START SPREADING THE NEWS...
Techmeme this morning is showcasing a discussion around a BusinessWeek article titled "So much fanfare, so few hits". The key theme is:
"Rivals get the jitters when Google's nonsearch products grab headlines. But a close look shows that so far, there's not a market leader among them..."
"...if you cut through the hype, Google's intimidation factor quickly fizzles. An analysis of some two dozen new ventures launched over the past four years shows that Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business, where it continues to chew up Microsoft and Yahoo..."
The articles goes on to give some examples like Google Talk, and Gmail, that have not clawed up to higher usage rankings after their much-lauded introductions.
As an aside, I actually think Gmail gets a bad rap in terms of it's ranking vs. Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail. The product remains on primarily on an "invitation" distribution model, likely because of the relatively huge (2.5 gigabytes and counting) free storage offered with every account.
But the thrust of the BusinessWeek article, is a topic I touched on in response to a question in the interactive podcast I discussed yesterday.
I'd mentioned in passing that felt that the big GYMAAAE companies, and not just Google, were doing a good job being innovators and fast followers in terms of adding new features and functionality, but that follow-on updates to these features and more creative "marketing" of these introductions for mainstream audiences, could be improved upon.
Michael Arrington disagreed somewhat in that he felt that good products would see viral pick-up by users, and that additional "marketing", both in terms of dollars and efforts were likely unwarranted. But in the rush to move the discussion forward, I didn't explain my point as clearly as I would have liked.
I agree that marketing in the traditional sense (TV, radio ads etc.) is probably something that should be minimized by the big internet companies.
But I DO feel that more creative, out-of-the-box marketing initiatives ARE warranted and needed to get a more mainstream set of users to use a lot of these new services, on a regular basis.
As an example, in a recent post, I cited some ways that eBay's Skype internet telephony services, could be made more accessible for mainstream users.
In addition, I believe it's important to have more frequent, and/or regular updates to these services.
The BusinessWeek article touches on why this may not have occurred as rapidly at Google:
"...product managers at Google tend to have less power than engineers, say several former staffers. This can contribute to slow product upgrades, since most engineers want to work on the next big launch."
The article then goes on to focus on Google focus on having a minimalist, uncluttered home page as being one of the main contributors to it's services being "under-promoted" vs. Yahoo, MSN et al.
But I don't think that's the only factor, or lever to pull here.
Both Yahoo! and MSN have introduced cool, new services (e.g. "MyWeb" at Yahoo!, which I've talked about before), that could use far more promotion and/or explanation of benefits, for mainstream users.
One potential answer may be creative co- and/or cross-promotions with the wide array of partners the GYMAAAE companies have in various facets of their business and services.
Whatever the right promotion/marketing/evangelism efforts end up being, I remain convinced that the need to do more by the GYMAAAE companies is pressing, and increasing in urgency.
There's no question that mainstream internet users are being bombarded with an ever-increasing array of consumer internet services, Web 2.0 or otherwise, from an exploding number of companies, large and small.
It's not clear if there's a saturation point in how much the mainstream audiences can absorb, understand, digest, and make part of their daily lives.
Most of the services by and themselves can be viewed as innovative, clever, and focused on some new need or the other.
And they're all about the two core reasons why users continue to embrace the internet:
- It helps them SAVE time (online search, shopping, travel, email, IM, etc.)
- It helps them SPEND time (Youtube, Myspace, Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc.)
As the GYMAAAE companies continue to build and/or acquire these innovations, they need to re-think how to be more proactive in promoting and marketing them.
Just one person's opinion, for what it's worth.
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