Ypulse Sponsored Interview: Catherine Cook, Founder, myYearbook

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myYearbook has been a long time Ypulse.com sponsor and is a sponsor at this year’s Ypulse Mashup, where they will be presenting a case study focusing on their advertising partnerships. In case you missed the news, myYearbook is now the number three social networking site behind MySpace and Facebook according to HitWise. As part of our sponsorship offering, we give companies the option to either write their own sponsored guest post or answer some questions in a Q&A format. What follows is a short interview with Catherine Cook, Founder, myYearbook (featured in the photo with her brothers David and Geoff).

Ypulse: What inspired you to start myYearbook?

Catherine Cook: My brother Dave and I got the idea for myYearbook from flipping through a normal high school yearbook. We thought that an online yearbook would make it easier to get to know people in our school. At dinner a few days later, we told our idea to our older brother, Geoff, and persuaded him to invest $250,000 into our idea. When we launched in April 2005 in just our high school, we signed up 300 people in the first week, but now myYearbook signs up 20K members/day and is the third largest and fastest growing social network in the US. In the last year, we have grown by 426% in market share to surpass Bebo, according to leading online competitive intelligence service Hitwise, and receive more than 5M unique US visitors and more than 1B page views/month.

YP: What do you attribute that growth to?

CC: We attribute our growth to the core features we create for our users. Applications such as Battles, the leading competition site in the US, myMag, the number 1 online teen magazine, Quiz, the leading quiz site in the US, and Match resonate well with the teen market. These features are not only unique, but very popular. According to Hitwise, the average visit length was 32:54 for myYearbook, compared with 29:54 for MySpace and 20:52 for Facebook in April 2008–making myYearbook the most engaging large social network.

YP: How are you different from your competitors?

CC: As a niche social network we stay focused on the teenagers. Unlike MySpace and Facebook which have both gone mass market, myYearbook stays true to its target audience. Also, we view ourselves as a social media company, not a social utility. As a social media company, we do not want to spam our users with applications that do not appeal to them. Instead of opening our platform to outside developers, we choose the best of breed applications and focus on an integrated suite of applications and a vibrant virtual economy. We listen to our users suggestions and build the applications they want to see making our new features a sure hit, rather than spamming our users with outside developers’ requests.

YP: What makes MyYearbook appealing to potential advertisers/partners?

CC: We believe we are successful with these advertisers because we allow our users to engage with advertisers by choice. Through a series of specially designed applications, our partners are able to truly connect with the teen audience. Featured gifts average over 20,000 gifts given and the average campaign profile generates over 50,000 friends, illustrating the success of these applications to appeal to teens. Our campaigns have been successful because of the level of engagement we offer our users with the brand.

YP: Is there anything new in store for myYearbook?

CC: Yes, we are always trying to better user experience by developing new features. This month we will be launching two new features, a TV application and a Games application. By partnering with Hulu, our members can enjoy TV shows from NBC Universal, Fox, and Comedy Central by using our TV application. The Games application will let users play card, strategy, word, and arcade games for Lunch Money, our virtual currency. By creating these features, we hope for myYearbook to have another year of phenomenal growth and remain the fastest growing social network in the US.

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Categorized under: 2008 Mashup

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