Fuego Nation is an online world inhabited by passionate, talented individuals. These individuals are linked together by a singular flame of passion that burns brightly inside each of them yet is expressed in innumerable, unique ways. Our mandate as stewards of this online enclave is to provide members with the tools necessary to express and celebrate their innermost passions while engendering powerful, life-changing connections between them.

While other online worlds focus on the external manifestations of one’s persona (often expressed through the use of digital avatars in world’s like Second Life) Fuego Nation focuses on representing the internal emotions that inform our every decision, drive our every behavior and mend our every relationship. The value in our approach is that members receive data about one another that inform more efficient, reliable connections while our advertisers have a hyper-targeted base of consumers with which to interact who are articulating exactly what motivates them to buy.

The basis for our focus on passion stems from the realization that it is often the flame of desire that links people together of all races, cultures and creeds. Every act of human achievement, heroism and accomplishment can be traced back to a singular origin in that flame. So while I might express my own internal flame through entrepreneurship, others may do the same via academics, the arts or athletics. The thread that unites us all is a common underlying seed of ambition informed by acknowledgement, acceptance and, ultimately, self-actualization.

At Fuego Nation we’re building a community of like-minded individuals who strive for some level of betterment in their lives and are building a framework that encourages the exploration and appreciation of other people’s unique gifts across vertical interest groups. This is reflective of real life but not represented anywhere else on the web today. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, for example, are very good friends because they share a commonality of vision, passion for excellence and desire to realize the potential of their God-given talents even though they play different sports and travel in different circles. Painters befriend writers, writers befriend academics and academics befriend athletes. The bonds that connect them all are formulated below the surface and create a common basis for budding relationships be they personal or professional in nature.

Regarding personal relationships and dating, we set out to create an environment that was both safe and secure while removing the stigma associated with the activity. In our discussions with consumers, we often hear that one’s ideal mate doesn’t need to have the same passions as they do they just have to be passionate about something. Passion links people strongly and that is the foundation on which we have built our virtual community.

In my life, the flame of passion has always burned brightly. While the origin of that flame is difficult to discern the unquenchable thirst for achievement could never be called into question. The target of that flame and the outcome of base desire is heavily influence by role models, another key component of our community. My father, an aerospace entrepreneur served as a role model for my own seed of ambition. Were he an academic, a sailor or politician it is quite possible that I would have chosen another outlet for my ambition.

Role models are important to the concept of Fuego Nation. While some members may have already achieved excellence in their lives other, perhaps younger or less privileged members, may still be looking for outlets for their own passions. Our status-leveling system provides role models to other members striving to make their unique mark on the world. It is this concept that we believe makes our universe universally appealing.

In many instances people have a burning flame of passion that is not supported in one’s physical environment (e.g. immediate circle of friends, family and influencers). We believe that the positive environment fostered in Fuego Nation will enable those who do not find support in their local communities to use the expansive support apparatus enabled by Fuego Nation to make their dreams come to life. It is our hope and aspiration that young adults in poor, rural areas around the world will find outlets for their unique passions and gifts in our virtual world where they can be assured of receiving the support and encouragement necessary to overcome the inertia of their physical circumstance. We believe that Fuego Nation has the potential to minimize diminishing forces in one’s immediate physical environment and replace it with a support system which channels one’s burning desire into productive outlets. The outcome would be stronger role models in real world communities.

Though the flame of passion burns more brightly in some, a core belief at Fuego Nation is that a flame does burn in all of us. If only people of all races, creeds and cultures had a support apparatus that provided the oxygen necessary to realize the potential of their own unquenchable fires, harness them and perpetuate their creative potential, the world would surely be a better place in which to live.
- BMK

Privacy concerns seem to be all the rage these days. Facebook, attacked in recent months by privacy advocates, has swung into reactive mode, largely abandoning their advertising beacon strategy and installing more controls over who can access and view a user’s personal information. Driving this trend are the adults who are joining social networks in droves. These mature users have a much more pronounced need for privacy than youngsters.

