www.socialgo.com
SocialGO plc is a developer and provider of software as a service which allows groups to build their own online social networks, SocialGO™. SocialGO's software allows customers to quickly and easily create, manage and control their own private social network and provides the members of these networks with the ability to communicate and share with like minded people in a controlled and secure environment. SocialGO derives its revenues from subscription premiums paid by network owners and from selling value added services which allows network owners to maximise the social networking experience and the revenues that can derive from creating and managing a social network. SocialGO is part of the burgeoning Silicon Roundabout in London, UK.
SocialGo gears up for the decisive next phase in its development
SocialGO (LON:SGO) has moved decisively into the next phase of development. It could be a potentially transformational period as prepares to launch the second incarnation of its SocialGO social network product.
It is doing so with just over £1.3 million in the bank, which it has raised from shareholders.
The company placed around 45 million at 2.95 pence and had to offer only a small discount to last night’s closing price to get them to part with their cash.
The City took the news in its strides. And after initially opening around 3 per cent lower, the stock was flat at 3.3 pence by 9.50 am.
"We're very pleased to have been able to take advantage of further demand for our shares, which will secure funding for the upcoming launch of version two of SocialGO, our next generation platform,” SocialGo chief executive Alex Halliday said this morning.
"As is evident from the ongoing take-up of SocialGO's offer, a diverse array of interest groups, from schools, sports clubs, churches and political movements, are all wanting a personalised platform on which to interact.
“That trend is only going to continue and we believe we're uniquely well placed to capture the opportunity.
"We look forward to providing further updates of our progress over the next few months."
The placing comes less than a month after the group raised £300,000. That last cash call removed the company’s reliance on an equity drawdown loan provided by Veddis Ventures.
Now it can put a little oomph and some financial clout behind SocialGO V2. “It should really give us some firepower when it comes to launching V2,” chairman Domonic Wheatley told Proactive Investors today.
He said institutional demand for stock had been very strong. “A lot of the fund managers are very keen on the story,” Wheatley added.
SocialGO has created a subscription-based model that allows individuals, clubs, groups and companies to set up their own social networks.
This is an interesting and scalable concept that creates interactive presences on the web that pretty, but static Joomla-style webtemplates don’t offer.
While there is a free version of SocialGo, it is merely a taster designed to hook potential subscribers to the product.
The fees start at a very reasonable US$24.99 per month right the way up to US$149.99 concierge service where the company actually helps manage the site. There’s even a boxed up version that is sold via Apple stores in the US.
French politician Dominique de Villepin is using SocialGo to mobilise supporters and communicate with them, though you wouldn’t know it is an off-the-peg solution.
The basic paid-for set up is impressive, the design is slick, and the dashboard easy and intuitive to navigate. It allows the user to vet material and moderate conversations as well as providing facilities to upload photos and video. There is even the capacity to monetise your web presence.
Now this isn’t a product review. I mention just how good and professional SocialGo looks because the idea is gaining some traction, and yet this is the product’s first incarnation.
Revenues were around US$120,000 in December 2010– an almost three-fold increase from the same period ayear earlier and growing at a healthy pace.
On current projections it is expected the group will break even towards the end of the summer of this year, though this is not set in stone.
That’s quite an amazing feat. SocialGo has only been out in the market since February 2009. So really, all we are seeing at the moment is the first adopters taking a look and using it.
There has been no marketing to speak of other than a modest pay per click campaign, which brings in around a quarter of the company’s new subscriptions and some in-house search engine optimisation, which has taken care of the rest.
Moreover, these are revenues that have been garnered from a versions one product, a pathfinder. Version two is in the beta testing currently and will hit the market in early summer.
It is hoped the updated version of SocialGo will attract a new and interested potential client base, while making the current base of users more inclined to renew their subscription.
So as sales rise, the churn figure falls. In this finely calibrated model, both have to move only a tiny bit in the right direction for thefinances to transform completely.
The chairman said recently: “Version one was a pathfinder product to establish two things. First of all would people use this sort of product to create social networks and then second would they pay for it?
“Here we are today with more than US$100,000 of income a month and rising from a zero in just 20 months. But there were several things we needed to tweak.”
Among them was linking with the existing social networks such as Facebook and Linkedin and making some of the routine processes such as signing up to SocialGo and setting up a social website a lot easier.
“The first thing to report is we have nailed the networking side.” Wheatley said. “Thousands of people now have busy active social networks across business associations, politics, education, hobbies and charities.
“But we wanted people to be able to consolidate their online activity. So we are building the bridges from the private islands (SocialGo networks) to the mainlands of Facebook, Linked in and so on.”
