It was an open secret but it was not confirmed. next month of June Telefónica will definitively close Tuenti migrating all remaining customers to its brand O2. The history of the company has lasted almost twelve years and has involved more than 100 million investment in the company between the acquisition and the allocated resources.
Tuenti will soon be history and will join the failure list of Telefónica acquiring companies far from telecommunications. The year was 2008 and social networks were beginning to become fashionable after the launch of Facebook in 2004. The operator wanted to get on that train and launched Keteke.com investing 10 million euros and counting on Paris Hilton as brand ambassador. The adventure lasted just two years and in August 2010 it announced the closure of the platform and the purchase of Tuenti for more than 70 million. Few readers will remember that it was precisely in the ADSLZone Group where we advanced the information in May 2010. At that time the operator flatly denied the information and limited itself to pointing out that they were simply rumours.
From social network to mobile operator
Telefónica bought Tuenti for three reasons, the first of which is that it sought to position itself in the segment of social media that were in fashion. The second reason is that the young people between 18 and 30 years old they were precisely on Facebook and the company created by Zaryn Dentzel and the third reason was the business model based on advertising and large audiences. In 2010, Telefónica reached more than 14 million unique users above Yahoo, another of the leading companies at that time that is also history.
The operation accounted for 70 million euros and surprisingly it was closed at a time when Tuenti was beginning to languish at the expense of Facebook. Sources close to the operation acknowledged to this portal that the indicators already showed a significant deterioration in the social network’s audience before the agreement was closed. Telefónica knew this, but decided to go ahead despite the fact that it was facing an expanding US giant while Tuenti was losing thousands of users a day.
Four months after closing the operation, Tuenti made its debut as an operator under the commercial name of «You«. The OMV had no permanence or minimum consumption and as an incentive it offered free access to the social network chat. As an idea it was promising, but Telefónica never wanted to bet firmly on its new brand so as not to cannibalize Movistar, which at that time was in good health thanks to the sale of terminals. From that moment on, the social network began to lose focus and the following changes that were made ended up completely burying the service. At the brand level, the company did not make the best decisions either. First it was called Tú, then Tuenti Móvil and they even invested a huge amount of money for a new “rebranding” that they commissioned from the consulting firm Saffron and which changed the name back to .Tuenti.
The history of the social network as an operator leaves behind successes that were well ahead of their time. In 2010 you could already talk free with customers of the operator when that was science fiction. They also launched a rate of 1 euro daily to access the Internet which was very disruptive. Lastly, we highlight the digital voice which became its own development and was well planned, but had to close in 2019.
They also made very avoidable mistakes, such as absence of 4G for its customers when all operators offered it. In 2017 and in a hurry they had to launch it free of charge because until then enjoying the new generation of mobile telephony had an added cost. In short, a story full of successes, but with more mistakes that ended up leaving the operator in the background, especially with the arrival of O2.
Total closure of Tuenti in June
According to what has been leaked by a union, in just two months the brand will be closed permanently and the affected workers will be relocated to O2. Current Tuenti customers will automatically migrate to other similar rates, thus, for example, all prepaid subscribers will switch to Movistar’s initial rate; For their part, postpaid customers will automatically migrate to O2 rates that offer better conditions.
Why doesn’t Telefonica closed before the operator? The company’s plans contemplated closing the brand for a long time and in fact O2 is the one that has all the prominence since its launch. The delay in making decisions has to do only with technical issues of migration and implementation of systems. After hard work, the brand will say goodbye forever in June and will be added to Telefónica’s list of failed operations. Does anyone remember Lycos, Terra, etc?