We believe the privacy backlash continues to gain momentum for two central reasons. First, most popular social networking sites were designed, engineered and perpetuated by youngsters themselves. Their designs have reflected their own value systems which are often in opposition to that of adults. The second is reflected in the ongoing reliance on antiquated forms of monetization in social networks which rely on CPM-based page views to generate income. As a result, deleting user data and limiting page views is antithetical to their very sustenance. The result is increasingly less control over one’s end-to-end data set.

What is so different about an adult that makes the need for privacy so pressing? While complex in origin, we believe it boils down to a fairly simple difference between kids and adults: the need to protect reputation equity. One might argue that kids are too young to have developed reputation equity as it takes years to establish domain and/or career expertise.

As adults, we’ve spent both energy and resource creating our personal brands and need to know that those brands can be effectively managed and protected in both online and offline contexts. As adults we don’t want everyone to know everything we do. We want them to know what we want them to know and nothing more.

Furthermore, the goal of sites like MySpace and Facebook is to generate as many page views as possible. These page views can then be sold to advertisers in the form of CPM-based online ad buys. Deleting a users profile decreases the available inventory for the site and therefore works against their interest. In addition valuations have been driven skyward by statistics around page views, registered users and monthly visits which further perpetuates the cycle of dependency on all data, good and bad.

The results of a large search on MySpace, for example, will turn up dozens of user profiles that have been inactive for six months or longer. Active or not, these profiles are still regarded as viable advertising inventory. A short term win will almost assuredly result in long term disappointment for user, advertiser and MySpace alike.

In contrast to this, Fuego Nation allows users complete control over their online personas. We monetize only active, engaged users. So, if a user isn’t active for a period of three months, we delete them from our system- entirely. The entire concept behind Fuego Nation was predicated on providing actionable data for both member and advertiser alike and to be actionable members must be engaged in the community.

We don’t have a page view ad model but an active user, sponsorship model. The key, then, is to provide context and environment for people to WANT to be engaged over a long period of time. If a user’s activity lapses, we want to address the problem of engagement not perpetuate a poor product experience by engaging ghosts of data past.

A major impetus for the founding of Fuego Nation was the feeling that in using social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo that I was an outsider trying to use the tools and devices of youth on the Internet. Virtually all of the major social networking sites left me feeling like I was searching for a paperclip in my nephew’s messy dorm room.

There are a couple key reasons why these legacy social networking sites look and feel the way they do. The crux of the rationale is that sites, Facebook is a prime example, are designed by young engineers, themselves still kids, with designs largely defined by their own life experiences and needs. This, coupled with the nature of technology early adoption being a youthful endeavor, has led to a preponderance of these tools being geared toward youth and not toward the discerning tastes and unique needs of adults.

But the market for social networking has moved far beyond the confines of schoolyards and dorm rooms. The fastest growth area on Facebook is among 25-35 year old adults, a segment that has seen 181% growth in less than one year. Ultimately, it is interest from this segment that has exploded consumer awareness of social networking beyond the previous confines of the youth market and gained the interest of brand advertisers, large and small. Recent growth trends with MySpace follow similar demographic trending.

Having said that, we anticipate a flattening in both demand and usage among adults currently using utilities like Facebook as the novelty of social networking as a concept wears thin and the utility value on sites originally designed for youth proves vacuous. We also believe that the overwhelming number of, and juvenile nature of, Facebook’s application program will continue to chase away adults from the site. While recently added privacy controls do provide some salve to the psychic wounds suffered by adult users, they will prove out to be band-aids to an inherently flawed experience.

The reality is that the social needs of kids and adults are so widely disparate that no plausible, easily understood and intuited system can peaceably coexist. Adults have very specific needs that have not been addresses by the market. They have more disposable income, but less free time. They are more willing to pay for a better controlled experience that helps them gather the information they need quickly and efficiently. They want a well-lit place for interaction not a messy dorm room when visiting another user’s profile. And perhaps more than anything, they want an experience that offers a simple, intuitive interface as busy adults have little time or patience for learning new technologies. Adults have jobs to go do, kids to get ready for school and mortgages to pay. Time is of the essence and value must be derived from each minute expended.

