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Why Consumer Social Products should monetize at Scale

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This post is written in context of – why consumer social products should never monetize without scale.

1. Because Users sign-up in context of Product –
Every social product is more about users and their connections / contacts together with a context (its product use-case). Users expect to interact with their contacts with this context.

For Zynga, the context is playing games; for Quora, the context is asking questions. At this stage – nothing is more important that making the context important. Focus on building the product.

 

2. Because Engagement is more Important –
Only value a social product should provide to users is engagement (both frequency and quality is important). Hence, the only metric that matters for any social products is engagement. That should be prime focus for any social product in its initial 24-36 months.

Over a period of time this engagement should evolve in to habit. Habits are tough to break. Facebooking, Tweeting, Checking-In are habits.

A QnA site like Quora with about 1 Mn ‘engaged’ users is more valuable that 50Mn+ users on Google+ who don’t talk to each other..

 

3. Because you need to Learn from Others’ Mistakes –
Learn from successes and failures of other products. All (successful) social products monetized at scale, till then they were just building the product and even continue to do so today.

Majority (if not all) of social products who tried to monetize early have hit the dead pool or pivoted.

Don’t want to name any specific failures, but look around – there are many social products that attempted to monetize in its early days.

 

4. Because your Users won’t like it –
You like it or not – large social products & platforms eventually monetize with advertising products but with its own product context. Facebook did with advts targeting by demographics; Twitter with promoted accounts, tweets & trends; Foursquare by local advertising deals for check-ins; with a exception of Zynga that sells virtual goods.

At early stage, users would expect a better product experience; not advts. If you plan to monetize with transactional services like eCommerce – think about it. Will users want another service that spams them through sms / email or advertisements? You don’t want to put off your users.

It is a tough decision with a simple answer – Focus on what users want; not what you want or what your investors want.

 

5. Because your Merchants or Business Owners won’t be happy with you –  

This is strange but true. Let me explain this with example – Imagine a hypothetical social product for shopping with 100,000 registered users. You sign-up with the top-20 eCommerce sites in India for monetization through affiliate model – you pat your back and give yourself a thumbs-up.

– Assume decent engagement levels @ 50% user base (50% of users login minimum 2 times a month).
– That is 12,500 users per week logins
– Take standard 1% ratio of conversion at merchant end
– Gives you 125 transactions per week; 500 per month
– That is about 25 transactions per merchant ~ approximately less than 1 transaction per day for eCommerce partner.

Consumers will not do eCommerce transactions every month. Next month, this picture might be more difficult.

4 of these 20 eCommerce services says, “Sorry! its not worth our efforts on integration and time spent. Please delist us.” Community is small, people change jobs fast and the word spreads quickly amongst the partners – “This product does not work!”

Now, the same scenario at scale;

– On a 1Mn user base: 8-10 transactions per day to every partner
– On a 10Mn user base: 80-100 transactions per day to every partner
– On a 100Mn user base: 800-1000 transactions per day to every partner. OMG!

Exercise extreme caution when you decide to monetize your social product. The timing is as important as how your monetization plan.

 

Also because Sean Parker said so –
From the movie – The Social Network. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin discussed on TheFacebook’s monetization in its early days –

Eduardo Saverin: Hey, you know what? Settle and argument for us. I say it’s time to start making money from TheFacebook, but Mark doesn’t want to advertise. Who’s right?
Sean Parker: Um…neither of you yet. TheFacebook is cool that’s what it’s got going for it.
Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah.
Eduardo Saverin: You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.
Mark Zuckerberg: Exactly.

—

Sean Parker: “You don’t even know what the thing is yet.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “I said that exactly.”
Sean Parker: “How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?”
Eduardo Saverin: “You?
“A billion dollars.”
 That shut everybody up.

This holds true for every social product. You don’t know really know how a product shapes up it its journey that starts from minimum viable product.

Note: Sean Parker has said that the movie The Social Network is work of fiction.

 

Building Awesome Social Products

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Number of Social Products are launched these days; everyday we come across a new one. While I am also busy building my own Social Product – sharing few of our learnings with other Entrepreneurs & Product Managers working on Social Products.

Social Graphs are all around us today – some like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter have extremely high adoption rate and have provisioned development frameworks for existing and new products to leverage social graphs behind them. Each of these social graphs are distinctive by type of connections and mindset its users have developed towards them.

Google+ has been left outside of this discussion – cause in my personal opinion it is yet to find itself a distinct social graph. In current position – Google+ overlaps with lot of existing and established Social Graphs. More notes on Google+ can be reserved for a different blog post.

 

Building Awesome Social Products

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Existing Social Graphs (everyone knows this):

  • Facebook – Social Networking for friends, (close) colleagues and family. These are users with whom you have interacted in real life.
  • Twitter – Loose social connections, people you know or are acquaintances with. Typically people who are celebrities, known professionals, subject or domain expertise are followed by others.
  • LinkedIn – Professional and Business contacts.
  • Email Contacts – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc – all people or contacts whom you have/had private conversations over emails.

There are other Social Graphs like – YouTube, WordPress, Flickr.., those who are limited by its mindset or domain; also limited ways to leverage those social graphs.

 

Every Social Platform has Social Mindsets & Product Norms:

Social Platforms – no matter how big in user base, its users over a period of time have developed strong mindsets, product usage norms and social norms. They are usually not said or stated, but followed subconsciously by its users.

  • Facebook –
    Product Norm: Users can share status, comments, updates, photos, videos with “known friends”
    Social Mindset: Informal, between friends, perceived closed group communication.
    Social Norm: Example – Do not keep on updating status at same pace at which they tweet.
    .
  • Twitter –
    Product Norm: Follow like minded people, domain experts, known professionals, celebs, etc
    Social Mindset: Open conversations & thoughts expected by followers.
    Social Norm: Example – Retweet what you agree on, etc
    .
  • LinkedIn –
    Product Norm: Strictly Professional & Business oriented. Make connection with people you have worked with or intend to.
    Social Mindset: Share professional or company updates; Industry news & views
    Social Norm: Example – Do not post jokes or Facebook-like status updates.

