The VG.no website takes pride in doing news, and doing it well. But it's a site for grown ups, and the company is trying to get younger people interested. They have developed a very successful web community, Nettby.no. It is now the largest community in Norway.

Jo Christian Oterhals says that the reason they wanted to get the attention of younger people is that if you have competitors, you can never have 100 percent of the market shares, so you need more than one product. For VG.no the other product is nettby.no.

Nettby.no is not about content, it's about conversation. It's for the young people who don't yet use Facebook; young people who don't have that many friends yet. Nettby.no gives them an opportunity to get some. They are able to look for friends by interest, geography etc. 

It has been very successful in Norway, where it was first launched. You can find 61 percent of the Norwegian teens there, according to Jo Christian Oterhals. And it is especially popular among teenage girls.

However, launching the web site in Sweden was not successful since the Swedish teenagers found mostly Norwegian teens on the web site. This was not popular and it soon disappeared. VG.no made another try in Spain in March this year. So far the results have been good.

On Nettby.no everyone has a say on what improvements should be made. The administrators have an open dialogue with the users about what to change on the site. Jo Christian Oterhals thinks this is one of the main things making Nettby.no successful. There are also Bouncers - volunteers making sure every one is following the rules. Nettby.no is looking for devoted and loyal users. 

They work a lot with advertising campaigns on the site. The ads are different from traditional ones. The Nettby.no-users are involved in the campaigns and it has to have a good content and offer something.

The next step for VG.no and Nettby.no is further international expansion.