments. “Amongst social networks, Tuenti is the one that has best managed to innovate in the publicity field, while acting respectfully,” observes Enrique Dans, Professor of information systems and technology at the IE Business School (Madrid). Certain users are nevertheless beginning to complain about being dogged by these campaigns. “It is crucial that the network finds other means to generate revenue, other than announcements for sponsored events,” he points out. “It could for example offer using these ‘events’, which the members discuss between themselves – concerts, shopping sessions, films – to introduce these young users, often without credit cards, to online consumption.”