 

Social Mindsets and Product Norms are difficult to break:

Users follow social mindsets and product norms subconsciously, they learn to follow it over months or years of product usage. Over a period of time, they become so strong that such platforms itself are not able to foster adoption for new products & features they introduce. Some examples are –

  • Facebook attempted to take on Foursquare with Facebook Places – but did not make much headway. Interestingly – there might be an 100% overlap of Foursquare users with Facebook.
  • Twitter struggled with getting usability for Lists feature. Users have added people to lists – but not following them for tweets. Twitter acquiring TweetDeck might be another sign of product usage norm.
  • LinkedIn struggled with its product LinkedIn Answers – while Quora scaled.
  • Google launched Google+ through GMail, but now struggles to keep continued engagement and adoption of Google+.

Because the Social Mindsets and Product Norms are difficult to break, products that leverage Social Graphs outside them become successful. (Facebook abandoned deals, but maybe it should acquire Foursquare as it is more valuable than Groupon, & LinkedIn should acquire Quora)

 

Some Perfect Examples of Social Products:

  1. Zynga – Leveraged social graph of Facebook and introduced Social Games like CityVille, FarmVille and others as a Social Application.
  2. Foursquare – Leveraged social graphs of Facebook & Twitter to introduce a location based check-in product on Mobile.
  3. Quora – Leverage social graphs of Facebook & Twitter to introduce a Questions product as a destination website.

 

The 6 Basic Principles of Building Social Products:

  1. Social Graphs are already Established.
    Do not reinvent the wheel and try to build social graphs again from scratch on your product.
    .  
  2. Social Graphs get built over a period of time.
    a. Over years – Users have made friends on Facebook, added professional contacts on LinkedIn or followed people on Twitter
    b. It will take loads of time, effort and patience if you try to build them again.
    Google+ is attempting this – we can wait and watch if it succeeds.
    .  
  3. Don’t build Social Products for sharing content & driving additional traffic.
    a. Most social products are built with this intention – sharing content and hence driving more traffic
    b. Existing social graphs are powerful and already allow sharing of content to drive viral traffic.
    . 
  4. Build Social Products that add value to users.
    There are many tasks and products that can be built outside existing Social Platforms which can add value to end users. While existing social graphs are established, users have a Usage Mindset about them, this is biggest incentive to build innovative social products.
    . 
  5. Don’t arbitrage value through your product.
    There is immense value in integrating directly with social platforms like Facebook & Twitter, do not try to arbitrage this value through your product. Users (if it is a B2C product) or Merchants / Publishers (if it is a B2B product) will at some point of time realize this and abandon your product to integrate/use directly.
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  6. Don’t build – but leverage Social Graphs!
    Rome was not built in one day! And so are Social Graphs. Choose the one that fits most with your product use case and leverage it.

 

Building your Perfect Social Product:

Foursquare, Quora, Zynga did it, so can your product. Introducing established social graphs to new products. Key is understanding what you manage and what you don’t – Social Graphs are not owned by you, your product is – seamless integration with your product makes it scale up virally.

It helps you in –

  • Viral User Acquisition
  • Introducing your product to user’s existing social graphs
  • User activity on your product generates updates for Social Graphs, which acts like contextual marketing.

Identify what are the validation use-cases for your product, allow consumers to share the same with his Social Graphs. Few examples are – Foursquare checkins, Questioning & Answers on Quora, reaching a level completion milestone on Zynga while playing its games and others.
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Solving the Chicken and Egg problem:

Social Products have more than one first users. Every initial user who registers to your product has his own social graph, he is the first user of his social graph.

The Chicken & Egg problem here is – what do you show to such first users who do not have any friends or activities to look at. Ask hard questions and look around for examples of successful social products.

First User Questions (FUQs) –

  • Facebook’s first user question – “Whom do I add as a Friend? Who will see my wall-post?”
  • Twitter’s first user question – “Who will read my tweet? Whom should I follow?”
  • Quora’s first user question – “Who will answer my question? How can I quickly get a answer for my question?”
  • Foursquare’s first user question – “Where should I check-in? Why should I check-in?
  • Zynga’s first user question – “Whom should I play CityVille with? How will my City grow?”

Try to figure out how these platform solved the first user question. There are multiple ways to do it, but idea is doing this right. The biggest challenge for any social product is solving the First User Questions – the approach and execution here makes or breaks your Social Product.

 

Validation Cycle of Social Products:

Defining Validation Cycle for your Social Product and reducing the time to validate it is the key goal for Product Managers. Validation cycles are reduced when you are at scale – thats a easy task cause at scale most of the things you do is just optimize based on data/feedbacks.

Take example of Quora – product validation cycle means getting answers from people with best knowledge about it. Since Quora has scale & adoption today – you will see few questions getting answered within minutes or hours of submission, while few take days to see first answer. But in its initial days – the validation cycle was not so short.

More crucial moments are in the first 10,000 users scenario. Have patience, learn from initial user feedback and pain-points; validation will be slow and takes time in initial days of adoption. Also to due slow adoption cycle in early days – the early adopters of any social product, don’t necessary get the best experience.

Example – My twitter profile (twitter.com/beingpractical) was created in Sept 2007; I had the First User Question syndrome. Same was the case with my profile on Facebook, LinkedIn or Orkut (Orkut showed me – “Bad, bad server. No donuts for you” 1000s of time).

 

Should it be an Application on Facebook or Destination site:

“Why is this not a application on Facebook?” is also a question you will hear from Investors. While there are different answers for this question when it comes from Investors, but for a product decision make your judgment based on –

  1. Your product idea or concept or product use case should deliver real value. The value should not equate to addition of features on Facebook.
  2. There are Social Graphs outside of Facebook that you want to explore.
  3. Facebook would want people to interact with people; not with applications.
  4. Product or Business use case qualifies to be a destination site outside of Facebook – like a Quora or Foursquare.

Remember again – Social Mindsets & Product Norms on Facebook are difficult to break. If your product requires to explore Social Graph and is outside the Social Norms of Facebook – it can be a destination!

