Excellent post “Hindsight 2.0: Lessons From A Failed Web 2.0 Startup” about Kiko, a Web 2.0 company with an online calendar which was torpedoed by the launch of Google’s online calendar:

Even With Web 2.0, Popularity Won’t Save You… They got a huge amount of visibility and free PR. They had a Google PageRank™ of 7. They likely got a bunch of registered users. But, nowhere in the eBay listing do I see a value associated to those assets (what they are valuing primarily is the domain name and the source code). I find that somewhat telling.

I had a quick look at Kiko’s site. Very nice — an elegant site. But I didn’t see any marketing going on. This site has a lot in common with many tech-oriented sites. They leave it to the site visitor to figure what why they should care, and what the site/ offering can do for them. Where’s the marketing plan?

Kiko is a marketing-free zone
The “take a tour” button on the site is not marketing. The “forum” is not a proper discussion forum — it’s just related to the bones of the product. The forum is another marketing opportunity missed to build a real community around the product.

If they had had a savvy marketing person on board, they might have developed a proper site, to draw visitors they could monetize when they original application tanked. With a clever marketing team on board, there are many ways in which this site could be monetized. Instead, the site’s on eBay.

There’s a lesson here for many companies. Have a marketing plan. Marketing gives you options.

Thanks to Shel at Naked Conversations for the tip.

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