Yahoo! Mail will turn to unlimited storage

Yahoo! put an end to the storage rush when Google is offering 2.8 Go and 2 Go for Windows live... This in order to be in line with people new usages of Mail.

This is a good news and lot of things could follow to deliver on "archiving your life" value.

Sony PS3 launch event : When execution leads bad customer experience

6pm under the Eiffel tower, with 3 dedicated barges, one big screen, a radio dj, one show on MTV & GameOne, 1000 guests... Customers had the worst event experience of ever for a new game machine launch... Just trying to explain what I've seen there. Customers were supposed to be accommodated at 6pm, i was there only at 7pm but anyway... First, the event was announced to be under the Eiffel tower, not really true... It was on the quay... so what was going there?

I've been accommated by 10 vigils, a wall of barriers blocking the access and several cops... Welcome! ... 50 boys and girls where waiting... One vigil was talking the 3 20-25 years old and well dressed guys but with different origins... Telling them that if they're not going to buy the machine, they could go away... After some hesitation i asked to a vigil what's going on...
He told me : "No demonstration, just wait midnight (very cold weather), show your payment card, enter, buy, and go away..." Ok so it's exactly like in a classic store like FNAC or Virgin without the good customer relationship management of the sellers. OK after some minutes walking around the place to see what's really happening, i didn't see anything, just one dj's announce telling exactly the contrary of what the vigil said to people... Go home and watch the event on MTV Greg...

I want to say thank you to Sony Marketing FR guys and responsible event agency if there is one. Great job! Lot of money waste, great ROI (Only 50 machines sold versus 1000 on the barge!). The event could have been great but if you had allowed people to enter, maybe there would have been more people there and more machines sold... What i understood there was that Sony wanted to dedicate the event to VIP only. Ok cool... Ensure that they're will be there next time!

But main thing : the ones who buy your machine are not VIP and you should have test to make them feel like VIP during this event... Lost! Let's play Wii, Xbox 360 & DS...

One special thanks to Xbox 360 Marketing team for the great XBOX 360 barge action "XBOX 360 loves you", it was the only funny things of the event...

Myspace VS WAT Episode 5

Last month i was thinking that myspace could reach 2M UV in January and it seems that it was not so realistic as it "only" gain + 191 000 UV vs December. Skyblog growth is continuous (i don't understand really that point but it demonstrates that the life cycle is not 2-3 trendy years)

Yahoo! 360's vertiginous fall (- 50% in 2 months) has ended, it regains 91 000 UV (+ 40%)... WAT's growth is slowing down with + 113 000 UV as the marketing budget for january should have been reduced versus december... This site is not engaging its users, retention is very low for that kind of site and was yet lower in january than in december. It's not social it's just yet another Yahoo! music property...

One fondator of Amiz.fr contacted me to present me his site, so i've integrated it to this analysis cause the related datas are back in NNR.

Audience (January UV):

. Myspace FR: 1, 691 Millions of UV (+191 000 UV MoM only)
(Beta officially launched in the middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360: 210 000 UV (+91 000 UV MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT: 713 000 UV (+ 113 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

. Skyblog: 5 186 000 UV (+ 265 000 UV only MoM)

. Amiz: 132 000 UV


Retention (December pages by user):

. Myspace FR: 70 (+19 MoM!!!)

. Yahoo! 360: 15 (no data last month)

. WAT: 5 ( -6 MoM)

. Skyblog: 164 (+16 MoM)

. Amiz: N/A

Next Episode on March the 14th

Previous Episodes:
Episode 4 : January
Episode 3 : December
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Myspace Music Store live / Snocap integration

All members just received the announce. Myspace music store is live.
Snocap has been integrated on Myspace music artists profiles.
The first artist push in the newsletter is Snoop Dog.
Here to view is profile

The integration is quite good but not perfect marketed, it's quite unpersonal in the wording "buy this artist's music", "buy my music" is basically better...
The cost of an MP3 is 0.83$!!!

Itunes Store...

It's time to build sense

Friday Carl Hallard (Currently working in the Marketing team of Paypal) and i, decided to turn one idea to reality. We had this idea 1 year ago when we were building SoME Business plan.

It will take time, we'll need talents to build sense together. First, we would like to meet technical talents working with passion. (Ruby on Rails addicted could be cool).

We think it's all about love, if we have passion, we'll make good job. We don't care about your location, your age or your education.

To meet us and share about it: Contact me

Myspace's growth is 30% per quarter

Rupert Murdoch interview :

Will Ebay make the deal? (With Myspace)

Myspace is currently discussing with Ebay, if you've read this article you won't be surprised.
Maybe this will be crucial for Ebay. Maybe it's simply : "make it or loose the e-commerce market". Sometimes i think it's just like Yahoo! and Google few years ago. Yahoo! didn't make it and you know the results...

I'm pretty sure that Myspace is a great opportunity for Ebay to growth now. Ebay network will be pretty hard to socialize... Myspace users are waiting to buy and to sell...
It's easier to make transactionnal links based on social experience than social links on commerce experience...

If they don't make it, another will. One survey of December says that myspace users are likely to sell and buy products through their social network, it's a more trusty network than Ebay one.

If Ebay provide his CtoC payment solution it could be the KO for Google Checkout...

Myspace deal on e-commerce seems to be the deal of the year. Myspace shouldn't wait too long, users are waiting, specially to buy music...

Google may loose Gmail Brand in Europe

After Deutchland, Google is about to loose the Gmail Brand in all European region cause of Daniel Giersch a entrepreneur and HIS (lol) brand Gmail. In DE and UK Google is already using @googlemail.com and not gmail.com anymore...
Duplicated brand > Not indexed anymore :)