Send an adult to MySpace for the first time and they will be instantly repelled. Why? Because the UI is so complex, confusing and non-intuitive that user friction becomes volcanic. If an adult first time user is actually able to create a simple profile (no small task indeed), they’ll probably have received a pornographic valentine before logging off. The product experience, itself, is just not acceptable to a discerning adult mentality.

In contrast to MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, Fuego Nation restricts its member base to those 21 years or older. From the outset we have remained steadfast that every feature, every design component and every value proposition should be targeted toward satisfying the digital socialization needs of busy, high-energy adults. We’ve done this because we believe the best market opportunity in social networking is that targeted at adults not kids and, secondly, an ‘adults only’ approach creates greater revenue monetization opportunities than do the frameworks of current, non-exclusive networks.

While at Electronic Arts, it was common to participate in hallway executive debates over the support of one gaming platform over another. Be it Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, choosing the correct fledgling platform during a market transition could make or break a company’s numbers. While technical capability was always a part of the conversation, the bottom line was trying to predict which platform would be most likely to deliver the largest base of potential customers. With hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D and development expense on the line, choosing one’s platform medicine correctly could either jumpstart, or short circuit, individual career paths.

Even with state-of-the-art research and decades of market experience, accomplished companies like EA have seen prescient predictions quickly go awry. While EA’s bet on the Sega Genesis in the 80’s ultimately catapulted it to 800-pound gorilla status, it recently whiffed on the unprecedented trajectory of Nintendo’s Wii.

We see a similar battle raging in the social networking arena between Facebook and those tethered to the OpenSocial initiative including MySpace, and most recently, Yahoo. Ultimately, the battle will be won or lost on hard economics. Whereas Facebook currently has a stable development environment, OpenSocial is just now gaining traction with MySpace’s firm commitment to the initiative. With 200 million users soon to be enveloped by OpenSocial, Facebook’s formerly massive platform is beginning to look a bit less, how does one say, massive. It would be like Nintendo and Microsoft getting together and saying to the gaming community, “We’re going to create a common ‘build once, write twice’ coding environment for game developers forming, in the process, a platform that would dwarf the market for Sony PlayStation 3. The result would be a compelling argument to design exclusively for that conjoined platform and block ‘exclusives’ from appearing only on PlayStation.  MySpace and others are looking to trump Facebook’s social application opportunity by embracing a third party API strategy.

So while Facebook’s audience is still large enough to substantiate an allocation out of most widget development budgets, the risks of doing so as a primary distribution strategy are about to go through the roof. The risk for Facebook in having the smaller audience is that developers will build first on OpenSocial and secondly on Facebook. The result will be a shattering of Facebook’s current social app monopoly. It will also result in the loss of prestige Facebook now enjoys from having what amounts to short term exclusive ‘rights’ to social applications.

It is our hope that having a wider swath of networks across which to amortize development expense will create higher quality applications than currently exist on Facebook. Perhaps we will see the end of mindless zombie playing, sheep throwing, juvenile applications that currently dominate the Facebook experience and open up opportunities for more resourceful uses of the platform. It has become increasingly self evident to us that this juvenile environment wears thin with an adult population very quickly. Kids do not want to hang out socially with adults nor do adults want to socialize with kids. To this point, Facebook has failed to prove that it can provide a social context for generations to co-exist peaceably and we believe this is largely a failure of their application development strategy.

Furthermore, the environment and context in places like Facebook and MySpace are repellent to lifestyle and luxury branding companies who are looking for a more controlled experience reflective of their own brand values. Hugo Boss doesn’t want to associate with juvenile activities, nor do they want to be squeezed between a Proactive ad and one for Monster.com. Hugo Boss wants to appear next to Armani, Mercedes and W Hotel. OpenSocial will provide more adult contexts better suited to the tastes of more demanding brands.

It is our hope that OpenSocial will provide the context and resource to enable a more rich and engaging interactive experience for adults. One that truly leverages the energy and passion of groups to impact their social environment in a manner that benefits both themselves individually as well as the wider community of which they are a part.

