Amikoo Introductory Video

Presented by Paulina Aguilera

Theme song 'Suite Tropical' by Sussie 4

Amikoo.com was a Web 2.0 Social Networking startup aimed at High School and College Students in Mexico which competed directly with Facebook in 2007. The site was considerably influenced by fellow Social Networks Bebo and the original Xuqa.

From idea to launch, Ken Bannister was the driving force behind Amikoo. Acting as founding partner, project manager, application designer, web designer, as well as brand, marketing and PR manager.

The project started at the beginning of 2006 with meticulous research into all aspects of the venture, followed by the writing of the business plan. After some difficulty in finding the right people to work on the project and securing the right funding, the team moved on to development in the first quarter of 2007.

The development stage was strenuous; marked by over 6 months of complicated interactions between the feature requirements and designs put forward and the programming challenges faced by the 2 expert coders that were hired to help envision and build the application.

The software application was developed from scratch using innovative technologies and open-source tools including php, ajax, subversion, debian linux, and others. After many setbacks and missed deadlines the site was launched in June 2007.

Following launch the team focused on improving the site and listening to customer feedback. I concentrated my efforts in implementing a web marketing and web PR strategy aimed at getting High School kids to sign up and use the site. The cornerstone of the marketing plan was viral or word of mouth marketing, supported by a strategic combination of generating buzz, email marketing, SEO, press (including magazines, newspapers and blogs) and a developers blog.

Amikoo suspended operations in 2008 owing primarily to underwhelming performance in new user registrations and subsequent shortage of funding as a result.

Causes for this were:

a. Facebook launching their "game changing" f8 applications platform.

b. A very crowded and quickly consolidating Social Networking market.

c. Barrier to new registrations caused by the "all my friends are already on another site" syndrome, which is to say the user and their friends have already invested time in another site.

d. Investor support was withdrawn after registered user targets and other milestones were not met on time.

e. Timing, in the sense that had we launched 6 months earlier we might have been able to beat Facebook to the punch in Mexico.

 

Despite Amikoo not gaining serious traction as a social networking platform, it was a well designed application with a successful proof of concept marketing campaign that generated a small fan base and enough buzz to be noticed at a national level in Mexico.

 

Some site highlights:

• Gift shop with virtual currency called "koo". The idea was to develop the shop into a micropayment platform similar to those prevalent in Asian social networks such as CyWorld.
• User uploaded and maintained public media gallery, a precursor of an app store. Each item in the gallery was a widget or other embeddable content which we called "Kubos". Users could rate and comment on these as well as add them to their profiles with one click.
• Amikoo introductory video titled "Amikoo te va a Encantar" (You're going to Love Amikoo). Written and directed by my good friend Yahayra Juárez and I.
• Secret admirer/crush feature. You could try to "fish" for someone you fancied, then if the other person "fished" you back, a private "connection" would be made.
• Public pages for schools and cities to discuss topics, publicize events, vote on polls, share media and carry out other "socializing" activities, giving geographic context to interactions.