 

The Key Questions to answer before getting started:

Have good answers to all of these questions before starting with build your Social Product –

  • The task your product is planning to solve – do people do it in real world socially?
    Social Products are reflections of user behavior in real world – People play games together, People want to hear answers from persons with best knowledge about it, and so on. If people don’t do such tasks in real world – they will not do it on a Social Product as well.
    .  
  • Is it a feature on Facebook or Twitter or any Social Platform?
    Feature products don’t last. Identify if your product can be a feature on Facebook or Twitter.
    .  
  • If B2C product – Is there a value to do this task outside of Facebook?
    Check and check again – Is your product idea meant to be a application or destination.
    .  
  • If B2B product – Is sharing and driving traffic to merchants / publishers the key aim?
    There is no harm if it is one of the propositions, but this should not be the key aim of your B2B product. Many social commerce products on top of Facebook project sharing & driving traffic as their core benefit. Marketers are smart, at some point of time they will self-integrate this on their Facebook pages.
    .

Always keep these things in Mind –

  1. People drive Social Platforms & Products. Not features!
    Features are how you want users to drive your product. But it is always people who drive it – make your features people-centric; not people feature-centric.
    .
  2. Engagement should be People to People
    People don’t login to Facebook everyday cause it is Facebook, it is cause there friends are there. Same will hold true for your Social Product.
    . 
  3. Don’t arbitrage on User Value
    Consumers & Businesses will eventually figure this out. So don’t do this in first place.
    .
  4. Don’t be Evil
    People love their Friends & Social Circle / Connections more than they love your product.
    Don’t mess with them. Don’t spam. Don’t be evil.

Happy Building your Social Product. Don’t forget to send me invites on pj(at)beingpractical.com.

 

The Biggest Innovations never solved any problem!

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Being an entrepreneur is exciting. And one question you hear often is – “What is the consumer problem that you are trying to solve?”

We try to reserve our weekend lunches for some awesome conversations over products, companies and where the world is heading in connected world. Last Saturday, Anupam Mittal (Founder & CEO of People Group, Entrepreneur behind Shaadi.com), my co-founder and myself discussed this over lunch – “Did Google or Facebook  solved any consumer problem?”

Our interaction inspired me to write this post –

Solving a problem and creating a market are two different ways to look at any company or any product idea. Products or Companies that solve a problem are the Million dollar companies, while products or individuals who look at the industry from a radically different approach – are the most disruptive, innovative and create Billion dollar opportunities as they grow.

My conclusions were –
– The biggest innovations never solved any consumer problem
– The founders or entrepreneurs had a different approach to the industry
– In almost all cases, the entrepreneurs did not belong to the industry, had little or no experience in that industry.

Further thoughts are embedded in this SlideShare presentation –

Biggest Innovations Never Solved Any Problem

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Have a different approach. Think different!

Lets Blame It on Rio (and not the Ecosystem!)

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Having read so much on blogs, forums, one on one interactions with entrepreneurs, VCs – I conclude that “Blame It on Ecosystem” is the favorite game for people in Indian startup space (both included – entrepreneurs & the investors). And the blame game continues – Entrepreneur complaining that this VC just “does not get it” when their pitch does not make it; Investors complaining that they are “yet to find a Bn dollar company” from India.

There is a lot of rant already over this topic without much reasoning. Unlike my other posts on this blog – I will not try to express any personal opinion about a business domain here; but just highlight why the Indian Startup scene is about 10 years behind Silicon Valley.

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Indian VCs don’t take risks –
Entrepreneurs have higher appetite for risk than investors. Every investment in any investor portfolio is a risk. There is a calculated risk that every VC takes, be it Indian or US investor. Indian VCs don’t take risk is a incorrect statement, the right way to put this is – risk appetite of Indian VCs is more inclined towards proven business models of west. After all a entrepreneur takes a risk with belief in his idea, VC with his money in entrepreneur’s belief to execute.

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Only Validated Business Ideas get VC invested –
OTAs, Daily Coupon Sites, eCommerce, Finance Lead Generation & similar., these are proven business models with metrics that are well defined.
– X visits result on Y transactions at average value of Z
– X spends result in Y leads and Z conversions from it

This is a low risk appetite investment, where it is not a rocket science to determine how to scale up the business and predict profitability & revenue projections. Knowing these metrics and a good team – the VC is more comfortable & confident with such investments in India.

Compare the same for an Facebook, Foursquare, Quora, Twitter, Dropbox or Evernote. If such businesses are pitched at early stage to VCs here, most of them would have no clue on what metrics to use for basis of their investment. All such platforms raised a angel round or small VC round before the metrics were clear.

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Lack of 2nd/3rd Generation Entrepreneurs –
Now why did I mention initially in this post that India is ten years behind Silicon Valley? – because Silicon Valley today has entrepreneurs & investors who have done 2X/3X exits. Living up a 2X or 3X full company life cycle till exit gives an incomparable experience, the next company they build is ‘better product & platform’ than the earlier and so on.

In India, with notables of Naukri, MakeMyTrip and few others we have started seeing first generation exits now, both Sanjeev Bikhchandani & Deep Kalra are doing the right things with spotting new investments for the next mile. To have more entrepreneurs going 1X, 2X or 3X exits, is anywhere between a 5-10 year game plan.

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Pre-Revenue Investments –
There is a big misconception that in Silicon Valley companies get funded in pre-revenue stage. Yes, they do – but not all; not the ones without strong user engagement, not the ones without a solid team behind the product or platform. And for B2B products, not the ones who have initial set of customers who swear by the product!

This might not be false for India as well. If Sanjeev or Deep Kalra want to start their next entrepreneurial journey – who will not invest?

Pre-Revenue Startups like Facebook, Foursquare and many others did not raise large investments or achieve high valuations in their first round. These companies themselves raised either an angel investment or a very low value Series A investment to start, validate their product, get users/customers and then went for a big round of investment/valuation.

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There are no Early Adopters –
Unless an entrepreneur agrees that his product is bad or not a market-fit or has not tried enough, in my opinion this is the biggest excuse. How can one justify the same in a country of 1 Billion people. In a country which easily figures among the top 10 countries by users for any successful web product in valley – from Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Quora and many others!

For B2C products – you have not tried enough!
For B2B or Enterprise SaaS products – did you guys not hear of Wingify or Fusion Charts or InMobi. This is digitally connected world – no one has bounded a company by geographical limits. These are proven models of product driven startups from India.