In the end, we believe that it is only a matter of time before Facebook joins the OpenSocial initiative. The writing is on the wall. They don’t feel the pressure cooker now, but the fire under the kettle has officially been set ablaze.

Others have referred to the next level of social networking as Social Networking 2.0. Whereas the first generation has been marked by face-to-face interaction progressing to the telephone then to email and now to collective group communication, we believe the next generation of social experience, borne of the digital realm, will engage and motivate communities in wholly original ways. The result will be journeys of the heart and soul left unexplored until now.

So what are the characteristics of the next level in social networking?

First, in order to truly connect emotionally in life changing ways one must do so on a deeper platform than functions and features. One must connect with people, places and things based on the thread of ignited interests.

Second, In order to do this social technologies must infuse real meaning not just offer standard functionality. Utilities are self-liquidating, meaning is not. Many interpret this to mean niche-based networks. To us that is not enough. These micro-networks must be motivated to inflict change on an otherwise lethargic status quo.

As a result, Fuego Nation is organized exclusively around one’s most cherished beliefs and motivating behaviors (e.g. passions). In our nation, passions are called ‘States.’ So while I might aspire to the doctrine of Fuego Nation as a whole (e.g. the nation concept), I might also fuse most powerfully with my state (e.g. passion to end homelessness in San Francisco).

The collective harmonizing of energy associated with individual passions provides the ignition necessary to combust social change on a macro level. We believe that Social Networking 2.0 is also about leveraging next generation RIA technologies to enable these more scintillating connections between people, places and things. We believe that 3D simulated environments will create an atmosphere that better represents our citizens’ passion-states and create new degrees of power in self-expression. Social Networking 2.0 is also about moving from user generated content to user-influenced design and user-determined communities. We want to provide the framework for people to connect in ways of their own choosing and to make passions discoverable in ways that elevate human understanding and tolerance and propel us to ever-greater collective achievements. Next generation interfaces and user experiences enable the shift from inclusive communities to discoverable worlds. The emphasis will go from the current obsession with binary profiles to a more comprehensive toolset that more efficiently matches interests and makes any number of connection types more actionable.

In the end, we’re collectively embracing the potential engendered by the next generation in social technologies and their implication in generating communities of change agents. We have committed to lead the way because, more than anything else, that is our passion.

Report: U.S. mobile web growth triples
June 5, 2007According to a new study issued by mobile content platform developer Bango, U.S. mobile web usage grew threefold over the past year. Bango reports that the U.K. market leads all mobile web usage at 27 percent, followed by the U.S. at 21 percent, South Africa at 11 percent, India at nine percent and Indonesia at three percent.

“We see that wherever flat-rate data charges are pervasive in a country then there’s much more web browsing,” said Bango SVP of marketing Anil Malhotra in a prepared statement. “We expect to see more competitively priced flat-rate data plans in the U.S. which will stimulate further web browsing.”

Mobile is a powerful buzzword in the start up community. But while buzzwords might move the VC community, real consumer buying behavior moves us. Consumer buying behavior generates revenue which begets profits which boosts corporate valuations and that is the game we are playing for our shareholders. Furthermore, having most recently worked at building two entertainment-related mobile companies, we’re confident in our ability to discern fact from fiction in this soon-to-explode business environment.

Literally hundreds of mobile gaming companies have been financed over the past five years to build products that oftentimes confound us. Few VCs have actually made any money on their investments and few have visibility into any near term profits. From our experience in the market there are several reasons why this is the case:

1. Poor Product Concepts: There is a dramatic need for a killer application in this space that is simple, intuitive and widely adopted by the 20-something set (and we’re confident that FN Mobile will be that killer app); A very small percentage of launched products have proven to be of material interest to consumers
2. Market Timing: Many products fail because they enter markets before consumers are widely ready to adopt new buying requirements and usage behavior; For the most part, only early adopters have bought data applications (e.g. mobile games) because they are virtually impossible to locate, difficult to purchase and download and of questionable value to the mass market
3. Distribution Friction: In the wireless world, the Big 4 carriers are king; They can make or break a product based on a whim by including it on their menu of phone options (called The Deck) or not and one oftentimes can’t control this process until a product is ready for launch

