A Case Study on Strategy: Yandex Resist Google’s World Domination
Great presentation about the successfull strategy of Yandex in Russia. They have not only kept Google totally out of the game, they also have a very powerful position in the overall media landscape. John Kelly of Morningside Analytics illustrated this in blog/media map at the re:publica 09.
Most of the companies are still not good in the 3 steps that made Yandex successfull:
1. Be relevant to the people in our target market = in Russia/Moscow it’s traffic jams
2. Try to concentrate all efforts and energy behind your core benefit and constantly improve and reinvent your customer experience
3. Be open, listen to customers and team up with competitors
7 years of 3G hype in Asia
This tweet of Harald Felgner lead me to a super interesting presentation of Benjamin Joffe about the main findings and learnings of 7 years of 3G service in Japan, Korea and China.
Some weeks ago I hold a speech about the future role of the mobile phone and I came to similar conclusion like Benjamin. Mobile providers need to shift their role from being the facilitator to become content creators. Only when you can provide users with new (and more human services) you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition that provides generic voice, txt and internet services. In a similar way the iPhone is a great example of how you can differentiate through user experience from the rest of the mobile market. This is of course way much harder for mobile providers that have an intangible product. A tangible product is a very strong asset but there are additional ways how mobile providers can create a remarkable user experience. The fact that the m-commerce market in Japan is bigger than the e-commerce market in China shows what you can achieve if you manage to create new services, educate your target group and develop new revenue models. It seems to me that in Europe we still have a long way to go to educate the target group and create a proper m-advertising market that will further help to finance new services and innovation. But hopefully augmented reality services like Wikitude AR Travel Guide will help to bring the power of the (latest) mobiles in combination with new and human services closer to users and advertisers.
Software for free
Adobe released yesterday Photoshop Express, which is the online and free version of Photoshop. I think it’s interesting that more and more software is web based. Office is already available and now also Adobe is starting to offer products via internet. Another interesting fact is that like all other services that were released in the last months there is a basic version for free available and a premium version for user’s that are willing to pay. Looks like that the business model is changing somehow. Premium services are the cash cow’s and the basic versions should create buzz. Cannibalization seems to play just a little role between the two different levels. I’m curious if there is an iPhone version available too, seems like that there is a special version for every software that get’s released nowadays.
Decentralized communication XING group
Yesterday the DCNTRL’s invited my to join their Xing group about decentralized communication networks as a moderator. Let’s see how this communication platform develops and how many other people are interested in collaborations in the field of marketing and communication. If you want to chat with us about empowered individuals drop by.
Free products and services?
I just found Twitxr, it allows you to twitter and integrate pictures into your posts.
1. Take a picture
2. Type a short text
3. Post it
If you would add a comment feature to Twitxr you could call it blog.
But the interesting thing about all this new applications and tools is that with the launch of the service there is most of the time also a iPhone version, public API and some widgets for existing services available. Looks like that developers don’t think about the product anymore but also care about users. Or in other words not only products are getting free but also services.
Free Economy
Chris Anderson published a first preview of his new book Free in the latest Wired magazine and on the Wired website. A great article with some very interesting thoughts that will make you think about your business from another perspective. Can you offer something for free to grow?
YouTube Playlist Feature
Thanks to Igor Schwartinski for showing me the playlist feature of YouTube.
This is the thing I was always waiting for. With the playlist feature you can let YouTube play the videos of your playlist in a row. This may not sound so interesting because it’s a basic feature of every iPod, iPhone or you name the device. But in case of YouTube it brings the platform to a new level. It’s not just uploading and sharing your videos anymore, now you can use it as a web radio or as internet music collection and this for free. Have you already experienced that you find a lot of songs and even videos of your favorite artists at YouTube? Even the latest tracks and some live mixes are online and only in a few cases I couldn’t find the song I was looking for. For me this makes YouTube to a very interesting alternative to the hype machine.
With the send-a-friend option and sharing of your playlists you have the same concept like iMix in iTunes. If everyone is tagging the songs right YouTube should be able to suggest you new music that you will like, based on the playlists of the other users - goodbye last.fm. So if you have unlimited internet access with your iPhone you don’t need to buy any music from Apple you can get everything for free from YouTube.
Do only I get the feeling that Google is doing a lot of things right?
