Fishing Where The Fish Are

We've been extremely busy at MeetMoi over the last few months. We have completely redesigned our user experience (for both WAP and WEB), added some great technical features, tweaked our marketing strategy, optimized our internet advertising, and came pretty close to saving the world. But the most important action over the past few months has been the addition of an AWESOME new member to the MeetMoi team – me. I'm Adam Gillman (aka “The Gillmanator”). I'm 23 years old, incredibly good looking, and the marketing manager at MeetMoi. Over time, I will be posting much more information about me but for now I would like to share a specific topic with all of you – the notion of “fishing where the fish are."

What's a “fish” you ask? Well, aside from being an aquatic vertebrae that is capable of swimming through water by utilizing its fins, we define a fish as an ideal user. The ideal user to MeetMoi is someone who is tech savvy, is familiar with browsing the mobile web, and is willing to experiment with new services.

A few weeks ago, we decided to experiment with customer acquisition and asked ourselves “where are the fish?” After some serious concentration, arguments, pillow fights, tequila shots, and games of “Operation,” we found a new lake to fish in. Since we knew we wanted users who would be familiar with browsing the web on their phones, we looked into those lakes which would be the most crowded (I'm getting symbolic here, I hope you're keeping up) and decided that mobile web advertising could be a great opportunity for us to explore.

So far, this has been a massive success. For all of you entrepreneurs who have been hesitant about investing in mobile web advertising, do not hesitate anymore. The mobile web is growing by leaps and bounds:

• There are some great ad networks out there and a lot of premium publishers that are more than willing to set up direct deals
• The mobile web has become the ultimate source for busy Americans – since people always have their cell phones on them, they are increasingly turning to the mobile web for entertainment and information on the go.
• We are not far from the wide introduction of location based advertising – it is the recreation of the internet and it's starting right now!
  

I guess what I'm saying is if mobile web advertising got into a fight with Spiderman, mobile web advertising would win. So stake out a good spot to fish people. Pretty soon there might not be a good place to stand. You'll hear from me soon.

Gillmanator out.

Hub and Spoke Marketing

While we’ve yet to start spending marketing dollars, I thought I’d share with you some of our marketing strategy as we look to grow our subscription base. One point of focus for us is a “hub and spoke” affiliate model: a structure that has worked so successfully for so many companies in so many different verticals.

Here’s how this model works. We have already built web services for any community or dating site to use our functionality in a customized way, complete with partner branding. Each partner can configure its user experience within defined parameters. Regardless of where they join, all new members become part of a common userbase so one partner’s members can text, flirt, and meet with another’s partner’s members.

With this functionality built, we are now looking to add new partners. We believe a good partner is any site whose visitors would enjoy a topnotch dating experience. If you operate a media publication, we can fill your dating void and address a community need. Just as importantly, we can offer co-branded functionality your company wouldn’t be willing to build on its own.

Shortly, we’ll announce our first major deals. For now, you can continue with us at www.meetmoi.com. In the future, my hope is you’ll see us everywhere.

Changes to the way we do Business

During the week, our developers check code into our code management system and then once a week (and sometimes more frequently) we do what’s called a ‘Build.’ The Build moves the code from the staging servers to the production servers and makes it available for everyone to use and see.

In this Build we included lots of small changes a few major changes to the way our system works.

• Refererenced Members. We bifurcated our membership between Referenced Members and Unreferenced Members. Referenced Members have a written reference from a person of the same gender that they said they were seeking when they registered. The idea here is to create a sense of exclusivity and a feeling of community
• Google Maps. This is a mashup of Google maps and our members. The display is a work in progress and we’d like to hear suggestions of the best way to show profiles on this page.
• Search. In the prior version, we build “Search” on the home page as a way to get visitors to see how the system works before having to fully register. We let users perform a search and then sent profiles to their mobile phones. The feedback was that the back and forth between the computer and the phone was too confusing. In this version, we let you do a search, see applicable results directly on the computer, and then complete registration on the computer.
• Email a Picture. You can now email a picture from your phone to us and we’ll post it directly to your profile. The most recent picture you send will be the one we use with your profile. If you’re not registered as a Member, you can also register by sending a picture to Register@i.meetmoi.com

As always we’re soliciting your feedback while we try to improve the product.

'Referenced' Members: Seeking Your Input

My last post was largely about seeking customer feedback to improve our product. But I think you’ll see that the way we do this is very different than the way most Internet companies operate.

Part of our ‘credo’ is to solicit public feedback to changes we make to our service before we make them.

Here’s the first major change, and it’s pretty significant:

MeetMoi intends to introduce the concept of a “Referenced” Member.

Rules for Referenced Members:

MeetMoi would create two classes of membership: Referenced and Unreferenced. Nothing in our current registration process changes for “Unreferenced” Members.

Everything described below is for “Referenced” Members.

Below are the rules and benefits of becoming a Referenced member.

How to Become a Referenced Member:

• Register for MeetMoi and upload a picture
• Provide one or more email addresses (you can list people that are not currently MeetMoi members). At least one person you list needs to be willing to provide a written reference on you.
• References must be of the gender that you are looking to date.
• Once you list what gender you are looking for, you can not change your preference until thirty days following registration.
• You may never change the gender you list for yourself in registration.
• A reference must confirm the accuracy of the listed profile. In addition, the Reference must provide a testimonial that answers the question, “So what’s so great about ?”
• Any party who validates a new member in an untruthful way will forever be banned from our system.

Benefits of being a Referenced Member

• MeetMoi would deliver the profile of a Referenced Member with a Referenced stamp and link to the reference.
• MeetMoi would modify its algorithms to give preference in the delivery of Referenced profiles over Unreferenced profiles.

Comments encouraged and appreciated. If you prefer to keep them private, please email me at andrew@meetmoi.com.