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Disconnect with Valley –
The kind of companies that are funded in India today are the ones that were funded in US about ten years back. I have no disrespect for the Indian companies – infact they are building the base for the next wave of Internet boom – exactly the same that happened with US.

With a whole lot of first generation entrepreneurs in India – we expect at least the VCs to bring an perspective on whats happening in US & other parts of the world, not the obvious answers that everyone knows. The learning from valley does not come or has not reached to many investors in India.

My point of disconnect with valley here is that many in investment community today are still unaware of Quora, Spotify, Dropbox, Evernote, Airbnb, Rovio, and so many others. In one of my meetings I had to tell a investment analyst about 500startups, Angellist and in another one that Ashton Kutcher is also a technology investor! And in one more, someone explained if a American company like Lenovo can be big in China, others too can (? – OK)! And that people in investor circles are still unaware of Yuri Milner & DST.

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No Product Focus –
There is a buzz within investor circles that the next Google, Facebook, Amazon of the world will come from India. With comfortable investment decisions in validated business models like eCommerce – post my above experiences I sincerely doubt if Indian investors will be able to spot such opportunities when it knocks your doors?

The current series of investments about eCommerce in India are a hunt to find the next Amazon. But, Amazon itself has ceased being an eCommerce company long time back, it is a product/ a platform and much more beyond all that – view Amazon’s Hidden Empire .

In US, investors invest in products & platforms; in India – they invest in companies. Huge Difference! When did you last hear of an eCommerce (leaving aside daily deals and private shopping, though a format of eCommerce itself) or Online Travel company getting funded in Silicon Valley?. If you are building a B2B or B2C product/platform company in India, all investors will be to help you with money & connections, but only handful of investors in India will be help you with product or platform – choose wisely!

Disclosure: Experience – I reached out to two venture capitalists at some point of time for role as investment analyst with experience in diverse products & platforms – was rejected outright for lack of ‘relevant experience’. No sour grapes, but I could have saved some millions for them 🙂

I am of a strong opinion that there is a huge need of in-house product & platform management advisory in many Indian venture capitalists. All ecosystem changes are driven by improvement & innovations in products & platforms, not by revenues. Lastly, it is only the consumer products that will scale up and be a billion dollar company!

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Everyone wants to invest Early Stage / Series A
Everyone wants to invest at early stage, but no one wants to take risk. So investments will happen early – but validated business models only. Some good examples for early stage investments in India are redBus, InMobi – while some good early stage misses are Infibeam (which has grown significantly larger without any outside investment).

Angels and Seed stage funds are well positioned to spot early opportunities than institutional investors.

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Premature Incubation Model
Going for a incubation model – make sure you choose the right one among the ones you are joining. Reason to say this – incubation models in US have mentors who have great experience in building products & platforms at scale. Y Combinator – has Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail & Google Adsense), 500startups has Dave McClure (PayPal, FBfund, Simply Hired and more) and mentors from hottest companies and startups in valley; and so many others.

I have simple belief – Internet & Mobile startups are as good or as bad as the products you build. If you are choosing a incubation model – make sure it compliments your actual requirements. Last reason an entrepreneur should choose a incubation mode is money!

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The Know-It-All Attitude
This goes to Entrepreneurs – if you have, please shed away this attitude and get in a mode to learn, to take advice and asking right questions. Relationship status between an Entrepreneur and Investor is complicated – you can’t live with them or you can’t live without them, so you might as well accept them the way they are.

While closing your meetings / pitch with prospective investors – take feedback on the product, business model and the pitch. They will advice you based on their best strengths and experience, but only if you ask! In my personal experience – I managed to get some key improvements & suggestions on the product I am building.

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Please learn to say No
Entrepreneurs learn to say no to investors who do not see and agree with the vision you hold for the product.
Investors learn to say no, and fast. Entrepreneur’s time is equally important as yours! If the product does not match your investment interest – communicate it as fast as possible. Saying no immediately may not so bad; but keep a hope alive may be frustrating for the entrepreneur.

PS: Please respond faster to emails! I exchanged few notes with some of ‘the investors’ in Silicon Valley – always found a reply within 12 hours in all cases, some of them in less than 30 minutes.

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Quality of Press Releases & Coverage
The state of ecosystem is also reflected by the type of news coverage & press releases one reads on Indian Blogs. People movements – in most cases of those names who we have never heard of before, New sales office in Middle East, Forward looking statements on revenues & projections, Surveys that say the obvious in press releases, Claims & unacceptable figures, and so much more! Damn – we would like to know more about your products & platforms, everything else is just crap!

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Concluding Remarks –

Startup ecosystem is built with entrepreneurs, their companies, their early customers and then the investors. You control 75% of the ecosystem already, investors will follow. In the same context I remember one of Sameer Guglani’s tweet – “Founders r creators / accelerators, angels, VCs r service providers. our business runs because founders start companies & not other way arnd.”

The point I am trying to convey here is that if you think or perceive that ecosystem is not evolved in Indian start up scenario, stop complaining and don’t be an entrepreneur. There is no point in waiting for a right time to build your startup, the time to start is now. Get started!

Ecosystem or no Ecosystem – it did not stop a redBus, Naukri, MakeMyTrip, Flipkart, InMobi or SlideShare* to be what they are from India. Why should it stop you!

The term ecosystem means lot of other components as well. Feel free to add more to the comments based on your experiences.

 

What problems are the Mobile Payment Services trying to solve?

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When I heard of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s announcement of mobile payment startup – Square, I loved the simplicity of the service. Few months Jack Dorsey tweeted that Square is processing transactions worth $1Mn per day – that is a cool revenue run rate of $10Mn per year for a two year startup (Square charges 2.75% charge per transaction when paid through credit card)

With very little knowledge of how offline transactions work in US, but it is definitely a card driven economy. Coming to Indian scenario – unsure if any Mobile Payment Services company in India will declare the value of transactions it processes per day. For a country like India, although the opportunity for mobile commerce looks huge – unable to relate if existing mobile payment services are trying to solve any consumer problem.

Back in 2006, when penetration of mobile phones in India was growing at an exponential pace – with falling talk times, it was predicted that India will be one of the largest telecom markets in the world. Well, that has surely come true. In internet world – there was another wave of prediction. Analysts & Enthusiasts found another buzz world – mCommerce which was supposed to be a multi-billion dollar industry by 2010.

