Case Study: Innovative Systems

Social Media Monetization

Customer: Bside-Me

Industry: Social Media, Advertising

Overview

Bside-Me was a Cologne-based startup designed to help celebrities take control of their social media presence and monetize their content directly. By developing personalized mobile apps for celebrities, Bside-Me allowed them to invite dedicated fans from major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to engage on their own app. This created an exclusive environment where celebrities could capture traffic, build stronger fan relationships, and generate revenue through targeted advertisements.

Approach

Bside-Me streamlined the monetization process by building an integrated advertising engine and establishing partnerships with advertisers. This approach allowed celebrities to focus on content creation while the platform handled ad placement and revenue generation. By offering a seamless transition from mainstream social media to their own branded platform, Bside-Me provided a turnkey solution for celebrities looking to build and profit from their own digital ecosystem.

I was the Head of Product for Bside-Me. This meant that I designed the mobile apps, the backend management system and the advertising system. Not too mention, collaborating with the celebrities and receiving feedback for the change backlog.

Top 5 Responsibilities

Business Model Development: Designed and implemented the business model for Bside-Me, focused on helping celebrities monetize their social media content by developing personalized mobile apps and creating a new revenue stream through fan engagement.
Advertising Network Creation: Established an advertising engine and network to streamline ad placements, working closely with advertisers to simplify the monetization process for celebrity users.
Product Development: Led the design and development of the Bside-Me platform, ensuring a seamless user experience that allowed celebrities to transition their followers from mainstream social media to their own branded apps.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborated with celebrities, talent agencies, and advertisers to build partnerships that would drive adoption and expand the platform's reach.
Brand and Marketing Strategy: Defined the brand positioning for Bside-Me, creating marketing strategies that targeted celebrities looking to leverage their social media presence while increasing fan engagement and monetization.

Business Model Development: Designed and implemented the business model for Bside-Me, focused on helping celebrities monetize their social media content by developing personalized mobile apps and creating a new revenue stream through fan engagement.
Advertising Network Creation: Established an advertising engine and network to streamline ad placements, working closely with advertisers to simplify the monetization process for celebrity users.
Product Development: Led the design and development of the Bside-Me platform, ensuring a seamless user experience that allowed celebrities to transition their followers from mainstream social media to their own branded apps.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborated with celebrities, talent agencies, and advertisers to build partnerships that would drive adoption and expand the platform's reach.
Brand and Marketing Strategy: Defined the brand positioning for Bside-Me, creating marketing strategies that targeted celebrities looking to leverage their social media presence while increasing fan engagement and monetization.

With the explosion of social media platforms in the 2000's and the large sums of money being collected by their creators, it was only a matter of time before people started wondering about how they could get a piece of that cash. Bside-Me set out to do just that. We started out with celebrities.

The model was that Bside-Me would produce personalized mobile apps for celebrities along with a way for them to edit the content. They would then invite all of the social media friends to join them on their mobile app. Once fans were on their celebrity's Bside-Me app, the celebrity would be able to serve up advertising through the Bside-Me advertising network and make money for themselves.

As mobile technology matured, there were more options to advertise on Bside-Me apps. I used the mobile phones capabilities to serve up innovative advertising methods like 3D rotation of sports shoes.

With opportunities to supply advertising on the mobile apps, came the need to design and build out an advertising system. The system would need to accommodate celebrities, advertisers, agencies and administrators. It would gather traffic data, clicks and other data points for various usage but most of all for monetization.

In 2015, Bside-Me closed its business. Looking back, we made some mistakes. We grew too fast and made too many promises to celebrities who had many demands. These demands turned Bside-Me more into an app factory vs. a foundational networking system - like most successful social networks.

At the end of the 1.5 years of operating, we created 15 mobile apps with close to 40,000 download in the app stores.

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