Good Grief! Found posters plastered everywhere in NUS today advertising yet another Social Networking Website. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty pleased to see folks who want to make a difference and start something to call their own but hey, notice I used the word "difference"? Don't think I've managed to spot a viable competitive edge from them yet (or I'm not trying hard enough but hey, neither will potential users!)
Apparently this new kid on the block (CampusJoint) lets you register, join groups, keep in touch with friends, upload photos ... etc. Thing is I'm sure that these are more than amply covered by my e-mail, instant messaging and handphone. Perhaps if they looked a little closer and did their due diligence, they would have noticed their path ahead littered with the deaths of dozens of similar sites which tried to offer the exact same stuff.
Generally, I feel that finding a niche segment to target is a good idea but when you restrict your user base to just folks from Singapore Universities, network value of the system is going down a gazillion times. And in the Internet age of demo-ing before using, forcing users to actually sign up first before even seeing a single screenshot of the interface just ain't going to cut it.
Think that more effort was put into the marketing than into the thought process behind this whole startup.
Guess its may be another case of "We do because we can". Yippeeeeee.
8 comments:
Haha, I was going to write an article on this wannabe. Luckily I found it on your blog first.
I absolutely agree with you. This wannabe has no competitive advantage at all. Worst still, Friendster and others have better features like video uploading, classified and etc. On top of that, they shrunk their own market size. Singapore population is only around 3~4millions, I doubt the wannabe will even reach a million if they decided to strictly restrict themselves to Singapore colleges and universities.
What I feel is that they want to replicate the success of the recent social sites like MySpace.com. We'll wait and see how they goes. ;) I'm quite surprised that they gotten the permission from OSA to paste their poster around the campus as well as the hostel. Wonder such services is freely available or... (shall not mentioned here)
Hey good post, i shared the same views with you here. in fact i did a post on this sometimes ago, and i dun jus find this constrain to businesses, but also YOs as well.
I agree with your assessment, Wannapreneur. The way I see it, Campusjoint does not really offer anything special or unique to the average S'porean user. Whatsmore, it is not only limiting its user base to S'poreans, but to college students in particular. Furthermore, with a main page that doesn't really offer an inside look into how the site actually looks (for members) and what its user interface is like, I think its unlikely to draw many members.
Social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace are already miles ahead in terms of technology, features, and membership base. You need a particularly strong hook to interest the average S'porean user enough to register with a social networking site.
I do not currently study in campus but I heard that they have launched quite a large publicity campaign on campus recently. This might attract some curious ones to register for the site, but in the long run, Campusjoint really needs to provide enough value in order to grow and become successful.
The way I see it, the concept is basically part Friendster, part Facebook (which is really HUGE in the United States).
Thanks for all the comments!
Spending money marketing a bad product only means a waste of money. The best way would be to fix the product into something that people will want to use and market for you.
Example: Frienster did not advertise in print ads or tv. Instead, they packed a lot of innovative stuff in their service. And the best part? You had to get your friends to join (read: word of mouth marketing) in order to build up a big group of online friends. In the end, the user base grew rapidly and provided tons of network effect and lock in effect for Friendster.
Thanks for the visit and clarification, Theodore.
Admire the passion that you and your crew have put up but frankly, it seems that all the features you have listed above are already implemented by IVLE (for NUS at least). In any case, I'm sure students would not be too keen in joining a SNS that just reminds them of their schoolwork?
And, if you feel that your still have some undisclosed, unreleased features, which would be the big bang the draws people to your system. Don't you think that you should have waited till they are fully developed before launching your marketing blitz? I believe that first impressions are important and thus are you saying that you are giving users a less than complete version of the site now?
Banking soley on features in the technology line is also weak as competitors (with established user base) will be able to duplicate those in no time.
Oh yes, I also remember a lot of sites use the feature of "nus.edu.sg" emails to safeguard their users.
But one question that has to be addressed is how then do you maintain these users once they graduate and lose their "nus.edu.sg" emails?
Hi Theodore, I also see that the marketing for you guys have picked up as of late thanks to your iPod Contest? Saw a lot of exposure for your website so that's a plus point I guess.
I'm pretty glad to be able to discuss this further and if you like, you can contact me at wannapreneur[at]nes.org.sg.
If possible, let's do coffee sometime, ya?
I have blogged on this as well. Great to see another one here by Hanyang. My views were quite similar to yours one week ago, and what this website brought me was only laughter. However things have changed and CampusJoint has made many moves that I do value and I found that they're not just targeting at this local market, but rather start small and grow big and strong enough to compete in the international market.
I don't want to judge whether their business will be successful at this point of time, but rather keep an eye on it and see how good their team's able to perform.
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