With time, the definition of Mobile Commerce is itself a cliche’d.

  • Is it mobile commerce when a consumer books a airline ticket online, gets a confirmation and PNR number on to his mobile number . Displays the PNR ar airport counter and gets ticket?
  • Is it mobile banking when consumer receives confirmation of debit/credit transaction on his mobile
  • Or is it when the discovery, intent & transaction for a product/service starts and ends on mobile phone?

The definition is now debatable – but with mobile communication included, online transactions and services have scored a big mile.

The proposition of Mobile Payment Systems is (or was) very simple:

  • Offline Merchants – Allow consumers to walk-in to any shop with his mobile phone, buy stuff and make payments
  • Online Merchants – Tie-Up with multiple online eCommerce/Travel portals – allow them to purchase products through their payment service
  • Own Marketplaces – Create own marketplace on mobile that combine eCommerce, travel, utility services etc and enable payments for such transactions through their own system

Honestly, this would have sounded amazing to everyone back then. Undoubtedly very huge potential – Offline retail transactions are worth billions of dollars everyday, Online Merchants wanting to reach out to very high percentage of consumers who have not come online due to lack of internet connectivity and mobile device seemed very logical, & of course with own marketplace strategy they too wanted to own a sizable chunk of users/revenue and be a destination for commerce.

The mobile boom did happen. It is very difficult to find someone these days without a mobile phone. But then why is it so rare that we don’t get to find people using mobile payment services as it was predicted earlier.

Trying to analyze why did this zillion dollar plan on paper did not translate to even millions of dollars in reality. Here are few thoughts, there may be many other reasons as well that contributed to this –

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Limited size of Market –
With 95% mobile subscription in country on prepaid, and average ARPU of less than 200 INR (& steadily declining with time) – mobile payments or transactions is definitely the last thing on such user’s mind. Addressable market for this service is considerably very small and will be a subset of eCommerce market.

Active Credit Cards in India are declining –
According to recent numbers published in this TOI report – number of active credit users in India has tumbled down from 20.7 Million (in March 2008) to 10.8 Million (in November 2010).

eCommerce Services discovered Cash on Delivery –
India is a cash driven economy and most eCommerce services have realized this by today. COD accounts for anywhere between 30% to 60% of transaction for players who have enabled it. IVR payment mechanism also has widespread acceptance for ordering directly through call center.

Banks play their own Game –
In fact they already have started playing their own game. Banks are launching their own mobile banking applications and promoting it aggressively. That leaves mobile payment services out of their own play-field.

The 3G Magic may not happen –
The 3G magic shall happen to other services, but in my opinion nothing dramatic will happen for mobile payment services companies. There is simply no connection between acceptance of 3G by consumers and why ‘new consumers’ will subscribe to credit cards or link up their bank accounts to a mobile payment service company. They will fight for existing consumers between competition and the banks.

Radical shift to app-economy –
Smart Mobiles & Tablets devices are making a huge difference to the way consumers are accessing services on handheld or portable computing devices. With advent of app-stores and in-app payment systems – the mobile ecosystem has grown more radically than any of these players would have thought about.

Money was always Mobile –
If the pain point that mobile payment systems were (or are) trying to solve was allowing consumers to do transactions wherever & whenever they want – then this consumer pain never existed. Money in whatever format – cash or card was always mobile.

 
I see and hear of Mobile Payment systems usage in India only in the context on prepaid recharges & utility bill payments. But that was not what they aimed for, correct?

To sum up the article –

  • Money was always mobile; the consumer pain point mobile service providers were trying to solve never existed!
  • These businesses were way ahead of time; and in most scenarios got investments before validation.
  • mCommerce model evolved differently and in a way that kept such players outside the ecosystem.
  • mCommerce will evolve along with eCommerce; will go hand in hand – but definitely not before.

In my opinion this vertical is classic case of ‘ahead of time’, ‘investment without validation’, and ‘dynamic changing ecosystem’. Lesson for entrepreneurs and investment managers – make sure your companies are a part of “validated ecosystem” and solves a “valid consumer pain.”

 

Why Foursquare is better for Local Businesses than Groupon

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While Groupon has redefined local business and is in news for its fastest billion dollar revenue + its $700 Mn IPO, from a long term perspective I think Foursquare is a far better bet than Groupon.

Some of the many criticisms of Groupon –

  • Socially unconnected users
  • Concerns on validity of Business Model, just 3 years and now a IPO
  • Merchant side issues – 75% discount on products
  • Not much metrics available for merchants, no user contact information
  • Are new consumers acquired or are they deal seekers only
  • No technology barrier, 100s of Groupon clones have hit across the Globe
  • Though not many players are as large as Groupon, LivingSocial; Merchants have a choice
  • Intensive feet on street business with huge sales force.
  • Groupon Now – merchants are able to create own deals through Groupon

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Take case of Foursquare – they could possibly over throw Groupon.

My contention is that any platform and service that can empower merchants to run business and acquire consumers (new/repeat) will be able to overthrow Groupon in long run. While Groupon clearly demonstrates that local deals work, Foursquare has the technology & product to take it to the next level and give a tough competition to Groupon where it hurts most – at supply side (Merchants or Local Business Owners).

The biggest ‘cry’ we hear against Groupon is merchants complaining – its only the existing customers who use Groupon coupons for deals, and new consumers are not acquired/retained.

On the other hand, Foursquare –

  • As a product, consumers checkin at all locations and businesses (small, local & large)
  • Foursquare need to move beyond check-ins for two reasons
    > In sometime real consumers (not technology savvy early adopters) will not find value in badges & points.
    > Foursquare will need to have a monetization model that works!

Foursquare has valuable insights about users for the merchants – people who have checked in. They just need to quickly enable self-serve platform for business owners with a global sales footprint.

