Posting to friends’ walls and the story of Badoo

Alexander Sergeev

wrote this on Мар 21, 2015

Badoo is a dating website, founded in 2006 by Russian businessman Andrei Andreev, the founder of other projects like Mamba and Begun.

He always dreamed of bringing Mamba to an international market, but never quite managed it. Then he created Badoo.

At the moment Badoo is fourth in the world rankings of social networks. The number of network users at the time of writing is about 162 million. 125,000 new users register with Badoo every day.

On April 13, 2011 Facebook threatened to close Badoo, if it did not become less viral. And it became less viral.

At the time of writing Badoo has a daily audience (DAU) of 380,000 and a monthly audience (MAU) of 4.5 million. Let´s turn to March 31, 2011, a fortnight before Facebook told Badoo designers to make the app less viral.

About 65 million people were using the app at the end of March, can you imagine this? That is an MAU of 65 million and a DAU of about 5 million

And they were not just using the app. If you read the chapter on how to get a 100% registration conversion rate with banner ads on Facebook, you will understand that the whole audience had moved to badoo.com. Moreover Badoo didn’t just import Facebook users’ names and ages, but also their profile data and photos.

In fact, Badoo copied Facebook’s audience. If Facebook didn’t react, then Badoo would probably have taken all of Facebook’s users!

So, a while ago I figured out where Badoo got its huge, 160-million strong audience.

• It got its first 15 million users from Mambo.
• It got a further 100 million from Facebook.

The rest of the audience probably came across the site independently and registered.

How did this happen? What viral tricks were behind this daylight robbery? I can now reveal their secret.

So what is the Badoo app? It’s very simple. You answer a question about one of your friends. For example, "Will your friend John Smith help a granny to cross the road?" Your answer to this question is "Yes," and Badoo posts the following to your friend´s feed: “Your friend answered a question about you ‘Will you help a granny to cross the road?’ Click here to see the answer.”

An important point: this note is visible to all of John Smith’s friends!

Your friend clicks and reaches the page where the Badoo app asks for the right to access their profile. He agrees and enters Badoo’s app. There he sees the following text:

“To see John’s answer, you need to score 10 points. To score 1 point, you need to answer a question about your friend.”

And then he starts answering questions about his friends. And Badoo publishes a note on the wall of each friend he answers a question about.

That was the era of Badoo’s conquest of Facebook. It was a glorious time, there were Badoo messages everywhere: “Your friend Mike answered a question about you.”

The history of the virus is as follows:

1. Facebook made a function in API, which allowed apps to post notes to friends´ walls.
2. Badoo found out about this opportunity.
3. Badoo made an app that automatically publishes notes to a user’s friends when they answer questions about them inside the app. Once again, it´s done automatically, so as soon as your friend answered a question about you, Badoo published a note to your feed.
4. April 13, 2011, Facebook demanded that Badoo make the app less viral.
5. Badoo fulfills Facebook’s requirements and under the questions displays a tick box with the option “Publish to your friend's wall,” but makes the message gray. If the user removes the tick, then Badoo shows the following text that his friends won't be able to answer questions about you. Badoo had technically fulfilled Facebook’s requirements, but we understand perfectly well what Badoo is up to. As a result of these changes, Badoo’s DAU fell from 5 million to 2 million.
6. Facebook finally bans Badoo from posting messages on friends´ walls. But Badoo is still allowed to post messages to those who answer questions. That is, if you answer a question about your friend, Badoo posts a message to your wall, which is visible only to your friends.
7. Finally, Badoo’s DAU fell to 380,000 and its MAU to 4.5 million.