Youmeo.com is already more than three years old but founder Calum Brannan is still only 19. He worked with Trutap in London but moved back to his hometown of Coventry to set up Youmeo and works with ten full time on the site, which aggregates social media accounts.
Brannan explains that youmeo started life as PPLParty in April 2005 and was revamped this summer with support from seed investors.
youmeo founder Calum Brannan
• Explain your business to my Mum.
We are a social network that allows you to keep in contact with your friends and associates, share, push and pull content with all the other social places - including, but not limited, to Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, Blogger and more - which means from youmeo you can manage and update your identities with one login. Did I mention we support OpenID? Privacy is key to us; we allow you to maintain multiple profiles for each 'friend group' so that school, work and close friends all see a different 'version' of you."
• How does that work?
"We use a mashup of APIs which allow us access to the other social places."
• How do you make money?
"We will generate income from targeted adverts based on our user's likes and interactions with other users, brands and content."
• What's your background?
"I started the company after saving up money from working at Pizza Hut aged 15, and at 17 went to work for Trutap in London before moving back to Coventry to pursue my ambition of raising investment and running my own business full-time."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"We have just over 400,000 users now and we aim to exceed 1 million registrations by Christmas."
• How are personalisation and recommendation part of your business?
"Based on the interests of our users we personalise their experience (such as the content we deliver to them) this includes placing their friend's recommendations above general results."
• Name your closest competitors.
"We consider our closest competitors to be FriendFeed, Bebo and Facebook, but they are also the ones who we have learnt the most from."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Ensuring our product is not only easy to use but easily understood and appeals to all users of the internet. We want users to experience a broader journey when interacting with friends, content and brands.
• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
"The internet is such an integral part of life today; it's not just another dot com bubble. More and more great ideas are shining through in the technology sector due to the surviving innovations and influences of the initial 'dot com boom' and the next generation of entrepreneurs."
• Any weird business experiences so far?
"There are days where I feel a bit out of my depth in the business world being only 19, but a confident smile, deep breaths and a great team around me always get me through."
• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
"I think FireEagle is a big service to watch but also working with Carl Uminski (Yahoo's ex Director of search and my old boss at Trutap) has provided me with a great insight into the emerging trends."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"In five years I want the company to be the leading social networking destination - aggregator or network - in the UK, with huge presence in the international market by being the first choice destination for bringing people, content and brands together across multiple platforms."
• Are the days numbered for advertising-based startups?
• What will really give the site an advantage over such high profile rivals as Facebook and MySpace?
• Is the future of social networking really mobile, or is that over hyped?
