TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor.com is a travel website that assists customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel-related content and engaging in interactive travel forums. TripAdvisor was an early adopter of user-generated content . The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by an advertising business model. [ 2 ] Description [ edit ] TripAdvisor Media Group operates seventeen travel brands including TripAdvisor, Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, Cruise Critic , Family Vacation Critic, FlipKey , Holiday Lettings, Holiday Watchdog , Independent Traveler, OneTime, SeatGuru , SmarterTravel, Tingo, SniqueAway, Travel Library, TravelPod , VirtualTourist and Kuxun.cn. History [ edit ] TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 by Stephen Kaufer. In April 2009 TripAdvisor launched its official site in China daodao . In December 2011, TripAdvisor was spun off from Expedia in a public offering. [ 15 ] See also [ edit ]
Scaling is Hard, Case Study: TripAdvisor. “TripAdvisor is to travel reviews what Kleenex is to tissues.” – Henry Harteveldt, Forrester TripAdvisor may be one of the most fascinating companies I know and so I was excited to dig into their business model as part of my series on scaling. This is a company that took $4 million of invested capital to build a company now worth over $4 billion. As I mentioned in my post last week, scaling is hard.
Really hard. As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. That’s why I embarked on this series: to highlight a few companies outside of the Google/Amazon/Facebook pantheon that have built large, sustainable, profitable business models at scale. TripAdvisor’s History: Two Big Pivots Chatting with CEO and cofounder Kaufer this week, I was reminded of the fact that the company started with a very different business model in mind. (Founder Stories) TripAdvisor’s Kaufer: Crucial Early Decisions Paved The Way For An IPO. Earlier today, TripAdvisor added its name to the list of companies publicly trading on the NASDAQ.
After doing so, TripAdvisor’s co-founder Stephen Kaufer stopped by TechCrunch for a Founder Stories interview with host, Chris Dixon. TripAdvisor offers user-generated reviews of everything from hotels to restaurants and claims “50 million monthly unique visitors and 20 million members.” Healthy numbers now, but dial back a decade and TripAdvisor was gasping for air. Kaufer says 18-months in “we had no clients, we had no revenue and we were running out of money.” Realizing time was short, the team dumped their initial business model after recognizing a demo they released on the side “to showcase what someone else could do with [our] technology” was gathering steam. Leadership built a plan around the concept, added a “write your own review” button and was off to the races with what we now know as TripAdvisor.
Episode II of Kaufer’s interview is coming up. User-generated content. Many commercial websites rely on UGC. For example,Amazon.com and Trip Advisor rely on users to rate products and hotels and restaurants, respectively.[2][3] These reviews are important part of what the two respective websites offer. When UGC is contained in commercial websites it is often monitored by administrators to avoid offensive content or language, copyright infringement issues, or simply to determine relevancy of the content to the site's theme. Because user-generated content is generally free to store, the world's data centers are now replete with exabytes of UGC that, in addition to creating a corporate asset,[4] may also contain data that can be regarded as a liability.[5][6] General requirements[edit] The advent of user-generated content marked a shift among media organizations from creating online content to providing facilities for amateurs to publish their own content. The OECD has defined three central schools for UGC:[9] Adoption and recognition by mass media[edit]
Lessons From 4 Killer UGC Campaigns. This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Burberry's Art of the Trench campaign redefined UGC in the digital era. It's simple, really — the best way to show how great your product is is to show real, fashionable people wearing your product ... and looking damn good doing so. Since the Trench site launched in 2009 (it's still a living project today), several other brands have sought to integrate UGC into their marketing tactics and business model. Last summer, apparel company Free People began integrating consumer Instagram photos onto product pages for its denim jeans. Doritos put its Super Bowl commercials in the hands of chip eaters — and it worked. Ray-Ban worked with Breakfast to create "mosaic" billboards in real time by pulling in Instagrams from a three-day music festival (see below). 1.
