Mediaboss Marketing

Tagged, a social-networking site thats struggled to attract users and grow revenue since its founding a decade ago, is changing its name and trying a new approach.

The San Francisco-based company has renamed itself if(we), said Greg Tseng, the companys co-founder and chief executive. Along with the new corporate moniker, the startup plans to shift its focus away from the Tagged social network and into developing a variety of new mobile and social apps, he said.

Were going from just working on Tagged to taking multiple shots, Tseng said. We are transforming into more of an incubator.

Reinvention is common in the world of technology, where a sudden shift in consumer behavior or a swift blow from a bigger rival can render a startups business plan obsolete. Many of the most successful ideas of the Internet era from Twitter to Flickr to Instagram were initially born out of failures and the ability of their entrepreneurs to quickly pivot in a new direction.

Taggeds new direction comes after years of trial and error and gradually slowing growth. Founded in 2004 the same year as Facebook Tsengs site struggled to create its own identity as Facebook expanded beyond college campuses to become the de facto social network of the Web.

In 2007, Tagged repositioned itself as a place for meeting and interacting with strangers. The next year it began adding games including Pets, in which users buy others and own them like pets, then barter them with other players or sell at a set price. The site, which has 10 million monthly users, makes the bulk of its money selling virtual currency, goods and subscriptions with the remainder coming from ads.

Tseng decided to end the companys focus on Tagged earlier this year, when he realized that his goal of an eventual $1 billion initial public offering was becoming unrealistic on its current trajectory. The company has been profitable every year since 2008, but it expects revenue this year to fall 10% to $51 million, its first year-over-year decline in sales.

The IPO plan wasnt working, Tseng said.

Instead of pouring resources into turning around Tagged, Tseng decided to turn his company into a kind of factory to pump out new apps. He hired Dash Gopinath, an Internet veteran who previously led product development at social-Web pioneers Digg and Badoo, to help reorganize the company into small groups dedicated to projects.

Its easier to innovate when you can work with a small group of people and operate independently of the baggage of a larger company, Gopinath said.

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Social Network Tagged Rebrands as an App Incubator