On Saturday I wrote about Ringo’s aggressive customer acquisition tactics. To summarize, the company is pushing users to open their email contact list kimonos in order for Ringo to gain new users. That’s a harsh way of saying the company is encouraging its users to invite friends, which is how Ringo puts it.
After experiencing this “sell” in the registration process itself several weeks ago, I created an additional account on Saturday (with pseudonym “Chris”) to test the waters again. I found no email contact list overtures during registration, but lo and behold, three days later (tonight), I receive the following:
Their “see which of your friends are sharing photos” quickly turns into an invite with all of your email contacts, both Ringo members and non-members, selected to receive a Ringo-promoting email with a single additional click. Sending to a few individuals requires scrolling to the bottom of one’s contacts where an ”uncheck all” button resides (i.e. not readily apparent).
One might think these tactics would be driving some massive growth, but perhaps users are having the same reaction I did (bait and switch of “see who’s sharing photos” to “invite your friends” is a turn-off), or perhaps the tactics are a recent move to buck a flatline trend:
Of course we shouldn’t put too much weight on Alexa’s numbers; Hitwise data suggests Ringo is a major player (top 50-100 community site online).
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that the above email offers “Hotmail,” “Yahoo!,” and “Other” as email provider options. I was in a meeting today in which a colleague was teased for still holding onto a Hotmail account! The early adopters, promoters, etc. that every web service wants in its stable (and that frankly have driven the success of services such as Digg) shouldn’t be classed as ”Other,” especially if they’ve reached critical mass. Gmail is the obvious exclusion here, and others are worth mention (according to TechCrunch, for instance, Zimbra has hit 4 million paid users).
I like the option to invite my friends with ease, but believe it’s got to be handled carefully.
Plaxo made the same mistake. They had a good opportunity for a business community play a la LinkedIn, but they tried too hard to invade your contact list to spread themselves, which turned a lot of people off. When trying to build a community of any sort, it’s important to cede most of that control to the user, especially the key influencers / early adopters who are vital to user growth. Don’t be overeager. Just create good tools and focus on what will actually make the product essential.
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