Skiilight Blog
Archive for the ‘Hype-check’ Category
March Madness: Yahoo vs. ESPN
Adweek posted an interesting article (with an entirely misleading headline) about Yahoo Sports vs. ESPN in March visitor metrics.
Headline: “Yahoo Sports Slams Foes”
The story: “Yahoo Sports reeled in 14.4 million and 12.7 million weekly uniques during the tournament’s first two weeks (per Nielsen), versus ESPN.com’s 12.8 million and 9.8 million uniques.” (Uniques in this sense are visitors)
The Reality: “John Kosner, ESPN’s senior vp, general manager of digital media, said ESPN.com draws a more passionate fan base, one that visits more regularly and stays longer than Yahoo’s does. Kosner argued that because Yahoo can funnel casual sports fans from its home page and e-mail pages, its audience is less valuable. He points to ESPN’s huge edge in total minutes (216 million versus 144 million in the second week in March) as a truer indicator of engagement. “ESPN.com’s users are consistently more valuable than Yahoo’s,” said Kosner.”
This is a great example of how quality metics and knowing how to interpret them helps you identify your place in the world. Taken at face value it looks as if Yahoo really took ESPN behind the woodshed. However, as John Kosner eloquently explains, the unique visitor metric does not hold as much value as time spent, especially when the total visitors number is as close as theirs are.
Hype-check: Online Applications
In the recent Digital 08 issue of Advertising Age, there was an article handed down from the marketing-pundit heavens delcaring that this is the year the consumer moves their workspace from the offline world to the online world. While its hard to argue that the evolution of working entirely online has been accelerated in recent years, this is not the year for it. Neither is next year.
The article reminded me of the perpetual push for “The Year of Mobile” which has been declared in each of the last 3 years.
Making news this week: Adobe released Photoshop Express which is a photo organizer that helps the user make simple edits like fixing your red eyes in that photo you want as you Facebook profile shot. While it is a great tool for the passive user, the designers of the world will continue to use programs based on their local machines for many years to come simply because the load times for large photos would be ridiculous. Adobe’s strategy here is to gain a foothold on the casual photo manipulator – and no other company is in a position to challenge.
Above: Photoshop Express Screenshot.
While online applications generate huge buzz, they have a long way to go to defeat their offline counterparts. A direct correlation can be drawn between how well a program performs and how long it has been around. Google Docs is a product suite that made waves when it debuted a few years ago. Google has continued to improve its products and the Microsoft haters of the world are quick to leap from their Office suite.
At this point, it is far too hard to move from offline to online applications. Hard drives capable of storing multiple terabytes (thats 1,000 gigabytes), faster than ever processors and slow internet provider upload speeds will hamper the adoption of online applications.
New product designers are doing the right thing by rushing online apps into production, because we know the first product to market has the best chance to hold the lead position for years to come. But let’s cut the hype, this isn’t the year your business moves from offline Office to online Docs.