WAYN

'WAYN' (standing for ''Where Are You Now?'') is a social networking website with a goal to unite travellers from around the world. WAYN has top 2000 ^[1] in Alexa Internet traffic ranking and was launched in May 2003 after two of its founders came up with the idea to connect people based on their location whilst having a few beers in their local pub. It grew from 45,000 to 4.1 million members in one year (to April 2006) and now can boast over 8 million members ^[2].
Often mispronounced ''Wayne'', the name is actually an acronym of ''Where Are You Now?'' encouraging the premise of which it is based – Location, travel and lifestyle. WAYN interestingly also means ''Where'' in Arabic, reflecting the global and universal nature of WAYN.

Contents

Features

History

Popularity

Criticism

See also

References

External links

Features

As with many other social networking services, WAYN enables its users to create a profile and upload photos. Users can then search for others, and link them to their profiles as friends. It is also possible to send and receive messages using email, discussion forums, eCards, SMS and WAYN instant messaging (web client, no downloads required).
Since it is designed for , it enables a user to locate visually where each of their contacts is situated around the world. The service is thus intended to be used for its members to keep friends informed of where they are whilst travelling but also for people to find out who is coming to visit their location from elsewhere.
WAYN is very popular in the UK where it has over 1.5 million members. It is also strong in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries in Western Europe, including the Netherlands. In all, WAYN has members from 220 different countries creating a strong global network.

History

WAYN was founded in 2002 in London and was presented to the public in May 2003 having secured financial backing from Stephen Pankhurst, the founder of the well known UK school reunion site Friends Reunited, which recently sold to ITV for £120M (plus £55M earn-out).
WAYN initially grew through word-of-mouth and reached almost 50,000 members by the end of 2004. Following its relaunch in May 2005 it grew exponentially, reaching over 2.5M members by the end of 2005. On 21st June 2007 the site claimed "over 8m members" ^[3]
WAYN is also one of the very few sites which didn't lose the impact of new subscriptions after introducing fees for taking advantage of the full membership service September 2004, making it one of the few premium social networking communities that has managed to become profitable.
WAYN secured $11m Series A funding from ECP (Esprit Capital Partners) last November (2006) and secured Brent Hoberman, ex CEO and Founder of Lastminute.com - Esprit Capital Partners, a firm formed from the recent merger of Cazenove Private Equity and Prelude Ventures, has put up most of the investment funding for WAYN. Others investing with Hoberman include the founders of some of Britain’s most successful online businesses: David Soskin and Hugo Burge of Cheapflights and HOWZAT media LLP; Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillips of Active Hotels (which was sold in 2004), and Constant Tedder of Jagex, an online games company.
Unusually for a venture-capital investment, Esprit has allowed Ward and his co-founders, Jerome Touze and Mike Lines, to cash in some of their shares.

Popularity

Though not as popular as MySpace in the United States, WAYN.com has grown into a global brand. While WAYN.com is not aimed at a particular age group, it is most popular within the 18 to 25 but also seem to have a strong position amongst the 35 to 45+.
Members can find out who will be travelling at their next intended destination, at the same time as them. It has been featured across the national press in Great Britain as one of the Internet Phenomenons of the year.
WAYN has been nominated for the Website of the Year contest in category Social Networks.
WAYN now has over 8 million members, growing by up to 20,000 members daily.

Criticism

When a user signs up for the WAYN service, they are given the option to import contacts from an online address book (such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and Gmail) by providing their username and password^[4] and invite those contacts to join WAYN. However, as with all social networks, this function has been criticised by some users, who felt that it is made too difficult to unsubscribe from these "invitation reminders"^[5].
In addition, when a user signs up for a new WAYN account and is given the option to import contacts from an online address book, the link to "Skip this step" can be overlooked, making some users believe that importing addresses is a requirement rather than an option. WAYN has however relaunched a new layout of their site in April 2007 with enhanched privacy functionalities and providing users with a more intuitive navigation throughout the registration process and whilst browsing online.
WAYN also censors the messages sent between users to encourage communication through the site. This is allegedly to ensure that users are protected by the WAYN site policies whilst interacting with other members. However, it also makes it difficult for users to communicate other than through the WAYN message system. Any reference to an e-mail address, or popular networking website will therefore be filtered. Although users have found some ways to get around this (e.g. deliberate incorrect spelling of mail addresses).

See also

★ List of social networking websites

References

1. Alexa Internet ''Alexa Traffic Ranking for wayn.com''. Retrieved October 10, 2006.
2. Media Week article, ''Media Run wins travellers' website account''. 27 April, 2006.
3. WAYN About US Page
4. WAYN ''Privacy policy''. Retrieved January 3, 2006.
5. Spyware Info ''WAYN — Spyware Info discussion forums''. Retrieved January 3, 2006.

External links

★ WAYN website

★ How we built WAYN.com — an interview with the creators of WAYN, published in MaxPC magazine

★ About WAYN Concept

★ WAYN part of TRUSTe