From Adsense to Flirt-Words; Virtual ice cubes that melt on arrival: Flirtomatic!

We love Flirtomatic here at this blog and have chronicled its rise and rise and rise since its launch in 2006. Flirtomatic's CEO Mark Curtis is a close friend of ours and has been remarkably generous in sharing detailed information about the service. I discussed the melting ice cubes two weeks ago at my mobile-specific blog www.7thmassmedia.com but they have again innovated and also picked up some recognition. So its time to do a bigger review of perhaps the most innovative social networking service of them all, Flirtomatic.

FLIRTOMATIC IS NOT

Lets start by what it is not. You might think its a dating service. It is not. There is an 18 year age limit and some of the often-mentioned (and seen) graphics from Flirtomatic included the girl swirling the bra, and the "virtual boob job", so its easy to think Flirtomatic is sleazy sexy nudity. It is not. The content guidelines for Flirtomatic say that the user-generated content must be of the kind, that the BBC would be willing to broadcast the content over the air. All messages and pictures are monitored by real live people and when members approach or cross the line, they are gently advised of the guidelines. The members greatly appreciate it. Flirtomatic is not a place for sick, perverted "dirty-old-men" (like me, ha-ha).

So its not dating and its not porn, what is it then? Its a fun flirting service for adults. Mostly young adults. A social networking service for that age who hang around in the clubs, pubs and discos. Who are perhaps a bit tipsy and drunk, wanting to flirt a bit, not really looking for anything serious. Twitter but with the fun added. In fact, Mark Curtis said that Flirtomatic members "buy extra fun from us" that is what they do.

BIG GROWTH

Ok, weird experiment in social networking? Lets look at the numbers. Today Flirtomatic has over a million users and has spread from the UK to Germany and USA. It is available on the PC and on mobile, but far more than half of users are currently on mobile. What does it cost? Nothing. Even on mobile, Flirtomatic abandoned its subscription fee as "unnecessary" in 2007 as we reported here at Communities Dominate.

To sign up its that simple that you only need a minimum of two details and you can be up and flirting. Yes, there are profiles you can fill out (later) if you want, but Flirtomatic understands that users especially on mobile are in a hurry and don't want to go through many clicks and pages of forms to sign up to something. Its as near-instant as possible.

So how do they make their money, it has to be advertising then, eh? Banner ads? Well, yes, Flirtomatic does have advertising also, but their ad revenues are a small minority of total revenues. So small that they really would not suffer if ads disappeared. (What? no subscriptions and negligable advertiser revenues? What kind of voodoo magic financing is this based upon?). Flirtomatic is the most creative developer of real money-making opportunities from their user base, that are possible in a virtual world.

MOBILE, THE MAGICAL MONEY-MAKING MACHINE

Personalizing for premium cost. You can have your basic character and customize it, post your picture etc. But if you want to customize your character and be a bit special - and who doesn't want to be a bit special - then yes, customization. Flirtomatic created their virtual money system, flirt points. And they started off by accepting premium SMS based payments to buy flirt points. Today they accept a wide range of payments including credit cards, paypal, direct debit, and yes, mobile premium SMS payment. Obviously this was not invented by Flirtomatic, it is a direct adaptation of the idea first launched by Habbo Hotel. But its one way to make money. Latest ideas of this concept include yes, boob jobs and tummy tucks at one UK pound each. They sold 10,000 virtual boob jobs for last summer (and bear in mind, its only visible in bikini, there is no nudity..)

Then they decided to add gifting. Virtual gifts. Again, this is not an invention of Flirtomatic, it is an adaptation of the stunningly popular virtual gifts first invented by South Korea's Cyworld. The first famous Flirtomatic virtual gift was the virtual red rose, which back in 2007 (when they only had 400,000 users) sold 3.5 million units at about 23 UK pence a piece and generated 800,000 UK pounds (1.4 million dollars) in revenues. That is what I mean. Flirtomatic was proving that mobile was indeed a magical money-making machine. Not everyone of their members needed to buy these premium gifts, but as some did, the others saw them, and more bought them, and rapidly Flirtomatic made tons of money. Since then they've done wonderful stuff in the virtual gifts space, such as the sprinkled red rose and then the innovation of real world gifts sent to virtual friends (a true invention) when they launched  a set of real world gifts for Valentines's day this year. Now they carry a big inventory of real gifts you can send to your flirting partner(s). Latest in this space is the gift of the virtual ice cube, that melts upon arrival.

MELTING ON ARRIVAL?

What? What good is a virtual ice cube? You see it in the phone screen, you can't drop it into your drink. And then it melts on arrival? Who in their right mind pays to send such a gift? Not in their right mind, remember, the Flirtomatic users buy more fun from Flirtomatic. They may be a bit drunk when flirting. Ice cubes can mean many things from cooling a drink to sensual sexual fun. An ice cube is fun. You are flirting, you may be in a pub or bar. Your friend may be stuck in a meeting that is running late and is getting upset at the boss who wont' let them leave (send an ice cube! Show you care). Then your friend is in the train that is crowded and hot (send another ice cube). Your friend finally arives, orders a drink - you see her, you wink, she orders her drink, drowns it fast, and with the phone hidden behind your back, you send another ice cube.. its fun. Did it sell? They sold 5,000 melting ice cubes in the first week.

