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| Tagged |
Initially targeted at US teens, Tagged was opened to users worldwide aged 13 and older in October 2006 and still maintains security measures for users under 18. Users over 16 and the public cannot view the profiles of 13 and 14 year olds, and profiles for 15–16 year olds are private to the public and to users over 18. The only way to add teens as friends is by knowing the email address or surnames to request the friendship, and the younger user must accept the friendship request. However, the security measures are not entirely successful. In February 2009 a high school teacher was arrested after having sex with a 14 year old girl he met on Tagged. The 32 year old, who was not listed on either state or national sex offender websites, had over 100 female friends below the age of 17.
In December 2009 New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that Tagged and 13 other social networking sites agreed to remove registered sex offenders under the New York Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act. Nevertheless, a 2010 undercover investigation found that graphic images of children being sexually abused are readily accessible on Tagged. Cuomo's investigators registered accounts at Tagged and reported inappropriate content to Tagged administrators following procedures described on the site. They found "significant lapses" in Tagged's response to these reports. For example, a slide show with images of children engaged in sex acts with other children was reported in April 2010 and remained online nearly two months later; some of the children in this slide show appeared to be under 5 years old. Cuomo has stated his office will sue Tagged if these issues are not resolved within five days. At a news conference, Cuomo referred to Tagged as "one of the worst social networking sites that we've encountered."
As of April 2011, Alexa rankings suggest the popularity of Tagged peaked in early 2009 and has been declining since. Each month Tagged is visited by 6.2 million US users and 20.4 million users worldwide. Hitwise data shows that between December 2008 and December 2009 Facebook drove category growth, and the only other site to grow in market share during that period was Tagged, which increased its share by 35%. In September 2009, Tagged had a 2.38% share of the United States social networking site market, based on monthly visits.
Originally launched as a teen-only site, Tagged now has more members in the 35–49 year old group than in any other; teens in the US now account for only 8% of its members. Seventy-five percent of users earn under $60,000 per year and 61% have less than a college education. According to ComScore December 2009 data, users spent 2 minutes longer on average on Tagged than Facebook users do on Facebook. In the US, users of Tagged are more likely than internet users in general to be female or African American.
In May 2010, ComScore reported that Tagged entered the top 10 U.S. Online Display Ad Publishers for the first time. Tagged.com was ranked at number 10 with a 0.6% share of the total market, having served 6.8 billion ads in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2010.
In September 2010, Tagged surpassed 100 million registered members of which one quarter to one third are active monthly. Revenue has grown to over $30 million, and 2011 revenue is predicted by Tseng to be over $50 million.