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April 18, 2006
WidiWici's Social Networking For Sporty Types
Neteco, which has become a good source for getting the skinny on French startups, has an interview with the creators of Lyon-based widiwici, a recently launched sports-oriented social networking site that has about 500 members.
About 20 percent turn up as active users who arrange sports matches, tournaments, and meet-ups online. We had a look and it is a bit like an early stage OpenBC with the focus on sports, rather than business networking, but with support for photo and video sharing, particularly appropriate for team sports or competitions.
The business idea is to create a community of sporty types and then provide premium services, ads, and products to that community. Originally only in French, it is now also available in English and Spanish.
It says it won't be selling its users email addresses to third parties to make money, but it may introduce a premium service for heavy users, those what that want photo and video storage will be offered a monthly fee of two or three euros. Otherwise access is free for registered users.
There are plans afoot to run ads for sports events or announcements in the public areas and it is putting in place affiliate marketing schemes for products like sports club insurance and sports gear. A white label service is targeted at firms or organizations that want to offer a sports networking to their community of users.
Widiwici's founders are hoping for 1000 members by the end of June and 10,000 by the end of the year. The interview did not have any information on how the venture is funded.
Posted on April 18, 2006 01:36 PM | Posted to Online services | Permalink
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