How does social media monetize? Not the way ooVoo is doing it.
ooVoo is an online video conferencing service where you can talk with up to six people at a time. The service launched in February with a clever promotion called My ooVoo Day, in which I participated.
But then ooVoo fell off most people’s radar screen, until today, when its agency, Crayon, sent an email saying ooVoo is moving to paid for PCs now and for Macs in a year. I responded saying, “No thanks, I don’t want to pay for Oovoo.” And, apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought the email meant you either subscribe or don’t use ooVoo.
A few hours later, came this email clarification:
“Apologies- the email that I sent out seems to have been a bit confusing.
To clarify, ooVoo is still free for 3 way video conferencing. The more advanced features have moved to a competitive paid option.”
It wasn’t just confusing – it’s a prescription for failure.
The business model for most social media has been to build up a solid user base and then use it to generate ad and/or membership revenue. The key is to provide a service people love, find indispensable, and want to continue using, even if it has advertising (as long as it’s not obnoxious advertising) or a paid version. But ooVoo’s software was buggy the times I tried using it – which I why I gave up and forgot about it.
One event doesn’t make a brand. A couple of emails announcing new features don’t build customer loyalty. Before moving to paid, ooVoo should have spent some time, effort and money letting people who’d experienced the buggy beta know that they got it working. Only then they might be ready to announce a paid version.
Frankly, it’s surprising I even saw the ooVoo email. I get 600+ emails a day. I have to triage them, so I pretty much zap anything that looks like a promotional email. I figure anything important will come through Twitter, IM, or some other more personal medium than email where any jerk can send you spam.
Skype has a paid model, but that didn’t come along until Skype was in widespread use, with scores of favorable reviews. It also had first-mover advantage, and many evangelists among bloggers and other digerati.
Oovoo wants Windows users to pay $30 a month when a pay-per-use model would make much more sense. Any way you look at it, Oovoo needs to go back to the drawing board.
Thanks for taking part in MyooVooDay and sorry to read your experience with the Beta software wasn’t stellar. We have moved along in quality and features since the event several months ago.
I would like to update you on the pricing which was clearly confusing in the email – we have a free three person video chat option and paid six person option which is $10 a month. Users can add phone to either package for $5 more. The email from the agency was actually more of a courtesy email to say thanks for using ooVoo during the event and give you a free account.
The event not only allowed several bloggers to meet their readership for the first time face-to-face. We also learned a lot about how to improve the software with feedback from people using ooVoo during our Beta phase for both Mac and PC. That was not the purpose of the event but we found the feedback helpful – and as you noted we are still building as a company part of this process is listening and learning to feedback.
We are working towards building a sustainable company that offers services that connect people but most importantly that people want to use. We are open to talking more about this with you and take on board your thoughts, naturally we want to succeed.
Philip – thank you for commenting on my post. I’d like to see ooVoo succeed because it’s a great idea.
Everything about the emails sent today was confusing. And they offered one free month, NOT a free account. However, offering free accounts to early adopters would certainly be a good idea.
I’d welcome the opportunity to talk more with you
BL
I got that same email and had the same thought. Where has Oovoo’s marketing been between then and now? Last I heard, I couldn’t even use it on a Mac. That being said, I liked it a lot during the promotion, because I did get to talk to a lot of interesting people. I guess the 3-person conferencing is free because there are so many competitors in that particular space.
The fatal flaw on it was that you couldn’t record the conversations and rebroadcast it. Nobody wants to have to login to the program, or download it, or whatever to have to watch something.
If it was a tool allowing me to record a video conversation and then take that video and embed or upload somewhere else as a recording… then I’d use it in 1 second, and I’d pay for it too.
But correct me if I’m wrong, it doesn’t do that?
BL, thanks also for allowing us a chance to comment on the post, and I do apologize for any confusion/frustration the email may have caused.
I’m more than happy to chat with you on ooVoo ID: philiprobertson, but as that’s a little cheeky, I’m also happy to talk by phone.
Francine does also raise a valid point, though we have been very active on Twitter for both customer support and reaching out to early adopters, press release, emails to users that registered etc, but we could have done a much better job communicating more directly with particpants in the first My ooVoo Day program. Fortunately this is something we can reapply to the next My ooVoo Day – Political Edition planned for late July.
James – I believe crayon has contacted you directly with more information, but essentially you can record video conversations on ooVoo (on Windows) ooVoo Mac’s recording feature will be launched in July.