The Feed: Is Badoo the Next Facebook?

Do You Badoo?: Badoo is the largest and sexiest social network in the world. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will probably be hearing about it a lot more very soon. Badoo is basically a hook-up service; it matches users based on profile picture and location. What kind of “hook-up” you get depends on what you are looking for—a relationship, a weekend fling, or other brief encounters. Badoo was founded in 2006 by mysterious Russian businessman Andrey Andreev. Andreev started it in Spain originally as a photo-sharing site geared towards meeting new people, and it quickly grew in popularity and spread all over Europe. Since then the site has gone global (14.1 million members in Brazil, nine million in Mexico, 8.2 million in France, 6.5 million in Spain, and six million in Italy) and mobile, and it has added premium services that are raking in the big bucks. While Badoo has users in the U.S. and British markets, it has yet to completely conquer these markets like the European markets—I guess it’s those prudish Anglo-Saxon values of ours that are making us take a little longer to jump on the Badoo bandwagon.  We’ll have to wait and see if it really takes off here too. Wired