Solving the issues and concerns outlined above prior to the commencement of any development process is intuitive to us. That is why Fuego Nation Wireless is being designed using the same interface as the web-based product (establishes known familiarity), relies on photos (which everyone enjoys looking at) and leverages text/MMS-based messaging which everyone already does. As marketers we believe that the key to changing consumer behavior is to evolve the usage pattern by extending it while never requiring an entirely new one. Doing so creates market friction and is a key contributor to poor performance to date.

One of the key criteria for us in building our next generation social community was to create an interface and product utility that was platform agnostic. This means that when it comes to making money we think ‘digitally’ not web or wireless. In other words, to us they represent two mechanisms to tailor deliver our branded community experience. This is why our mobile interface looks identical to that found on the web.

From the outset, we designed our online product to seamlessly dovetail into the wireless world. We did this for several reasons but most particularly because we believe that mobile data services represents the next great opportunity in the digital universe. And though we believe our online products have enormous potential we have always believed that our mobile product line stands to have an even bigger market impact.

There are several features of the online product that, when mobilized, extend the value of our product to users ‘on the go’ while others are unique to the mobile experience and create a distinct advantage over mobile products from the likes of MySpace, Facebook, etc.

Similar to the online version of the product, users will be able to do the following:

1. Vote on applicants to the community

2. Browse member profiles

3. Contact other members through expanded search functionality

4. See member activity in their designated groups

5. Email their member friends

6. Check their scores and receive mobile alerts when a material change in status occurs

7. Upload mobile device photos and videos to their selected profiles

8. Meet and converse with other members using text messaging functionality

The wireless product offering also includes features that are uniquely tailored to the mobile experience including some that, as a result of our targeted, high end user base, can only be found in our product. A brief sampling of the proposed features follows below: 

Data Export to Location-based Services. Because our database of talented, high-achievers is constantly culled and refined by our users, we have an opportunity to export that data to location-based services (LBS) companies like Loopt who will then be able to map, in your city, the hot spots for singles. While these services classically use GPS-tracking to locate friends, children, etc. Fuego Nation Wireless adds a whole new dimension of value never seen before. So while Loopt might help you locate your friends, FN Wireless extends this capability to ‘where do we go?

Mobile ‘Business Cards’- The ‘trading card’ metaphor was designed specifically to work equally as well in a mobile context; So, while it would be difficult to ‘sign up’ for Facebook or MySpace via a mobile device, the process is simple, quick and intuitive at Fuego Nation. Additionally, members will have their Passion Cards loaded onto their phones which they can then virally send via short-range communications, Bluetooth or MMS to any other phone; This is a much more secure and fun way to grant contact information to someone you meet in a bookstore or bar and acts, essentially, as an advertising/recruitment tool for the online product

Talent Scout- With Fuego Nation Wireless, members have the tools to become emissaries of our mission to compile the largest collection of talented individuals in the world; The talent scout feature allows one to make an otherwise awkward introduction to someone by recruiting them to the site (snapping a photo, adding six bits of information, etc.)

Parlor Games- Our automated rating system allows a user at any time (at a nightclub for example) to take a camera photo of a friend (or group) send it to Fuego Nation Online, have it rated by users and returned back to the sender all within a matter of seconds; Any number of addictive games could be parlayed off this functionality but our favorite is called “Lowest Rated Photo Buys the Next Round”

Spontaneous Act of Excellence/Heroism- User generated media has become a phenomenon amongst the young, early adopter crowd. Companies like YouTube and now Current Media have exploding valuations based on photo and video content taken by consumers ‘in the field.’ But only recently do mobile devices have both photo and video quality that allows them to capture, not just inane, silly videos which dominate YouTube but true acts of human excellence and heroism. The destination for those videos of interest will naturally lie with Fuego Nation and our video upload functionality will make it simple for anyone with a web-based connection via their phones to contribute to our community of excellence. Once videos are uploaded on the site (for which members gain participation points toward a higher status ranking) videos are voted on and displayed in Leaderboard format for viewing by members and guests around the world