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Foursquare can just topple off Groupon and with its solution for merchants that covers every pain they have with Daily Deals services like Groupon, Living Social and 1000 others only for one reason – Business owners know who are new/repeat customers

  • They can enable deals for individually and for specific type of customers
    > Consumers who check-in for first time
    > Repeat & Regular customers
    > Consumers who have not checked-in since last 30 days
  • Decide what deal goes live when based on user interest, inventory available, and so on

More than that, they can –

  • Decide how much discount they should offer. To whom.
  • Take private feedbacks from customers on service
  • Push deals to customers on special occasions like birthdays & more
  • Pass on details about business Facebook & Twitter presence to customers – so that they can stay connected.
  • Analytics – who checks in, cost of acquisition of new customers, competition overview in same location

And most importantly – Foursquare should give ability to businesses to generate coupons, pass on to consumers in vicinity or existing customers which users can redeem immediately.

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In short – daily deals websites exploits local merchants. Foursquare can empower them!

The pitfall – Foursquare does not have a global sales footprint to enable this. Though technology savvy merchants back in US might adopt it, the business would scale when 1000s of merchants across the world are able to enable it. But again, thanks to the 8 Mn+ users – Foursquare already knows which businesses are popular and when they should start.

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If I had a million dollars and choice to invest in Groupon or Foursquare – i would surely bet on Foursquare!

My Prediction – Groupon or some player who has intention to venture big in local deals space will eventually acquire Foursquare or a majority stake.

Isn’t it time to re-look how TRPs are measured?

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This post is dedicated to John Wanamaker, credited for setting advertising standards and considered by few as father of advertising. John Wanamaker died in 1922. Had John lived today – he would have some interesting quotes to share on RoI in digital advertising.

This post is inspired by one of his very famous quotes – “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

The term RoI became a buzz word ever since Digital advertising started to gain prominence in last few years. Talk to any brand manager today on digital spends through any channel – Search, Social, Display or Email – his quick conclusion on effectiveness of any campaign will be based on ROI.

Pitch any campaign today on Digital – both Brand Manager and the Digital Marketer sound no less than a Investment Banker trying to advice its client on a multi-million dollar deal discussing on its investment, profitability and more. The same Brand Manager or Media Buyer will simply look at TRPs of any channel/program and allocate about 50% of its media spends to Television, distribute a significant chunk between Outdoors, Newspapers, Radio and leave a minuscule 5%-10% to Digital.

Well, this post is not about how Digital Medium today is perceived as ROI driven, this is very unlikely to change in coming years. The question to raise is – isn’t it time to re-look how TRP ratings are measured rather than blindly accepting the reports as provided.

First – to know more about what is TRP and how they are measured using people meters – read this excellent post on Television Point.

For those who have not seen a People Meter – here is one below:

credit: image source

Here are some questions usually asked about the authenticity of TRP ratings –

  • In India – TRP People Meters are installed only in 16 cities across 9 states; Less than 10,000 people meters are installed  –  would they be good enough to reflect insights on Television Viewership of a country as large and diverse in demographics & culture as India?
  • There is little or no transparency on number of households with People Meters installed, techniques of data collection & interpretation, and how the data is extrapolated to whole population. Are there any validations if the meters were correctly operated and data collected the way it should have been?
  • People Meters were always perceived as expensive devices since invention; with advancements in technology – why have the People Meters not proliferated to a wider reach.
  • Is there any control by Government authorities on collection of this data and authenticity of same.
  • How will any marketer, advertiser or broadcaster challenge authenticity of the weekly TRP ratings released.

And in world of digital economy, let me add few more questions to above arguments –

  • Now people are socially connected through social networks, it is very difficult to spot people who mention they have subscribed to People Meters.
  • On Google’s image global index – there are not many images when you search for “people meter”.

In todays world anything that happens in offline world leaves a footprint online. Absence of digital footprint for “people meter” wants me to question the proliferation of such devices in real world.

The DTH Effect –

Direct-to-Home (DTH) or Satellite Televisions are today immensely popular amongst masses. In India – its reach is 20 Million households in 2010; and India is expected be the world leader in DTH subscriptions. 20 Million would be a better representation of viewership data – compared to the dismal < 10,000 people meters installed by TAM in India.

aMap works with DTH service providers – but it is unlikely to capture data across all subscribers and might be following the people meter approach. Brand Managers are believed to be more inclined towards TRP ratings provided by TAM for decision making while aMap ratings are for reference.

Its most unfortunate if DTH platforms are unable to track viewership data. Thats like Air Traffic Controllers saying – there are 500 planes in skies today – we are unaware of their origins & destinations, can confirm with pilots only when they land.

TRP Measurement – Its time to Change!

Fundamentally – People Meter approach will always be poor representation of the population. As spends on digital media start increasing and reaches a critical mass, sooner or later TRP measurement will be questioned by same decision makers who accept it blindly today.

Fortunately or Unfortunately, the future of TRP & GRP measurement is digital. Existing global players like Nielson, TNS, & others involved need to look beyond people meters and embrace the medium.

Here is overview of how possibly TRPs will be measured in digital world –

  1. Develop applications across digital channels – Internet, Mobile (Java, iOS, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and others)
  2. For every location (geo by country / location) – populate information stream of programs currently broadcasted at that time.
  3. Allow users to select the programs they viewed and report the same back to the measuring system through the applications.
  4. User demographics will known at time of App-Registration.

There are ways to authenticate user viewership patterns. Instead of focusing on data collection through people meters, with same efforts & resources – it will be possible to crowdsource viewer-ship data for programs and channels across millions of users – all in real time.

Future Prediction – by the year 2022 (exactly 100 years after John Wanamaker died) – people meters and traditional TRP measuring practices will be obsolete. They will be measured through digital medium! John Wanamaker would have proudly said – “Thanks to Digital, I know exactly which half of my advertising money is wasted!”

Absolute Selfish self-promotion –

I future-gaze based on trends in consumer internet, user acceptance of technology innovations and its impact on lives of people.

My thoughts on Future of Television have been well received and acclaimed by a few users who took notice. Beyond which I have no expertise/experience in Television Domain.

Daily Deal Aggregators – what is your business model?

