Tuesday, April 14, 2009
I read with interest about the current page rankings battle comparison between Facebook and Friendster with a slight dissatisfaction about the facts quoted here or "Facebook has superceded Friendster in Malaysia ". Trackback: http://tinyurl.com/craj4t.
What most people tend to forget is..
a) Minority of users on Friendster demographic profile is the elitist or the educated urban yuppies. The actual bulk of the users are from all over Malaysia which are your low-middle income young generation across rural areas and outer cities. Hence Malay is their preferred choice, even in Indonesia. The more affluent demographics were smart enough to move over to Facebook a long time ago as early adopters, but we still represent a minority, even in Internet user base over the whole population.
b) Frienster's page structure (or lack of it) is designed to generate multiple impressions to maximise advertisement revenues. Just look at the message page navigation and flow. Count how many impressions it takes to read from message to message if you have more than 11 messages. This in a way generates the page views they claim contributes to their ranking.
c) The assumption based on increased iPhone users is completely irrelevant, delusional and misleading. The number of iPhone users in Malaysia and Singapore is extremely low. iPhone and Blackberry only has a 4% & 11% market share respectively globally. A marketing gimmick than fact. A highly insignificant proportion to Symbian's domination of over 60% worldwide via Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other devices. The upcoming Symbian Series60 version 5 release, as well as Google's Android platform along with new cheap accompanying phones will quash all hype that iPhone brags even with their Apple Cocoa based platform version 3 release soon.
What would have been more accurate to say is the insurgence of Web Enabled phones into the market capable of accessing social networking services in an always-on web runtime environment would lead to a competitive battle for screen space and users for multiple applications.
This battle would be won by Facebook as their user demographics would be able to afford data services over the more sophisticated mobile smart phones. The majority of the population in the Asian region will still depend on the web to access either Facebook or Friendster base on their social friendship demographics. In most cases, they will have and maintain both accounts.
Friendsters attempt to stage a comeback will only work by adopting a more user friendly approach to cater to low bandwidth internet speed users in this region with better page layout and functionality. A more in depth market research in terms of language preference and option to remain in English is a must. They would also benefit via existing collaborations through other Open Social partners and application developers to recapture their glory days.
Jo :)
What most people tend to forget is..
a) Minority of users on Friendster demographic profile is the elitist or the educated urban yuppies. The actual bulk of the users are from all over Malaysia which are your low-middle income young generation across rural areas and outer cities. Hence Malay is their preferred choice, even in Indonesia. The more affluent demographics were smart enough to move over to Facebook a long time ago as early adopters, but we still represent a minority, even in Internet user base over the whole population.
b) Frienster's page structure (or lack of it) is designed to generate multiple impressions to maximise advertisement revenues. Just look at the message page navigation and flow. Count how many impressions it takes to read from message to message if you have more than 11 messages. This in a way generates the page views they claim contributes to their ranking.
c) The assumption based on increased iPhone users is completely irrelevant, delusional and misleading. The number of iPhone users in Malaysia and Singapore is extremely low. iPhone and Blackberry only has a 4% & 11% market share respectively globally. A marketing gimmick than fact. A highly insignificant proportion to Symbian's domination of over 60% worldwide via Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other devices. The upcoming Symbian Series60 version 5 release, as well as Google's Android platform along with new cheap accompanying phones will quash all hype that iPhone brags even with their Apple Cocoa based platform version 3 release soon.
What would have been more accurate to say is the insurgence of Web Enabled phones into the market capable of accessing social networking services in an always-on web runtime environment would lead to a competitive battle for screen space and users for multiple applications.
This battle would be won by Facebook as their user demographics would be able to afford data services over the more sophisticated mobile smart phones. The majority of the population in the Asian region will still depend on the web to access either Facebook or Friendster base on their social friendship demographics. In most cases, they will have and maintain both accounts.
Friendsters attempt to stage a comeback will only work by adopting a more user friendly approach to cater to low bandwidth internet speed users in this region with better page layout and functionality. A more in depth market research in terms of language preference and option to remain in English is a must. They would also benefit via existing collaborations through other Open Social partners and application developers to recapture their glory days.
Jo :)
Labels: Facebook, Friendster, iPhone, Malaysia, Symbian