Yogawear company lululemon is all about living well. 2. 3. 4. 3 User-Generated Campaigns That Got it Right. Carolyn Baumgarten, is the community manager for Socialogic, a social media marketing agency. No stranger to the social media landscape, Carolyn brings to SociaLogic work experience in multiple industries including the arts, environment, and entertainment. Follow her @cbaumgarten. In an age where constant ad bombardment has become as common as paying $5 for a latte, companies are looking for new ways to break through the marketing clutter. One particular form that has grown in popularity is building a campaign around user-generated content (UGC). The advent of technology and social platforms has made it easier than ever for people to post their own content online, whether it comes in the form of reviews, videos, photos, or blog posts. Of course, when it comes to these campaigns, some may wonder what benefit there is in taking the power out of the hands of brands and transferring it to consumers.
SEE ALSO: 3 Mobile Platforms Your Brand Should Leverage 1. 2. 3. How to Start and Grow a User Generated Content Community. So I’m doing something a bit different this time around. Instead of going into one of the main sessions, I though I’d stumble into one of the Expert Spotlight sessions to hear how one company is “doing it right”. Paul Edmondson from HubPages is on hand to talk about how to grow a user generated content community, using his company HubPages, as a mini-case study.
Let’s see what Paul learned on his journey and how we could maybe adapt his best practices for own sites. Up for the challenge? Let’s go. What is HubPages? HubPages was designed to help everyday experts communicate their knowledge to information seekers while earning an income. Five Things To Help You Start and Grow Partner: Like going to the gym, having a partner makes you show up. Some questions from the audience: What channels are best to get new users to your community?
The best channel is blogs – writing blogs, community blogs, etc. As you acquired users, did you invest mostly in SEO, SEM, etc? Advertising - How to start the influx of visitors on a user-generated content site? How can i create a 'user generated content' site? Quote: yzal, Here is my thought on this. I have been following, and researching, the revenue share, offerings, and general business models of ALOT of websites that do essentially the same thing.
They share revenue, in return for content, and some do REALLY well and some don't. Even with a 100% revenue share, some fall to the wayside for a variety of reasons. Hate to say it, but in order to come up with a site, that goes viral, yes, you are probably looking at sharing AT LEAST 75%... The problem is, though, it is VERY hard, especially for a new site, to grow, with all the competition out there now.... Seriously....you have everyone from the Squidoos, to the eHows and HubPages and Xombas and Bukisas of the world....each one does essentially the same thing, but with slight variations on how they are managed and what they offer. Seo - How to get users to sign up for a ugc site? - Webmasters Stack Exchange. 7 Tips For Generating Great Content from Customers. Yelp, Inc. Yelp, Inc. is an American company that operates yelp.com , a local business directory service and review site with social networking features.
Yelp.com had more than 100 million monthly unique visitors as of January 2013, up from 71 million on the same time last year. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Yelp's revenue comes from local business advertising. [ 6 ] [ 7 ] History [ edit ] Early history [ edit ] Yelp’s email-based website from 2004 Yelp was started out of MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects. [ 8 ] In late 2004, Levchin brought up the topic of Yellow Pages, which had been worked on since the incubator was started, with Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons.
Development [ edit ] A California court found in 2013 that Yelp is not legally liable for the actions of its review filtering software. [ 59 ] Recent history [ edit ] Yelp started offering a local deals service to compete with Groupon in April 2011. Reviews. Yelp: From Scrappy Startup to $100 Million IPO [INFOGRAPHIC] Yelp is ready to hit the marketplace with a $100 million IPO on March 2, and both investors and the tech community will be watching to see how the location network will fare. While the numbers are certainly nowhere near Facebook IPO territory, Yelp has proven itself over the long haul with steady user and revenue growth since 2005.
But despite the upward climb, Yelp has yet to turn a profit, posting a net loss of $16.8 million in 2011 — its biggest shortfall to date. It's presumed public investment will garner Yelp the capital it needs to finally get into the black. SEE ALSO: How 9 Tech Giants Traded After Going Public [INFOGRAPHIC] Our friends at Statista have aggregated Yelp's financial history and created the infographic below for a clearer picture on where the company has been, and where it might be headed.
Do you think buying stock in Yelp is a sound investment? Does the site have what it takes to stave off other up-and-coming location networks? Infographic courtesy of Statista. Elite Squad - Montr?al.