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Deal Aggregators – what is your business model?
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Movie 300 – One of the most inspiring scenes, when King Leonidas asks his army – Spartans, what is your profession?
watch it here – http://bit.ly/4csyEj
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Post the series of daily deal sites that have come up in India (or across the world) – there are many deal aggregation services that have been launched. There are on going debates – is there a business model for deal aggregation services?
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While daily deals and coupon services are growing in India and else where – many users/customers of daily deals services as well as critiques of this business models have complained that people usually end up buying things that they do not want or would not have purchased otherwise. Which is little illogical because you buy it for the deep discount – and you buy it by your choice.
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My example – I am a regular eCommerce transactor – at least 10-12 product/books (non-travel) transactions per year. However I am yet to buy a deal/coupon as most services are offering deals that are not relevant to me or not close to my location. As a consumer, here is my take – I will not be interested in a coupon that gives me Rs 200 off at a restaurant in Andheri (Mumbai). The economics does not work for me, total travel time of 4 hours, commuting cost between Rs. 100 to 500 depending on mode of travel and accessibility of the service provider.
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There are two primary needs of consumers in this space that are not yet solved completely:
– Relevance of the Deals
– Location of the Deal
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While this is the problem that most daily deals and coupon services are themselves trying to address – the aggregators can do a better job at this for following reasons:
  • Most deal sites are limited to anywhere between 1 to 5 deals at any given time. That limits their reach to about 5-10 suburbs in a city like Mumbai (Mumbai + Navi Mumbai + Thane) or Delhi (Delhi + Gurgaon + Noida)
  • A deal aggregator can get such 5 deals from 5 different websites – and will have 25 deals to showcase and in most cases the span of reach will be wider – about 20-30 suburbs (which covers 40-50% of Mumbai)
The above statement is very logical, however deal aggregators now have to think beyond just aggregation and focus on distribution of such deals to relevant audience – relevancy by deals and location. At least in India, it may not be the daily deal websites that can take this business hyper-local but definitely the deal aggregators can if they wish to.
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If deal websites are focusing on – Deals in Mumbai; aggregators should focus on Deals in Andheri, Bandra, Chembur, Colaba, Ghatkopar and more!
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My two cents – Business model for Deal Aggregators should not be aggregation of deals. That is a simple job and that is minimum expected out of them. Your business model should be Distribution – distribution of deals, thats where they start testing their capabilities and adding value to the ecosystem!

Twitter Business Model – 8th Wonder of the World

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Twitter – the microblogging platform that revolutionized social media. Tons of businesses today are revolved around the tweetoconomy (tweet economy) – right from developing applications, social media agencies, and so on.

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While it might be an billion dollar economy that revolves around twitter and social media today, unfortunately Twitter still is trying to evolve its own business model. My argument here is that although the Twitter ecosystem is valuable, its going to be very challenging to monetize it. Twitter may have some business model (as it now has – promoted tweets, trends and users) but it will not justify the investments made in Twitter and the valuation it has today.
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And discovering that business model which justifies the valuation & investment may be as good as finding the eighth wonder of the world. Here is why:
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Twitter ecosystem consists of three factors:

  • Users – who tweet
  • Tweets – the 140 character messages which users write
  • Applications – all applications that allow users to write these tweets

All other functions of twitter – search, trends, lists, etc are functions of these 3 factors.
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Twitter has 175 million users; 75% of all tweets are outside of Twitter website and about 40% of them from mobile devices. Growth of twitter was propelled by three factors:
– Acceptance by celebrities and big brand names, which lead their followers to come on-board twitter
– Twitter became a pet of mainstream television and offline news
– Widespread development of applications by developers across the world. The twitter API was easy to implement and build quick apps, many innovative applications where built by developers which would have taken twitter ages to come out with.
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As per twitter website, as of Sept 14 2010 – there are a whopping 95 million tweets a day. (Imagine the monetization Google will achieve with 95 million search queries!). However most tweets are irrelevant; according to a research report by Pear Analytics – 40% tweets are Pointless Blabber, 38% are conversational, 9% have pass-along value, 6% are self promotion, 4% are news while rest 4% are spam.
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Tweets get a very little attention span. A study did by Sysomos revealed that – 71% of all tweets generated get no reaction – 23% get replied  – 6% get re-tweeted.
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The life-span of a tweet is another big issue – and every tweet gets a fractional life-span before it gets lost on tweet streams. To put it simply, fractional tweets are seen, more fractional tweets are read and even more small fraction of them are responded.

The life-span depends on factors like
– number of followers you have
– % of followers online at that time
– rate of tweeting of people followed by your followers at that time for them to notice your tweet
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Twitter’s Business Model

Few months back – according to internal documents leaked and published on Techcrunch, Twiiter was expected to reach an revenue of $140 million for 2010. The documents were leaked in 3rd quarter of 2009 – post which Twitter launched its 3 business offerings – Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.
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Was Twitter referring to these 3 offerings to generate an revenue of $140 Million. In that case assuming 33% contribution towards revenue generated for each of them, they have to generate $46 Mn per year – at rate of $125,000 per day.
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Thats very expensive! Should twitter be charging $125,000 per day for these offerings? The answer to this question may surprising be Yes!
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Reports mentioned on sites like Clickz, Mashable, Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, Read Write Web – and many others have indicated that costing of promoted tweets is upwards of $100,000 per day!
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Such high costs are not justified as the business model is still not proven. Advertisers paying for these should be aware that these features are mostly available on twitter.com, while 75% activity on twitter happens outside of Twitter through applications and mobile devices. While there is no or very little context and relevance in which these promoted tweets, trends or accounts are served.
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Twitter’s ecosystem cannot be monetized!
Twitter’s ecosystem may be valuable, but cannot be monetized! Here is why was we summarize each of its component.
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Tweets:

  • Most tweets are blabbers, pointless
  • Most tweets do not have any intent like search keywords, and even if they have any intent – it will be momentary.
  • Most tweets are meant for others (for followers). Finding intents specific to self may be difficult task.
  • An user’s tweet can be completely different than his previous one – hence establishing relevance or context and validating seriousness of that context is not possible.
  • If Twitter is able to build an killer-product that deciphers user’s intent and in real time shows and advertise to the user, the only relevant format in which advertisement can be displayed to user is by tweeting a reply. This will lead to tweet-spam and users will protest!
  • Is the advertisement will include a link (of say ecommerce website) – chances of users to complete a transaction may be very less. Visitors from Twitter are known to have highest bounce-rates with a huge majority of users not exploring beyond 1-2 pages.
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Trends:

  • Trends are collective tweets of a large set of users. Most of the times trending topics are consequences of large offline news events and big announcements made by brands, companies and individuals (celebrities)
  • Its understood by commonsense that a promoted tweet may not cause same impact amongst users as a natural trend. The viral factor in a natural trending topic will be 1000X of promoted trends.
  • If twitter continues with promoted trends – at a costing of $100,000 per day – this model is not scalable and will not appeal to small segment of advertisers
  • Its not even possible for Twitter to monetize natural trending topics as they are usually related to subjects or topics that cannot be monetized. Twitter cannot predict a trending topic; and for an current trending topic which has potential to be monetized, it might be difficult for them to get find an advertiser before the topic stops trending.

