Why there is a fair bit to admire about WAYN

Where Are You Now? has had plenty of detractors in its relatively short history.

A round-up of general negative opinions would feature probably a few of the following comments: "Too much spammy email." "It's just a dating site dressed up as a travel social network".

So today's news that the founders are radically overhauling the WAYN offering may trigger a few rueful smiles from some of its harshest critics.

I was invited to WAYN HQ in London last week to meet with co-founder Jerome Touze, ahead of the announcement being given to a consumer title (The Daily Telegraph) and the business media (us, luckily).

His partners at the top of the ladder have stayed away from the limelight in recent months (Mike Lines, in reality, has never been seen as the public face of WAYN and Peter Ward has spent most of his time with the core development team in Poland), leaving Touze to front much of the relaunch of WAYN.

The latest chapter for WAYN is pretty simple: the trio realised something needed to be done to address the image WAYN has amongst the wider consumer base (restricting its growth), extend its remit into other areas (i.e. become a wider, lifestyle brand) and overhaul its, as Touze admits, cluttered user experience.

Supporting this, they hope, will be a new business model which will see advertisers given highly targerted leads through a new behavioural targeting system.

The idea is that members will now be answering the question, through the Plans functionality: "What are you up for doing?"

They will then have the opportunity to see offers from advertisers based on what they are planning to do and, hopefully, forward on to their friends.

So, what is all the fuss about? Why does WAYN gather plaudits and criticism in equal measures?

One of the main things to admire (as the headline above suggests) about WAYN is that they have never been afraid to re-engineer the business, and talk about it so publicly.

[Obviously, from a journalist's perspective, they are eminently quotable because of their brutal honesty]

"We have done some things right, but have done many things very wrong," admits Touze. "I look at some things now and say: 'what the f**k were we thinking."

And this is what makes WAYN such an interesting company, not because of the offering (which, depending on your point of view, is a very interesting idea especially when you factor in the new functionality and design) but simply because it is willing to take risks.

There are many firms across the travel sector which plough away at the same model for years, despite all evidence to the contrary that times have moved on and a new approach should be made.

The last round of soul-searching took place in early-2007 when, shortly after receiving a round of funding from the likes of Brent Hoberman, David Soskin, Hugo Burge, the founders of Active Hotels and Esprit Capital Partners, WAYN dropped much of the subscription barriers which were preventing growth.

And, so, WAYN reaches 2009 and a vastly different social media landscape and web users who are demanding much more, but on simpler terms.

Whether the new strategy works - let's face it, Twitter and Facebook have stolen a march on WAYN, if you see its latest incarnation as a direct competitor - will be troubling the founders for the rest of 2009.

The detractors, to return to them once again, will also be watching closely to see if the bright young things of London entrepreneurland can pull it off.

It seems blindingly obvious, however, that 15 million members (how many of those are active, is the burning question, of course), a number which WAYN has reached this month, will be the judge of whether the network can pull off another overhaul.