Ypulse Interview: Lin Dai, CEO, Kiwibox

Before Tom Anderson launched MySpace (and when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was still in junior high), Kiwibox surfaced on the web as a social network for teens before the buzzword "social network" even existed. Ten years later, Kiwibox is still thriving. CEO Lin Dai explains the site's success and staying power on the web. Lin will be speaking on the panel "How to reach youth on social networks" at the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East at BU. Another reason to register today….

Ypulse: Kiwibox has been around since 1999 – why has it lasted so much longer than most early internet startups?

Lin Dai: Kiwibox has managed to survive and exist for so long because of many reasons, most importantly because we have a solid business model. Kiwibox’s unique content meets social networking model was the first of its kind back in 1999, and still is a huge differentiator for us today in the eyes of the end users as well as advertisers. Our longevity can also be attributed to our dedication to the teen demographic. While other major social networks are aggressively expanding to target business users, Kiwibox has always been committed to serving the teen audience. In return, we have a tremendous community of teen contributors who are loyal, even fanatical about our platform, which allows for creative expression like no other site.

It’s a very interesting time right now in the market as users are also starting to show signs of social networking fatigue. The days of social networking for the sake of “collecting” friends online are numbered. People will be looking for ways to connect with each other online on a deeper level. Teens don’t want to belong to the same site as their parents. While most users in the social networking realm will continue to maintain a profile on one of the generic social networks such as Myspace or Facebook, they will find deeper connections and receive specialized content they are interested in on more targeted social networks like Kiwibox.

YP: What is your advice for Ypulse readers/media and marketing professionals trying to reach youth?

LD: You need to empower teens. Your message will be much more effective if you can get teens to have a true sense of ownership and expression. Kiwibox has been able to effectively reach the teen demographic by doing exactly that. Teens are a huge part of why our site is successful because they contribute the majority of its content. Teens are very opinionated and they contribute the content that’s most relevant to their everyday lives, through submitting news, articles, and journal entries and participating in the community. On Kiwibox, teens are able to create and mold the content to reflect their exact interests and preferences. This gives us a huge advantage because the message will always be relevant as long as teens are the ones taking ownership in creating them and sharing them with their peers.

YP: What sets Kiwibox apart from other social networks?

LD: Kiwibox’s combination of an online magazine and social networking features makes the site unique. In addition to standard social networking features, we publish a new “issue” of our online magazine each week. The magazine features content about music, entertainment, games, fashion, and love. Teen reporters contribute articles that go through an editorial process and are then published to the site for millions of other teens to see. As oppose to if you post a blog on your profile on a traditional social network, maybe a few dozen of your friends end up reading it. This is tremendous for a generation looking for self expression. The layer of content on top of the social networking features allows teens to discuss and connect with each other based on issues that are relevant to them. Teens are not limited in sharing their opinions with just their immediate friends, but they are able to do so with millions of other teens with similar interests. This is something you cannot do effectively on traditional social networks.

YP: What is the most popular feature on Kiwibox?

LD: Many of the features on Kiwibox are very popular with out audience. As part of the launch of Kiwibox 2.0 this summer, we released enhanced profiles that have been very popular with our members. Teens can now create customized profiles and add widgets to connect with services such as Facebook, Myspace YouTube, all without leaving Kiwibox.

The new KiwiboxTV section has been a hit with our audience. KiwiboxTV showcases exclusive Kiwibox video content hosted by teen Video Journalists selected from our members, conducting interviews featuring artists such as T-Pain, Danity Kane, Nelly, and more, or covering red carpet events such as Batman The Dark Knight premiere and New York Fashion Week.

KiwiGames and contest have been very popular ever since we launched the site in 1999. We released a new set of flash games as part of Kiwibox 2.0. By leveraging our longstanding relationships with major record labels, movie studios and game companies, we can offer teens exciting opportunities to connect to their favorite entertainment sources by winning prizes exclusive to the Kiwibox community. For example, we ran a contest with Nintendo where the winner wins a party for him/her and 8 friends, complete with a party bus, concert tickets for all, and a Nintendo DS to take home for each person!

YP: A recent Media Post article focused on your success with major brand advertisers — why do you think Kiwibox has been successful with brands?

LD: Kiwibox has been successful because we allow brand advertisers to connect with a targeted teen audience. Advertisers like having their ads shown next to our high quality online magazine content as opposed to generic user generated content that can be of questionable quality. Also, our online magazine approach allows us to pre-pitch sponsorships based around specific magazine issues. For example, Kmart, Kohls, and Tampax all ran ad campaigns for our Back to School issue.

YP: Anything else Ypulse readers should know?

LD: It’s an amazing time right now both online and on the mobile front. Advertising spend for online media is still far lower than it should be when considering the actual media consumption and amount of time people spend online. But the trend is finally starting to catch up, and we see a continuing shift of more and more ad spend towards online.

There’s even more opportunity in mobile advertising. The ad supported model on mobile is finally becoming viable. Open APIs on the iPhone and Google’s push for Android leaves the door wide open for development of innovative 3rd party applications, even industry-changing applications. Kiwibox has launched the first version of its WAP site this summer, and has had tremendous interests from advertisers seeking to integrate their online and mobile campaigns. Our “4KIWI” (45494) SMS services will launch in Q4 this year. It will have a collection of the best ad supported text messaging entertainment applications for teens.

We also plan on replicating our tremendous success in collaborative online content publishing onto the iPhone and other mobile platforms. Innovations like these will ultimately change how people connect with each other and the way people consume media and entertainment. We are very excited to be in the space right now and thrilled about all the opportunities to work and partner with a lot of the great companies in the industry.

Categorized under: 2008 Mashup East

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