Quepasa.com is a trilingual social network for the Latino audience, with features such as making friends, games , courses, flirting, sharing photos , video and music .
Summary
[ hide ]
- 1 History
- 1 Peterson retakes the reins of Quepasa
- 2 Features
- 3 References
- 4 Sources
- 5 External links
History
Jeffrey Peterson
In 1997, Jeffery Peterson (b. 1972) founded QuéPasa.com. The site was the first large online community focused on Hispanic Internet users.
A year later, he succeeded in convincing Jerry Colangelo – a sports ace from Arizona – to help him raise about $ 20 million of capital to launch the company. Later, Jason Kidd – basketball player for the Phoenix Suns (NBA) – joined as an investor . John Elway – famous American football quarterback for the Denver Broncos – invested $ 500,000.
A few months later, José María Figueres – president of Costa Rica – and William Seidman – CNBC business commentator and former FDIC president – joined Quepasa’s board of directors.
Peterson sold shares of the site to Sony Pictures Entertainment and Telemundo LLC .
After meeting with Peterson during an online interview at the Miami Herald offices , Gloria Estefan signed on as Quepasa’s official spokesperson and also as an investor. Quepasa’s billboards, a common sight in Hispanic cities in the United States, encouraged Latinos to join the “new online world.” Millions did.
On June 24, 1999, Quepasa entered the Nasdaq stock market . At the end of the day, the firm was already worth $ 272 million. The proud young founder appeared in live interviews on CNN and CNBC. At 26, Peterson had seen his net worth climb to $ 36 million.
A year later, it was named the most popular online site for Hispanics in the United States, ahead of its competitors Starmedia and Yahoo! Spanish .
Soon after, Peterson was ousted from the company by Gary Trujillo, the new CEO that Peterson had hired to run the company just 60 days earlier. Speaking of the surprise administrative coup, Peterson said of Trujillo: “He violated every grain of trust I placed in his hands,” he told the Arizona Republic newspaper .
In a lawsuit filed with the Maricopa County Supreme Court, Peterson was charged with competing with Quepasa. The lawsuit was resolved 90 days later, and Quepasa had to pay $ 2.4 million to Peterson. Trujillo later acknowledged that the conflict was due to a “personality problem.” Peterson subsequently resigned from the Board of Directors, although he remained the majority shareholder of the firm. His departure from Quepasa would have “left the company in the hands of a chief executive and a board of directors with no experience in the internet or the technology they were managing.”
Peterson retakes the reins of Quepasa
By 2002, and under the leadership of CEO Trujillo, Quepasa shares had dropped in value to practically nothing. In media reports, Trujillo blamed the decline in Quepasa’s value on unfavorable market conditions. On the subject, the Chicago Tribune newspaper wrote: “Even with the Internet winter blowing cold winds across the digital landscape, many experts were shocked to hear of the death of once a super successful Hispanic-focused website, Quepasa. com”.
But later, Peterson led a group of investors through a fight to retake the reins of Quepasa, investing millions of his own money. Shortly after the takeover, Peterson was reappointed as president and CEO of the firm.
In January 2004, the Business Journal of Phoenix reported that Quepasa was “in the midst of a reform led by its creator, Jeffrey Peterson.” By 2006, his shares had increased in value by $ 150 million.
On November 5, 2006, Peterson left the company again, after selling 30% of Quepasa to billionaire investor Richard Scott.
In 2011, the Spanish company PRISA Digital (a subsidiary of PRISA, the publishing group of CincoDías) closed a collaboration agreement with Quepasa, the company that controls Quepasa.com. [1]
Later, the company was closed.
features
On this site you can enter your data, although avoiding being too precise and configure the privacy permissions well, and upload photos and videos. The supported video formats are varied (MPEG, AVI, MOV, MP4, WMV, 3GP and FLV) and they load without problems as long as they do not exceed 60 MB .
In your profile section, apart from modifying your data, you can also include, as in almost all social networks, a profile photograph, in addition to your photo albums. You can add as friends or contacts people you already know or want to meet, either to start a relationship with friends or as a couple, although always keep in mind the manual, the official guide to making friends.
As it is a social community, you will be able to know in real time the new content that other users of the network are uploading, even your videos and photographs can be valued by the rated community . With a friendly interface, and giving it a business model approach, it also integrates a dollar system so that purchases are made in its virtual store and to be able to give gifts, badges, etc. to other friendly users.
It is a social community that is increasingly attracting more attention on the Internet given its accelerated growth, thanks to the fact that it is also listed on Nasdaq. Some call it Facebook for Latinos , although in Latin America , Facebook has much more presence than this social network, which is available in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
