Female webmaster: 17-Year-old girls build station profit million

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

The 17-year-old Catherine Cook, who co-founded Myyearbook.com two years ago, now has a revenue of millions of dollars a year.

Internet companies have always been more than 20-year-old young people in the world, look at Microsoft, Yahoo and Google know.

But now the age seems to have an increasingly low tendency.

Catherine Cook, 17 years old, wanted to qualify for the graduation yearbook in his first year of high school and set up a partnership with myyearbook.com. Less than two years ago, Cook said, the station now relies on advertising for millions of of dollars a year, according to comscore, the station has more than 3 million visitors per month (the station in 2006 through the venture capital to get 4.1 million dollars.) )

It is also one of the favorite areas of online marketing, as users are mostly between the ages of 13 and 22, and almost all are authentic Americans.

Cook hopes to turn Myyearbook into the most popular teen online media company in the United States by next year (the site currently has a user-generated online magazine and a variety of topics to vote on, such as which seniors are the most handsome and so on), while on the one hand in the web business, She will also enter Georgetown University (Georgetown University) this fall to attend international business and marketing.

CNET reporter interviewed Cook himself about the future of truancy, fundraising and online publishing.

Q: How did you get the idea of Myyearbook at first?

Cook: My brother Dave and I just switched to a new school, so I didn't know the same grade friends, so I had to find the yearbook to get to know my class. David took a picture of a girl to show me, then we want to say, if you can choose their own photos, and even the internet to paste their own photos and write a paragraph, it should be very good. We hadn't even heard of Facebook before, so we started to think about the feasibility of the idea, and in a few days we were looking for Geoff.

Is Geoff your other brother?

Cook: Yes, Geoff $250,000 trillion (about 8 million NT dollars) to invest, he has this money is also relying on the university to create a website to earn, we will start the road of entrepreneurship, our web page is to find the Indian side of the program team to carry out. My brother had previously worked with Indian engineers, so we thought it would be a good idea.

Has the whole station been developed in India?

Cook: Yes, the original version, we divided into several stages, the first stage is from our school, is a beta, it has not yet appeared on the site of those popular function options, these popular features are later friends contribute to the idea, we are eating together to talk about these features, such as how to chat , secretly like who.

Are these popular features provided by your friends?

Cook: Not all of them, such as the most popular this battles function, then the site has a netizen suggested, we developed in February, traffic so far 500%, this function is a one-to-one photo duel. The most popular features are. "Who is the most photogenic" is currently the most popular category, we launched one months ago the film showdown, and now the music film is also very popular.

What do you think of your site if you compare myspace.com with Facebook?

Cook: We are different from them, we are third in the United States in terms of traffic, but we are behind MySpace and Facebook, but we are stronger than Bebo, Hi5 and tagged.

But if you compare MySpace with Facebook, Myyearbook has a lot of young people, 80% of users are 13-22 years old, and we have our profit base.

Another big difference is that in MySpace or Facebook, users point to the personal data and then choose to join the group, but in Myyearbook, only 10% of the traffic is looking at personal data, and other traffic comes from our popular features like battles, Mymag and Riddles.

My mag This feature is a user-generated magazine, why is it so popular with users?

Cook: Some people come here do not want to play or challenge the category, they will go to use my Mag, it will be popular is the Netizen contributed a lot of new articles, we also have a professional editor, otherwise the article will not be so wonderful.

Only about 2% articles are published and are closely related to teenagers, not just celebrity gossip, like how we talk about maintaining good relationships.

Many teen magazines, such as Teen arranges, Elle girl and so on, have even ceased to be physical magazines, but their online editions are not as popular as ours, as they maintain their original publishing media companies and are not accustomed to full Web publishing. I personally think that a lot of young people's magazines are focused on the star gossip, I feel very different, I personally hate to see this kind of thing.

The hottest article on my mag gets 3000 discussions a day, and the average of 1000 discussions a day.

From this perspective, what do you think the future media will look like?

Cook: There's no need to repel what's called user-produced content (user-generated), some traditional media or graphic publishing companies, who are afraid to hear users ' own content because they don't trust the user. But I think this is the only way to make users feel connected, media companies to know, users write something, is the reader most want to see content, such a connection is the largest.

How much time do you spend on Myyearbook?

Cook: At least 40 hours a week, I spend 60 hours a week during the summer vacation, about 25-40 hours a week, and it depends. After going to college, I hope to be able to maintain the same time, I guess I will often skip class.

Do you want to go to college altogether?

Cook: Of course, I'm doing a good job right now, but I still want to try and decide.

Do you want to open any other company besides Myyearbook?

Cook: I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and not necessarily internet companies, but no matter how, Myyearbook will never be my only business, ten years later, I think I should not be able to do the general life of the office, I have become accustomed to being the boss, my own company is really very interesting.

Have you ever been in the same stage with other young entrepreneurs at the Mashup 2007 convention, do you think you're any different from the other group of student bosses?

Cook: One of the things I said at the time, it was a laugh, and I was asked how to balance my schoolwork with my work, and I said, I don't really care about schoolwork, and the other respondents mostly say that they will sacrifice their jobs for their studies.

Whatever it is, I take myyearbook as a priority, such as this year, I have not prepared any one paragraph exam, final exam. In addition, the size of the Myyearbook is also relatively large, we have 30 employees, which is also different.

Will your grades be affected?

Cook: Actually, I got 4.0 when I graduated. I don't think school schoolwork is that difficult. I would use a variety of ways to do several kinds of work at the same time, such as the third year of high school, I have never opened a government policy book, I have directly downloaded the Internet podcast audio books, put it on my ipod, use to work on the way to listen to the car.

What was your mood when you first raised for Myyearbook? Did you go to those meetings?

Cook: My brother Geoff, he is executive long, although I take the company as a priority, but I still have to find a way to finish high school. At the time I was in charge of PowerPoint for the business plan, the pressure was really great, it took a lot of time, I slept less than three hours a day, but then when I put it, the whole person felt so relaxed.

How many days have you been absent from school?

Cook: Mom would scold me every time she received a school absence notice, and I had to run to explain to the vice president that I was absent for a reason and that I should be asked to leave. This is a bit annoying, because I often almost be deducted credits, but my mother is really good for me, she hoped that I should at least finish high school graduation.

I did a report that now teenagers are not using e-mail, you are the only one in the text to be interviewed also use e-mail, you think e-mail will be text messages and other communication mode to replace it?

Cook: No, e-mail can't be completely replaced, after all, e-mail is free, and you have to spend money to send text messages. I often write e-mails to my friends, and they all reply.

I think the real disappearance is the traditional mail, when I applied for college, I even forgot how to write an envelope address, I have to check to find out.

Aren't all college admissions applications online?

Cook: Mostly, except for Georgetown.

What other sites do you have besides myyearbook?

Cook: I like gamehouse.com and I also join Facebook because I want to know what Georgetown College students are doing. I also like to watch blogs, I fixed reading include: Mashbie,techcrunch, and Gigaom.

I also like to finish Scooby-doo PSP game, in addition, as long as the sports basically I like.

The last thing a college admissions habit will ask: What do you think you will look like in 10 years?

Cook: I don't know, I think it's possible to work abroad, that's why I choose International Business as my major. When I was a freshman, I didn't expect to run such a big company in my senior three, so everything was difficult.

http://www.imchief.cn/(female webmaster) feeds