Yehey! Chief comments about IPO

Yehey! Chief Donald Lim left a comment on my blog about my earlier entry on their supposed plans to go IPO this year.

Actually, we are going IPO for many reasons: from gaining more cash for other investments, to becoming a global online media behemoth.

Yehey has undergone a transformation since last year, starting with its facelift and relaunch, and the introduction of Kaban (www.kaban.com.ph) which replaced Payplus, to becoming a formidable marketing tool for business.

For our users, we have introduced a rewards system called bretas. The more you search or navigate yehey, the more points you earn, and you can redeem it later for goodies.

I guess PinoyMoneyTalk is right in the sense that we have become too hybrid. What is our positioning anyway? For now, we are happy being home for Pinoys in and out of the Philippines. We deliver aggragated content, have a good message boards and chatroom activities, new channels and sections, and definitely, more interactive features. But we will see how it goes.

If you have ideas, please let us know. Thanks.

First, I have to give it to Yehey! for the bold move. Going public could make or break your company so it’s a huge risk to take. Second, I didn’t knew about this Kaban thing that’s replacing the half-decade old PayPlus so I’m surprised about the switch.

Lastly, and this one’s interesting, is the bretas system — looks like an attractive scheme to make the site sticky. But it also begs the question — are your eyeballs there because of the unique and useful value you’re offering or because of the rewards? How to monetize this traffic will be as challenging as Friendster trying to monetize its 5 million Filipino users. I can now imagine people gaming the system — from repeated manual punching of the F5 key to an automated 5-second page-reload browser extension.

From Donald’s comment, it would seem that Yehey will try to become an everything-for-everyone site.