PS Note: I have named this post 'The Love Boat' because when I finished writing it, I felt good, like if things from then on would be piece of cake. In a matter of hours, as you will find out in my next post, my eyes were brutally opened to some of the harsh realities of entreprenurial life.
Giving some thought to the marketing model we want to pursue, I think there are two main aspects to it. The Web (democratic) one, and The Mobile GPS (non democratic):
- The Mobile GPS:
This is not available to many people, it is not democratic. Marketing wise, it's more of an investment for the future (near future?), because right now not many people –in relative terms- have got GPS and internet enabled gadgets.
The bottom line is that Mobile GPS users are more "Early Adopters", meaning they are kind of geeky people who understand computers and who are not afraid or don't mind tinkering and playing around to make things work in their gadgets, even if the services provided by a certain website are difficult to configure.
These "Early Adopters" are also people who are more willing to pay for a service, in the same sense are they were the first to trust the internet for their online shopping with their credit cards. They could be ready to pay for a service that would give them info about where their friends are by sending MMS for example. Here could be the business via direct payments.
However, I don't think this market has potential for explosive growth. Even if GPS mobile devices get more and more common, the inherent difficulty of installing stuff in mobiles, the lack of use of the internet in mobiles, etc may prevent this.
I live with people who opened my eyes on this issue. People to whom I tried to teach how to check the mail in a computer while they kept asking things like "Should I left click or right click here", "Is it single click or double click over there" or "what is a link?". I know these are extreme examples, but this leads me to the second aspects to the marketing model:
- The Web:
The Web is within reach of everybody. The Web is much more democratic than a mobile with GPS and a big screen. Any person having access to a computer with an internet connection may get to use any web application just by opening the browser. And this is great.
I think the most viral of the viral marketing is to be found in the web. Not from a GPS mobile user to another, because that is not that contagious.
Why would we want viral marketing? Two things: 1.- To get more people to know our product, and 2.- Indirect cash flow for publicity (google Adsense revenues?).
If more and more users get to know the product, the easier it becomes from a user to leap from Web to Mobile GPS, from indirect revenues to direct cash flow.
In my view the most contagious environment are social networks like Myspace and Facebook - I refuse to link them again!!-, where someone may see your widget with a service in your site, and with a single click (only one!!) on the classic button "Add to my personal page", you get infected.
For something to be really contagious in the Web, two things are most important: It should be easy to get infected and People should want to get infected.
And for knowing if people will want to get infected, I try to think of things I would like to use and that would make my life easier. Because in the end we get back to the holy grail of entrepeneurship: do something good, because people like good things.
In the next chapter, extra scary reflections on all this, and a list of players in the arena of geolocalisation, web 2.0, find-your-friends, find-stuff, use-google-maps and other ultra-interesting things. Stay tuned. Eat tuna.
Yet-another-note: That virus pic up there represents a little bastard, the HIV.
