Nowadays, dating websites gain grounds and have a great impact in human relationships. Badoo.com is a free dating website active the last eight years with more than 170 million registered users worldwide. It is one of the most rapidly developing websites in its field. This dating website is available on laptops, mobiles and tablets and enables direct connection to the social media.
How does it work?
In order to have access and use badoo.com, individuals should sign up. Personal details are required such as name, date of birth and current city. Another mandatory field to fill in is the reason users visit the website – date, make friends or chat – and the gender you are interested in. The next steps which are the option to connect with friends via e-mail account or social media and upload pictures, are not obligatory.
Since individuals have created an account there are several choices. Firstly, there is a setting to specify characteristics such as age and gender of the person you want to talk with. Pictures of people appear and two options are possible, a “heart” which means I want to meet you or an “X” which automatically replace the picture of the man/woman with a new picture of a different person. In case that two people like each other picture by pressing the “heart” the use of chat is possible.
Badoo.com is free to sign up and chat with maximum ten people per day. If users want to have more choices there are premium services with different costs. These premium services and advertisements constitute the main source of income of the business.
Advantages and Disadvantages
The structure of the website in combination with the free access is the main reason that makes this website high in consumer preference. The users can easily choose the characteristics of the man or woman they want to meet. Moreover the “Help” session is perfectly written in order to provide information not only related to the use of the website but also in other subjects. Another important issue is that allows people to chat only if they both like each other.
On the other hand the members without a premium account have a limited number of choices relatively to the defaults. Only the age and the age of the person determining the selection of the pictures that will appear. More options such as profession, marital status, religion could be used in order to help the search.
Conclusion
As it general acknowledged, last decades internet has changed people’s lives in different sectors. A significant interference is the creation of human relationships through dating websites.
Badoo.nl is tailored to users’ needs and expectations based on features such as age, gender, location. It is definitely not a product customization but it could be considered as “people customization”. Badoo.nl offers services to connect people but in a way that someone may in advance determine preferences.
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References
http://www.worthofweb.com/blog/case-study-badoo-it-is-a-complete-dating-social-network/ee
http://www.think-inc.co.uk/case_study/Worlds_Best_Chat-Up_Line/)
Maria Nikolaidou (371861)
Consumer Value Creation 