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Users:

  • Most followed Twitter users are celebrities or big brands that have pulled more users to Twitter. Twitter will not have been at this scale without such users.
  • Twitter will continue to offer featured users and verified accounts for free, they may not be a business model here.
  • Promoted Accounts is being offered without much reference to user’s behavior or interest. Hence there may be little value to businesses for ‘promoted accounts’ to gather users to whom their tweets may not be relevant.

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Applications:

  • Twitter has indicated it will not allow applications to monetize tweets
  • Twitter cannot charge application developers. With 75% tweets coming from applications, Twitter is more dependent on them.
  • If Twitter starts monetizing individual tweets, they will also need to credit the applications that completed the monetization action.
  • While there are few benefits associated with applications like Quora to integrate with Twitter; stand-alone twitter applications will also need to have a way to monetize. If they are not able to monetize and generate revenue by themselves or through Twitter – they may start loosing interest in building or maintaining applications for Twitter..

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Twitter’s Speculated New Business Models:
Business model speculation and criticism is not new for Twitter. There were reports that Twitter may be be coming up with an eCommerce or News related business model. Here is my take of them:
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eCommerce:

  • There are few tweets shared between users about product recommendations, purchases and reviews. Tweets work in an open environment and Twitter may not be able to add more value to such conversations that are already happening.
    Example., if Dell continues to generate millions of dollars revenue through Twitter, there is not much Twitter can do to get a share if that.
  • In event if Twitter is forcing upon some business model related to eCommerce on to large brands on-board, there are multiple small accounts that will continue to converse as always. A business model that cannot be expanded to cover all its users equally will not last for long time.
  • Twitter itself is not an eCommerce seller like Amazon and can never be one. Neither can it act as an affiliate

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News:

  • Twitter is used by meaning leading publications and individual users to break stories. Once the story is pushed to twitter – its responded by followers, a huge story ends up becoming a trend and initiating conversations.
  • The process of publishing a twitter, spreading to follows, building conversations over it happens in a very short span of time. Twitter by itself is not a news service, any attempt to be in this domain will mean competition from well known and well followed media organizations. For a user – he is still very happy with the existing news publishers on Twitter.

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Concluding Remarks:
Twitter has always remained in the spotlight and seems like raising more capital is not a problem for them. For the fact that VCs have invested over $360 Million, Twitter is surely bound to give their investors a good exit and their quest of finding an business model will be going on for some time.
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Right now, its not clear if Twitter is or is not under great pressure to show an convincing business model, but some point they will have to. Twitter team is no doubt struggling to find a revenue model that fits its ecosystem – an ecosystem which has value for its users but is extremely difficult to monetize for the company that owns it.
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While Twitter is not ready to accept proven online business models like search and display, Twitter’s discovery for its revenue stream will be as good as finding the eighth wonder of this world!

Twitter Business Model – 8th Wonder of the World

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Why LinkedIn should acquire Quora

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Quora has seen unprecedented traction in last few months on 2010 and bound to be an one of the most talked about startup for 2011. Here are few reasons what makes Quora an perfect candidate for acquisition by LinkedIn.

1. LinkedIn is a network of professionals – however much activity is centered around initiating business contacts and building your professional resume/network.

2. LinkedIn tried getting into having its users into groups and eventually discuss, debate on topics within the community – if you are an expert a mere “recommendation” by colleague is emphasis of your performance at a particular role or organization. Recommendations always centered around – great team player, leadership role, knowledgeable, etc – but users were not able to demonstrate their expertise, opinions on to a common forum with industry leaders/ participants.

3. LinkedIn community features (like status updates) are mostly feed-into by Twitter or applications like Foursquare. Professionals will not share expertise without being asked for – Quora has questions, and hence ability for professionals to demonstrate their knowledge.

4. LinkedIn Groups have repeat questions – the perfect answer may be in some different group which is not discovered by the person asking the question. Quora has solved the discovery puzzle for users. I manage an 8000+ group on LinkedIn, the quality of answers on Quora are unmatched to those on LinkedIn. The issue is not quality of people, they same are on LinkedIn, issue is how to get those quality Questions & Answers discovered or re-used.

5. Other players – Twitter, Facebook, etc are more social and so is the content shared – status messages, pictures, links, etc. The level and quality of questions that are asked and answered on Quora will not fit within the Social Norms established by Twitter or Facebook.

Nevertheless Quora also has challenges like going beyond the web-startup community, dealing with self-glorifying users that at times add irrelevant answers to grab attention, highly prolific users with right expertise flooding user stream that overshadows other users, questions with multiple answers but few getting maximum votes causing difficult in discovering other relevant answers, and so on. These are good challenges to have and will only test ability of this product.

If LinkedIn has to acquire Quora, rather than integrating the same within LinkedIn as an component it should –

– Allow Quora to grow independently on its own

– Allow LinkedIn profiles to be linked with respective Quora profiles

– Build an rating/ranking system that allows determination of user’s expertise on subjects/topics based on crowdsourced feedback on user’s questions / answers / comments

– For LinkedIn users, show an Quora expertise quotient in subject/topic user has participated.

The great thing about Quora is its well maintained quality of questions and answers. The next great knowledge resource is Wikipedia (but in encyclopedia format). If Quora has to be independent it will grow in a Q&A’pedia; if not LinkedIn is best fit for professionals to demonstrate their expertise

This opinion was posted originally as an answer on Quora at: http://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-to-acquire-Quora