Friendster Copywriting
25Jun2004 Filed under: Careerdanah boyd posted some facinating emails that Friendster sent out: apophenia: Friendster is desperate; viral marketing failed. From a copywriter perspective, these are really interesting, because you can see them trying hard to catch their demographic … and the demographic they’re going after loaths being a target market, and will resist this kind of desperate marketing attempts at casual “chatty” language. Very interesting.
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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Philos
June 25th, 2004 at 11:16 pm
I think they’re somewhat amusing, though I too doubt they’ll be successful. However, it seems to me Friendster’s problem is not a failure of viral marketing, it’s the continual failure of the Friendster service. I’m certain I can’t be the only person who’s found the network to be unavailable easily 75% of the time, if not more, over the past year. People aren’t using Friendster because Friendster has been unusable. People aren’t logging in to check their accounts because often they can’t even do that. And people aren’t bringing in more users because, once again, they can’t recommend a “service” that doesn’t serve.