Piczo’s Public Privacy
San Francisco-based Piczo is staging its “U.S. Market Introduction” this week by doing a lot of press interviews to build hype. There’s no actual news, but we think the company is worth mentioning due to its success with an interesting methodology for protecting its young members’ privacy: near-anonymous profiles, and no search tool.
Unlike other social networks, Piczo does not default to a simple profile, but instead multiple pages (a mini-site) of loose templates centered around pictures. It looks more like Geocities or Angelfire than MySpace or Facebook. Users are discouraged from posting any identifying information. Pop-up messages warn “Careful What You Post!” telling kids not to use their real names, or even mention their schools or sports teams. Users can only find friends through email or by looking at a friend’s list of friends.
Started by an Oracle software engineer as a paid photo scrapbooking site, two-and-a-half-year old Piczo has quickly grown to 17 million registered users. It is particularly popular in UK, with 13-to-15 year old girls being the dominant demographic. It has already set up ad deals with studios and music labels (e.g. John Tucker Must Die profile).
Its trajectory is remarkably similar to Bebo, another San Francisco-based social network that has also taken off in the U.K. The company raised $7 million from Sierra Ventures and Catamount Ventures and recently brought on new CEO Jeremy Verba, formerly an EIR at Foundation Capital, with experience at AOL, HearMe, and E! Online.
Other privacy-focused social networks like Tagged and Facebook try their darndest to associate users with real-world identities. However, those companies seem to be revising their closed philosophies. Tagged, we had previously thought, was only open to U.S. teenagers, but this week we didn’t have a problem registering with our real birthdate. And Facebook says it will soon be opening to all comers. It seems that only extremely closed networks, like Industrious Kid’s Imbee for 8- to 12-year-olds, are sticking to their guns.
Piczo is going entirely the opposite direction by keeping things anonymous and unsearchable. In this day and age of data leaks, this makes sense. Giving no personally identifiable information means kids can express themselves without fear of stalkers and weirdos. What’s more, they can protect themselves from the embarrassment of that information being attached to their real names when someone Googles them later in life. Kids need a place to play online that doesn’t go on their permanent record.
At the same time, parents and school administrators will be less than happy with the distance this puts between them and kids’ online expressions. The site, which has already been blocked by some schools, is opening itself up for a world of backlash.
PS: U.S. launches are hot, it seems. Consider our recent coverage of Cyworld and also Habbo Hotel. Look for another post Monday on WeeWorld, the European avatar phenomenon, which has partnered with AIM to get its way onto American desktops.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Liz:
Obviously, at Bolt we’re fairly bullish on the social media space, but I have to disagree that this has been a growth period for competitors of Myspace. Closer scrutiny of these numbers show that really only Bebo has had a good six months. Tagworld has gone nowhere since it raised capital and the only time it does it when it spends money marketing. Tagged has an impressive pg view/user number but very few uniques. Friendster doesn’t have American reach and Tribe has almost no traffic. Piczo has not move domestically but obviously has value in Europe. Even Facebook has leveled.
Bolt is listed by comscore as a video site so we don’t turn up on this list. If we did we would be third in unique users and sixth on page views. Our uniques have surged from 2 to 6mm in five months, but page view growth has been harder to come by. The truth is the myspace imitation game is a losing proposition and if there is going to be consolidation it’s going to be around Myspace not yahoo and viacom.
The only way to compete with Myspace is to differentiate not imitate. At Bolt, we plan to take our own advice.
Piczo might have the right idea. In fact, it’s a complete opposite from a website like Facebook, where everything is attached to your name. Kids, especially, but also many other users aren’t aware of security risks associated with online social networks… until they don’t get a job because of something they put up on their “personal” profile.
SAD!
i have forgotten the password to get into my web and i dont want to start a nother web so can i have your number to call