Under the Radar:When Per Jacobsson came up with the idea for a social networking website, he could hardly have predicted just how quickly Nimble.ie would find a foothold in the Irish market, writes Ciara O'Brien

The Irish answer to Bebo, Facebook and MySpace, Nimble is targeting young users who want a fun, lively website to keep in contact with their friends, share photos and jokes and create blogs.

At its low-key launch earlier this year, the site was aiming for a modest 30,000 users before the end of 2007. To date, it has already signed up more than 80,000.

Nimble has primarily relied on word of mouth to gather new members, with the company concentrating on building up the technology behind the site before making a full-scale assault on the market.

"In the last few months, it has gained momentum," says Jacobsson. "It's grown a lot faster than even we had hoped."

The ultimate goal is to have 70 per cent membership in Ireland in the 13 to 30 age group, a target audience that represents about one million people.

The site started out as a hobby project for Jacobsson. Originally from Sweden, he grew up with social networking as an everyday activity. "It's a natural part of life to have a profile on one or several pages," he says.

He first came to Ireland in 2001, returning to do a master's in business and entrepreneurship at Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier Street. "The idea came to me one or two years before my stay in DIT. I knew about social networking, had a few ideas for myself and thought it would be fun to do, but I had no time," he says. "When I was doing the business and entrepreneurship course in DIT, they asked if anyone had any ideas."

The rest, as they say, is history. Nimble became part of the Project Development Centre (PDC), which is essentially a hothouse programme to help start-ups grow their business. Jacobsson says the PDC was instrumental in helping Nimble develop, even down to facilitating contact with fellow entrepreneurs. "It's a nice acknowledgment of your business," he says.

Nimble is trying to break into a competitive market, with Bebo in particular having a strong foothold among Irish users, but Jacobsson is confident that the site's approach will revitalise users.

"The only way to stay top of this business is to remain exciting and launch new features," says Jacobsson.

You can already see the effect it is having. Several weeks ago on Bebo, messages began appearing across the site from users who had signed up to Nimble, inviting their friends to join them on the Irish site.

The feature that allowed Nimble's members to send out invitations like this has been disabled for the moment, but could be reactivated in the future, technology permitting.

Nimble has been relatively low-key up until this point, but this could be set to change. "For the next six months to a year, we really want to break into the Irish market. A lot of people still don't know about Nimble," Jacobsson says.

Rival sites have come under fire recently for not doing enough to protect the privacy of younger users, but Jacobsson is determined that Nimble will not fall into the same trap.

The site has put in several safeguards to ensure younger users are protected from unwanted contact; for example, an entire age group can be blocked, or simply specific users. Pages can also be set to private, which allows only listed friends to contact members or to view their pages, and automatic alerts are triggered and flagged for moderators when certain words are used.

"Privacy on the net is a growing concern, but the whole purpose of these sites is to open up and talk," he says.

With News Corp buying MySpace's parent company Intermix for $580 million (€391.4 million) in 2005 and Facebook selling Microsoft a measly 1.6 per cent stake for $260 million in October, social networking sites are certainly hot property right now.

With sites of this nature, the value is in the user base rather than the balance sheet.

"The problem with these net businesses in the past is that they haven't really been making money, or enough to break even," he says. "The bigger companies buying them are really looking for the user base, for example with YouTube."

And although Jacobsson isn't aiming as high as Facebook's price tag just yet, he concedes that it would certainly be a nice windfall for the firm.

ON THE RECORD

Name:Per Jacobsson

Age:27

From:Born in Sweden, he moved to Ireland several years ago after falling in love with an Irish girl.

Education:Degree in computer science and a master's in business and entrepreneurship. Admires: People who aren't afraid to be themselves. "People always complain about me - I laugh at my jokes. But I don't mind."

Most likes to:"At the moment? It's spending a lot of time with my sister's new daughter. I also like reading business books and psychology books."