VIP Club Passes- With a Fuego Nation VIP Club Pass on your phone, you will never HAVE to be on a list again; with participating Night Club sponsors, all you’ll need to do is flash your VIP Club pass on your cell phone to bypass the line at hundreds of clubs around the nation

Couponing- To advertisers, not all consumers are alike which is a key reason why we group our users into status levels. This enables us to deliver coupons on a more targeted basis to our users. So, for example, while we may know that two members are both Madonna fans, we might send a discounted coupon to the Basic Member and a Backstage VIP pass to the VIP member. This form of targeted web to mobile, real-time couponing doesn’t exist today and is unique to the Fuego Nation experience.

In the end, we are big believers in the potential of the mobile web and in the expected explosion of data service usage on mobile phones generally. This realization, coupled with our intent to build a product with true global appeal from the outset will allow us to market our digital products not only here in America but around the world in places that have few computers but massive cellular device penetration.

Intro

The phenomenon known as ’social networking’ has exploded on the global scene over the past five years beginning with sites like Friendster and The Globe and taken to new heights by the likes of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and other newcomers. With growing patronage on these sites have come investment opportunities unlike those ever seen before on the web. Facebook, valued at $200 million less than two years ago, now enjoys estimated market valuations approaching $15 billion. MySpace, bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2003 for what most believed was a rather rich $680 million, is now estimated a few short years later, to be worth north of $18 billion. Triggering this explosive categorical growth in social networking is the inherent utility of leveraged communication via web-based technologies coupled with rapid adoption by 20-something’s resulting in a sonic boom of activity and interest everywhere around the globe.

Market Overview

The use of social networking sites worldwide has grown substantially in the past year, with some sites seeing total visits increase by as much as 270 percent, according to a study recently released by Internet measurement company ComScore Inc. MySpace, for example, drew more than 114 million global visitors in June 2007, a 72 percent increase over the past year, ComScore noted. Facebook, which in September stopped limiting access only to college or university students or workers, experienced a 270 percent increase in worldwide visitors over the past year, according to the study. Bebo, a popular social networking site in the United Kingdom, experienced 172 percent growth, with 18 million visitors in June 2007. Tagged, a social networking site aimed at teenagers, grew 774 percent over the past year, attracting 13 million visitors in June.”Literally hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis,” said Bob Ivins, ComScore executive vice president of international markets in a statement. “It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global Internet.”

Chronicling Market Growth

While sites like Yahoo! and AOL continue to see a slowing in their site traffic growth, social networking products continue to gain market share and now dominate the Global Top 20 of most trafficked (and most highly valued) web-based properties. Additionally, many sites continue to see net negative declines in average page views per month, social networking sites continue to dominate. With the increase in prominence of social networking sites, comes the increased interest by advertisers to reach this audience. As a result, social networking products are expected to command an increasing share of total advertising dollars spent by marketers online in the coming years.

The Bottom Line on the Web In an analyst report dated August 14, 2007, Juniper Research indicated that revenue from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will increase from $778 million this year to a staggering $7.8 billion by 2012.

Mobile Social Networking: The Next Frontier Many believe that the next frontier for social networking products will be in the wireless world. “Even though social networking sites are in their infancy, the exponential growth experienced by a number of mobile service providers, in some cases achieved primarily through viral marketing, would seem to affirm that there is huge potential in this area,” says report author Windsor Holden. Holden’s report also noted that users of mobile social networking sites will rise from a current 14 million to nearly half a billion by 2012.

At Fuego Nation, we believe that the promise of mobile social networking could exceed that currently enjoyed by market leaders MySpace and Facebook on the web which is why we designed a web-based product to seamlessly integrate with mobile devices from the outset. As a result, we feel optimally positioned to capitalize on usage trends currently seen on the web while preparing for the next wave of social networking generated by the global proliferation of web-enabled mobile devices.