Fotolog Passes 20 Million Members
Grows from 10 to 20 Million Members in 1 Year
World's 4th Most-Active Social Content Site Adds Revenue Streams & Builds Platform for Continued Growth
NEW YORK, Aug. 20 -- Hi-Media Group announced today that Fotolog (www.fotolog.com), the world's largest photo-blogging website and the 4th most-active social network(1), has passed the 20 million member mark. Since the website's acquisition by Hi-Media Group was announced in 2007, Fotolog's rapidly-growing and highly-engaged community -- which has created one of the largest and most-global inventories of user-generated content -- has achieved key milestones.
-- Sharply accelerated growth rate going from 10-20 million members in the past year (previously, Fotolog had built a 10-million member community in 5 years).
-- Rolled out the m.fotolog.com mobile service worldwide and introduced the Allopass micro-payments platform in Latin America.
-- Key market growth worldwide: #2 social network in Spain; US unique visitors doubled in 2008.
Fotolog's Explosive Growth Confirms Hi-Media Investment Strategy
"Fotolog's performance affirms our strategy of acquiring and monetizing one of the world's massive publishers of social content as rapid growth continues in Europe and Latin America as well as the US where we are beginning to get traction," said Hi-Media Group Chairman and CEO, Cyril Zimmermann. "We have successfully applied our advertising and micro-payments capabilities to grow Fotolog's revenues, which has enabled us to selectively focus resources on growing the global audience and adding attractive features such as mobile capabilities that further enrich the member experience."
Fotolog was acquired in November 2007 by Hi-Media Group, a top-100 Internet company (comScore, June 2008) and one of Europe's largest diversified, publicly-traded, pure-play Internet companies. Since the acquisition was announced, Fotolog has doubled its audience in over 200 countries, adding 10 million members worldwide. By bringing Fotolog's audience together with Hi-Media's global advertising and micro-payment services, Hi-Media Group has expanded revenues three-fold year-on-year in the first half of 2008.
Fotolog Goes Mobile, Rolls-Out Micro-payments Platform & Upgrades
Infrastructure
"Fotolog's incredible growth in Europe has established it as a truly international brand," said General Manager Andrew Cohen. "Today, the success of our micro-payments business, scaled to an audience of 20 million members, has positioned Fotolog as a leading innovator in the social networking space."
Fotolog is laying a foundation for continued growth by adding revenue streams, new features and a state-of-the-art infrastructure. In July, 2008, the website announced the world-wide launch of its mobile service accessible at m.fotolog.com. In August, Fotolog announced the roll out of Hi-Media's Allopass micro-payments system to members in Latin America where Fotolog has over 12 million unique monthly visitors who generate over 2.8 billion page views. By enabling subscription membership payments by SMS, the introduction of Allopass added hundreds of thousands of new members across the region and created promising new revenue streams. In August, Fotolog announced a complete technology upgrade to the world's highest-volume deployment of MySQL on Solaris and a doubling of Fotolog.com's software engineering team to accommodate explosive growth that is generating over one billion weekly page views.
About Fotolog, Inc.
Fotolog is the 4th most trafficked social networking site in the world (Alexa, May 2008) and represents one of the most active communities on the Internet today. More than 20 million member accounts from 200 countries have shared over 600 million photos since Fotolog's inception in October 2002. Fotolog has grown virally since its founding, with virtually no marketing or member incentives. Fotolog was acquired in 2007 by Hi-Media Group (www.hi-media.com), one of the top 100 media companies worldwide, with advertising, publishing and micro-payments businesses.
About Hi-Media
Hi-Media Group is Europe's leading integrated online media company and ranks among the world's largest Internet publishers with 29 million unique users and ranking among the world's top 100 Internet media groups (comScore). The Group's audience is monetised by Hi-Media's integrated advertising and micro-payment networks serving more than 200,000 partner websites. With operations in nine countries, Hi-Media is listed on the Euronext Paris Eurolist B and belongs to the SBF 250, CAC IT, and CAC Small 90 indices. ISIN Code: FR0000075988
(1) Alexa May 2008
Contact Information:
Andrei Bogolubov
NEWPR Group
917-849-9300
Andrei.bogolubov at newprgroup.com
Hi-Media Group
