Interview with WAYN.com's Peter Ward and Jerome TouzeIs revenue model still unproven for most of the web 2.0 companies?

Published: 04 Jun 2008

Interview with WAYN.com's Peter Ward and Jerome Touze

Is revenue model still unproven for most of the web 2.0 companies?

Or more specifically, within in the travel industry, as far as the user-generated content goes, does 2.0 and real revenue co-exist already?

From a travel and lifestyle social networking community website's perspective, WAYN.com's co-founder Peter Ward says most web 2.0 companies are struggling to monetise simply because they are too small.

Ward categorically states that there simply aren't that many web 2.0 companies that are generating a few hundred million page views a month and that limits the amount of traction that can be made.

"You can have the best product in the world but if you have no way in which to distribute that product then you will struggle to make money. Facebook has become both a source of inspiration and a challenge to us as we need to ensure that our community remains differentiated from what Facebook offers and concentrate on how we can better meet the needs to those interested in travel and living a good lifestyle," he said.

"Since last year, we have thankfully not seen a huge migration away from WAYN and on to Facebook. If anything, we have seen a large number of people use both Facebook and WAYN as complements with Facebook more focused on your social graphs of friends and what they and you are up to in general, whereas WAYN is more of a collective global community where people come together to share travel experiences and ultimately – help other people to make the most of their experiences and make a difference on global issues such as how to reduce their carbon footprint," added Ward.

WAYN.com considers Facebook more of a potential partner now and it is more concerned about WAYN remains the dominant social network in the travel space. It is already witnessing more and more interest from companies wanting to partner on an advertising and business development basis as more companies are starting to better understand the value opportunity for them.

Overall, as far as building a pan-European 2.0 brand in social media domain especially UGC/ reviewing sites is concerned, some feel it might take longer to gain the necessary traction. The added complication within Europe is diversity of language and culture. UGC works well in the US because it is predominantly in English. Building pan-European 2.0 brands will take longer as one has to achieve the viral effect in each jurisdiction.

Commenting on this, Ward said to some extent, every online travel business should look to either provide users with the chance to consume user generate content / reviews but they do not necessarily need to be the provider of such content.

"Much like WAYN is not going to necessarily looking to build a booking engine from scratch and provide the associated fulfillment and customer service, companies should look to partner with those most well established sites that have both UGC and perhaps more importantly – users interacting. Rather than trying to build a standalone social network for example, companies can partner with sites such as WAYN who can provide a white label as an API, to provide not only a social networking platform to a companies existing users, but also to plug in to an already rich network of users from around the world to chat to before they go or meet up with when they get there," he said.

According to Ward, reviews, photos, videos, trip itineraries and more can also be syndicated to feature on their site.

"It is not easy to generate thousands or even millions of reviews, photos, comments and ratings of such content. This is where sites such as Tripadvisor and WAYN can help," he said.

For its part, WAYN identified a number of needs including the development of the right infrastructure so that travel companies that may or may not have access to rich user generated content, will also have access to the community, and thus, bring that content to life.

Regarding the same, co-founder Jerome Touze shared plans for launching a white label platform, which simply allows other companies to tap into an already existing network of users and content and create a much more richer, sticky and brand loyal experience for their customers.

"This also provides for a number of cross selling opportunities and for partners to benefit from a revenue share on advertising. We are rolling out the offering a select group of companies in the first phase but are keen to provide this offering to a number of other parties also. We will also be opening up an API to allow companies or developers to create travel-related applications for WAYN members, which we plan to roll out later this year," he said.

During EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution US conference in Las Vegas last October, Ward had mentioned that UK accounts for 20% of all of its traffic, with 51% of members being 35+ and over 16% being 55+.

On how such demographics offer an opportunity for travel suppliers and service providers, Touze said there are opportunities to target users based on their demographic group, whether it be by age, gender, nationality, where they have been or where they are going, to name but a few examples, and this provides travel suppliers and service providers with great opportunities to engage their brand and target their offerings to their target market.

"We have found that those companies that think that social media companies are not valuable because they have previously run a test campaign using display advertising channels without any relevance or targeting, have yet to fully appreciate the value opportunity that exists. Display advertising does work, but it should be coupled with more integrated or targeted content offerings so that the advertising in effect becomes part of the content," said Touze.

According to him, an example includes a campaign with Air New Zealand. A customised profile with profile skin was created and a WAYN user was sponsored by Air New Zealand to travel across New Zealand. It is enabling Air New Zealand to engage with users in an entertaining way, whilst at the same time, promoting their offerings through user advocacy and two-way content generation, which has been very positive.

"If companies wanted to target an older demographic, we can tell them what channels on WAYN the older demographic tend to hang out and how best to engage with them," said Touze.

According to WAYN, in many cases it is still about educating the company on how best to approach things based on tried and tested methods.

(Forthcoming event on Social Media Strategies:

EyeforTravel is scheduled to conduct its inaugural Social Media Strategies in Travel Europe conference, as part of Sales & Marketing in Travel Europe 2008. The two-day conference will be held in Munich on 14 and 15 October.

For more information, click here http://events.eyefortravel.com/smeurope/ or contact Gina Baillie at +44 (0) 207 375 7197 or gina@eyefortravel.com).