Its not just selling such gifts to the Flirtomatic members, they also can turn these into sponsored content, so its a form of advertising. Not a boring banner ad, but a sponsored "big wet kiss" for example by L'Oreal or a sponsored virtual drink like a glass of champagne or a beer. Again, Flirtomatic is blending the line between reality and virtuality, they had for example a gift of a sponsored real glass of Guinness beer, redeemable at authorized Guinness pubs. Not virtual beer but real beer from your virtual friend. Who would NOT want to give this gift to a friend? See how Flirtomatic delivers more fun to its users?

EGO SERVICES

But the really funky part of where Flirtomatic has truly shown the way for the 10 billion dollar social networking industry worldwide (over 2/3 of the revenues is generated on the mobile side, obviously, most of the Facebooks and YouTubes and Twitters are very poor at generating revenues while mobile social networking is usually very lucrative), is with what Mark Curtis labeled as "ego services". Paid premium services that deal with the users' ego. For example your ratings. All Flirtomatic members can rate each other so you get 5 stars or 3 stars or perhaps you get 1 star. Nobody wants bad scores, and it is typical of human relationships that sometimes there is unfair play, perhaps "revenge" etc. So you have mostly great scores and the one 1 star review spoiling your record. Wouldn't you want to be able to just eliminate that bad score? With Flirtomatic you can. They call it "delete your freak". But obviously you need to pay (I wish I could delete one freaky review of one of my books on Amazon ha-ha).

This also is a class of services, there are many. Another is to pay to reveal who gave you that score, whether particularly good score (really loves me) or particlarly bad score. But pay to reveal. Yes. Ego-services, a true innovation by Flirtomatic.

AUCTIONED USER ADS

And they keep on and on. So while yes, there are banner ads on Flirtomatic and yes, traditional brands as advertisers; and Flirtomatic has also pioneered virtual branded gifting; the most amazing part is how they've brought auctioned ads to the service. They started with the First Face. If you want to be the first picture all Flirtomatic users see when they log into the service, that is easy to do. Bid on it. outbid the others, and you are the First Face for the next 6 hours. You'll definitely gain new friends in the next 6 hours, fastest fingers first...

Now they've just today announced Flirt-Words, a variant on adsense type of auctioned words, rented for the next 24 hours to the member who bids the most. Want to own "cool" or "sexy" or "fun" for the next day, when Flirtomatic members search the service? If you win the bid, you get it and be prepared for incoming messages from new friends.

GRAND PRIX OF NEW MEDIA AWARDS

We love Flirtomatic. It is the most fun side of our thesis that communities dominate, and we really do appreciate it, that Flirtomatic keeps validating that you can make money on social networking (primarily on the mobile side, obviously). Last week the New Media Age, a UK publication focusing on digital media but with a strong history and focus on the internet side, had its annual awards. Flirtomatic was not only the mobile winner, but given the Grand Prix top prize of the gala event. I wish I could have been there but we joined very warmly celebrating with Flirtomatic via Twitter and Forum Oxford and now here at the CDB blog. Congratulations to all at Flirtomatic.

Now, several really important additional comments. First, Mark Curtis is of course also an author, his book Distraction: being Human in a Digital Age is very VERY warmly recommended. Its in paperback, if you want something great to read this summer, pick it up. If you like our blog, you will love the book.

Then Fjord. Mark Curtis is a founder and board member of Fjord, the digital design agency specializing in digital convergence, between mobile, web and media. Truly a world-class talent, Fjord is used by the BBC, Nokia, Yahoo, T-Mobile, etc. And yes, Fjord designed Flirtomatic originally. Certainly its own staff have evolved Flirtomatic very far, but please, in your mind, go back to 2005-2006. Four years ago, who was promising new ways to make money on social networking? on a converged service? Who was even offering mobile social networking back then, apart from some unfamiliar names from Japan and South Korea.

Yet back then, long before Twitter, when Facebook and YouTube were not known, some UK digital agency named Fjord, conceived of Flirtomatic. If you today need help with gaining success in this difficult digital convergence space that includes mobile, then please consider Fjord. They have expanded past the UK with offices in Germany, Finland and USA. They are truly world-class.

And lastly, if you want to read more about Flirtomatic and also those other services I mentioned like Habbo Hotel and Cyworld, then I am most proud that Mark Curtis wrote the foreword to my latest, my 9th book, Tomi Ahonen Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking. You can read many sample pages of the 171 page eBook, that has 50 case studies of success in mobile social networking, at this page: Tomi's Pearls Vol 2.

Comments

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