There's an old, terrible joke that goes something like this:
What do you get if you walk under a cow?
A pat on the back!
So it is with having your business constantly critiqued by a bunch of bloggers. It might be flattering to be the centre of attention, but the barbed words sometimes aren't what you wanted. Since I've been hard on Skype recently for some things they're either not doing or not executing well, here's some editorial balance with something that is strategically spot-on.
Today they announced a whole bunch of ways to make it easier to give 'em some of your cash. I won't recap it -- you can read. But it extends the distribution of their service, reaches the parts that other private voice applications can't reach. Their PC distribution network comprises several stages: awareness, inquiry, download, install, pay.
Awareness was viral. Marketing budget: zero. Cost per gross add: infinitesimal.
The web site is a work of genius. Seriously, I think it's beautiful -- uncluttered, clear, direct, funky. You can sense that this has gone through some heavyweight usability testing labs. (Sprint once ran a corny ad campaign about how "Business is beautiful". Well, maybe they were right.)
Their download and install experience leaves the rest standing.
Finally, the last piece of the distribution jigsaw is catching up.
Now, this is just how your are distributing your product. How well does Skype meet the user goal of "The service is easy to acquire and is availabile wherever and whenever I need it." It probably beats the PSTN already. Easier to find a WiFi-enabled coffee shop than a payphone these days! It may still be a pale shadow of the money-capture networks the mobile operators have created, but nobody else comes close in the pure-IP space.
The question of what you are distributing is, of course, a different matter. But for now, time for Skype to get a pat on the back from the blogosphere.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 3:03 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/670