Success for Pikeo on the StarMedia portal

Launched in December 2006, Pikeo is an online photo sharing community open to all web users, regardless of whether or not they are affiliated with Orange. This service was launched in three languages: French, English, and Spanish.
Pikeo is a marked success in Europe and, over the last few weeks, in Latin America as well thanks to its presence on the Hispanic StarMedia website.

In late November 2007, Pikeo had become StarMedia’s picture channel. This website offers Spanish language contents and services not only to all of Latin America but to all the US Spanish speakers as well. It’s available in 20 countries and handles 24 million users every month. Just a few months after its launch on StarMedia,
it’s already quite obvious that Pikeo is a hit, what with 700 000 unique visitors per month. And out of 55 000 thousand Pikeo members, close to 20 000 of them came through StarMedia. The peoples involved are mainly Mexicans, Peruvians, and Colombians. Interestingly enough, these web users’ usage is different to that of Europeans.
The European user essentially uses Pikeo for exchanging pictures with friends and loved ones. The Spanish speakers using the service are more interested in the community aspect of it; in things along the lines of dating services, chat services, or social networking. However, the scope of this service goes well beyond that: this success means that there are truly no more barriers on the internet.
That’s the entire point of communities; they can built for any media, in any country, and be adapted to any ethnic group. The next step, given the different uses for the different places of use, will probably be to work on improving the global coherence of the service for each country.