Rollo & Grady Interview // Rick Marini
Rick Marini has been a pioneer in online social media for the past ten years. After graduating Harvard Business School in 1999, he started a company called Emode, which later became Tickle.com. Tickle was one of the largest social media sites on the Internet and the first site to successfully leverage viral marketing through personality tests, photo-sharing and matchmaking products. Under his leadership, Tickle operated as a profitable company with close to $40 million in annual revenue and 200 million users. In 2004, Marini ended up selling the company to Monster.com for just over a $100 million dollars.
Rick is back in the social media space as the Founder and CEO of SuperFan.com, a site where users can become Fans of everything that they love. Marini sees SuperFan as the intersection of three companies: “the fun and customization of Myspace, the efficient communication platform of Facebook, and the self-expression of Twitter.”
R&G: Tell me about your new venture, SuperFan.com.
Rick: SuperFan is a social network site that allows users to become a Fan of everything they love and like in life. We’ve identified ten major Fan categories, including music, celebrities, TV/movies, sports, brands, places, schools, charities, books, and video games; pretty much anything you could become a Fan of, we have in the site. SuperFan is also a social game, where Fans use a virtual currency called “credits” to compete to become the “SuperFan” of their top “Faves” (favorite things). As the SuperFan, the user gains control over certain aspects of the Fave profile such as the color palette, profile picture, wallpaper, and the SuperFan can also add a personal quote about their Fave. The user has special privileges as a SuperFan, but anyone can be a Fan. For example, if you’re a big fan of U2 or Kings of Leon, you can bid credits against other Fans to control the page dedicated to the band. In the music area, you could become a Fan of a musician, a band, a song, or an album. It’s really to express who you are to the rest of the world and to find other people that are like you with similar interests.
R&G: SuperFan was originally named MyRockstar, correct?
Rick: That’s correct. The beta site was called MyRockstar, and that was just focused on music. Then we relaunched the site as SuperFan to include every Fan category.
R&G: What led to your decision to expand beyond the music category?
Rick: It was always in the original business plan that I wrote four years ago to go after all the Fan categories. That was always part of the plan. We started with music because that’s our core passion, but the music space, as you know, is super crowded online. You’ve got Imeem and iLike and Lala and Myspace Music and ten others. We quickly realized we needed to go to part two of the business plan and expand to all of the categories, including music.
R&G: Are you in discussions with the record labels to possibly stream music or sell digital downloads from the site?
Rick: Yes. What’s happened in the last couple of weeks has been pretty amazing for me, in that three of the labels have reached out to us. They see us as kind of that next generation fan platform to connect their acts and musicians with the fans that love them. They’ve actually reached out to me as partners, which has been phenomenal. I know that fifteen months ago, when we started the site, this environment wasn’t what it is today. The labels have been great. They’re approaching us as partners, and not throwing lawsuits at us. Instead they’re saying, “How can we work together to promote our artists on SuperFan?”
R&G: Are there any deals in place?
Rick: Well, the discussions have literally just started in the last three weeks. EMI called me today. So, literally, these discussions are just taking off now. I think we could have something up within the next two months. I don’t think it’s something we’d put in place next week. It takes some integration time, but it’s a priority for us, so I think you’re going to start to see some real work being done, real partnership between us and the labels in the near future.
R&G: Indie music is important to my audience. How are indie bands represented on the site?
Rick: We’re huge indie fans here, personally, so it’s something that’s near and dear to our hearts. We started out populating the database by hand, and going and finding the top 10,000 bands, musicians and individual artists. We also have a suggestion tool, so that users can let us know if we’re missing a band. Let’s say that an indie band didn’t make it in the database, or that you’ve got a band and you’re on tour right now – maybe you’re not even signed yet, but you’re doing gigs and you want to be included – you or your fans can go and use the suggestion tool. Then that would go to our customer care, so that they can determine that the band is legitimate, and then we’d add you to our database. From there, the band could use us to promote themselves and have their fans come on, become a Fan on the site, and then compete to become their SuperFan.
R&G: Clutter and spam are major issues with other social networks. How does SuperFan monitor unwanted content?
Rick: That is an ongoing issue with any social network, so we have a flagging system. There’s no perfect system, but basically, it’s going to be policed by our users, so if something is flagged a certain amount of times, it automatically gets pulled down, put into a customer service cue to review the content. One of my primary goals is to run a quality and clean site. I don’t want spam. I don’t want porn. We don’t want any of that on the site. Keeping the site clean is something that we’re very serious about.
R&G: You’re friends with Shawn Fanning. He’s also on your board of directors. How did you guys meet one another and what was his role in the start-up of the company?
Rick: Sure. I was actually out with Shawn last night at dinner and, yes, Shawn is a friend and an advisor to the company. Shawn obviously has deep experience in digital music, but he’s also our video game guru. Shawn started a company called Rupture that was purchased by EA a year ago. He brings both social gaming and video gaming expertise to the advisory board as well as expertise in digital music. I met Shawn several years ago. We’re both Boston guys, actually. We just kind of run in the same circles out here in Silicon Valley. We hit it off, I guess, having the Boston connection and the music connection as well. He’s become a really good friend.
R&G: How do you plan on monetizing SuperFan?
Rick: There are three different things we’re doing to monetize. One is the virtual currency – the credits. You can purchase those credits using a credit card, Paypal, or your cell phone. That’s one revenue stream. The second is integrated advertising placements. One of the main categories that we have is brands. We are going to be able to tell the brands that we have identified millions of people who not only love their brand, but are actually fighting to become the SuperFan of their brand. That’s extremely valuable to these brand managers. Then we can do integrated things like send someone a coupon to McDonald’s or a coupon to 30% off Banana Republic – whatever it is – and do integrated promotions after we’ve identified their core audience. The third revenue stream is the affiliate deals that we have with iTunes and Amazon and Ticketmaster and Stubhub for concert tickets and downloads.
R&G: What about user privacy issues when discussing data with brand managers?
Rick: Let me be clear on that. We would never compromise the individual privacy of the user. It would only be an aggregate form. Never personalized data. That is an absolute. We would never do that. That is something that everyone here knows. We would never compromise our users.
R&G: What’s your favorite current band right now?
Rick: My favorite current band right now is Kings of Leon.
R&G: Stones or Beatles?
Rick: Beatles. The Stones are great, but the Beatles changed music forever.
Editor’s Note: Stones are better than the Beatles.
To learn more about SuperFan (click here).
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