Press, Financing and Refining the Service

Plodding is the word that comes to mind for a company before it raises capital. Plodding to get development done. Plodding to build your brand. Plodding to market. Plodding to hire.

And then the financing arrives. In our case, it was a $1.5 million raise from a respected venture group in New York. The pace immediately changes. It doesn’t just quicken – you begin to move at light speed.

Last week we issued a press release announcing that we had closed our first round of venture financing. But even before that, we received some tremendous press coverage. We hit the cover of the Wall Street Journal (and I mean page one), had a great piece on Fox News, and made our unofficial entrance into the blogosphere.

With all this press, we have to admit, we were a little taken by surprise. We weren’t expecting such a rush, and to address the bugs you discovered, we scrambled into the early mornings to address problems as they arose. We heard on blogs about improvements we needed to our registration and our chat. And we heard the excitement about the introduction of our service. Many of you told us you believed that networking, socializing and dating would change forever because of mobile services like ours.

In the next few days, you’ll see significant changes on the site. First the changes will be to the way search works; then to registration; and finally to chat.

From the beginning we had two notions of focus groups – the first a group of people we brought in who could answer specific questions we had about usability. The second focus group (and certainly the more important) would be our user base. Releasing an Internet service is a far different process than releasing a software product. The release times in software products are usually measured in years or months. At MeetMoi we release changes to code weekly. From a user-experience perspective, we are quite literally testing in public. That’s why I’m asking you to be vocal in what you like and what you don’t.

I literally read every single email that comes in to suggestions@meetmoi.com. Your response has been terrific. In the next week, we’ll be posting some significant changes we plan to make to our definition of a ‘Member’ which is likely to make membership more exclusive. I’ll post here: first, soliciting feedback; and then based on the feedback that we receive both formally and informally, implement these changes.

Stay tuned and thank you.

An experiment in building a company: Perfecting the Loop

This is an experiment in how to build a company. It’s my fourth start-up. The businesses change, but the process for building a successful consumer product stays the same.

How it works: in one sense the product doesn’t much matter. I begin with a thesis about a need in the marketplace. The thesis is presented to people I respect and described with absolute conviction. I present it with conviction because I’ve found that without the conviction, most people will discourage you from venturing into a new place. The outward conviction — even when I lack the certainty myself — elicits the response for which I’m looking.

And it usually goes like this: ‘that wouldn’t work, but if you modified it to be like this then I think it would work.’ From the feedback, I modify as I think makes sense and then present again with conviction to a new person. The process continues, until the presentation reflects the reality, in so much as I’ve come to possess certainty.

But certainty in what? It’s not certainty in the exact offering, because only a fool could be certain that his or her guess will hit the bullseye. It’s certainty of a direction. And only a general direction.

For MeetMoi, the certainty is in this: someone will build a 100 million member community for location based mobile dating. The paradigm for dating will be the opposite of what exists in the online PC-tethered world, in so much as the dating will be ‘push’ based, rather than pull. Here’s what I mean: in the traditional online dating site, a user queries: I’m a man looking for a woman between the ages of X and Y. The system returns a set of results.

In the mobile world, the experience will be: I’m available to date and I’m located on the corner of 8th and Broadway. Please send my profile to everyone who meets my criteria that’s close to me.

If my vision sounds specific in nature, in many ways it is. But from the thesis above, there are still a thousand permutations of the service that can be built. Let your mind wander for a second, and imagine all the different rules and circumstances that could apply to sending out profiles and chatting with someone over the phone.

So how do I come to the right answer on the right service from here?

Build the perfect Loop.

The Loop is the cycle between marketing; listening to what users say; modifying the product; and then marketing again. Technology companies have the opportunity to shrink the time frame for the loop like no other industry. Think for a minute how long a Loop would take to make for a manufacturer of automobiles or a manufacturer of jeans.

In 2007, just about anybody can find a partner with a userbase or buy a mailing for a relatively modest amount and drive people to a page. The question is not, ‘can you get people to come?’ Rather, it’s what will they do once they come. And how quickly can you learn what they like and don’t like? And when you learn what they like and don’t like, how quickly can you pivot to modify your offering?

MeetMoi is still in its earliest stages. We’re shortly to introduce pictures to accompany the text based profiles we’re sending out now.

My goal has always been to perfect the Loop. This time I’m going to try to build the Loop in public with the hope of shrinking the timeframe still further. Your comments are welcome. I’ll share feedback and features as we go.

Social Networking: In Need of Definition

This morning, the New York Times reported about social networking’s next incarnation with the development of networks within corporate

America. Unfortunately, the phrase ‘social networking’ has been used in so many different contexts its meaning has morphed to the point where it’s not clear what the term means anymore. In the sixdegrees context – we always talked about social networking as meeting the people you don’t know through the people you already know. We defined degrees as a measurement in people from you, beginning with relationships you had that preceded your involvement in a website. My college roommate is my first degree. His friend from high school is my second degree.

At I Stand For, a political technology consulting company I founded in 2003, we brought social networking in the truest sense to political campaigns. I remember pitching one of our early gubernatorial clients on the value of endorsements. I told him that people cared less what prominent politicians had to say about him and more what their mother or other people in their first degree had to say about him. This latter type of endorsement led to honest creation of a social networking brought to political campaigns. We wrapped it a module called ‘endorsements.’

The same can’t be said of most ‘social networks’ on the web today. Whether its MySpace, or Twitter, or Nike’s new social network, most friends are found on the site and are based on common interests, rather than a prior connection that existed offline. In the 90’s we called this an online community, not a social network.Years ago, we predicted at sixdegrees that one social network would eventually overlay the entire Internet and that different applications would sit on top of that network. This type of ‘infrastructure’ paradigm seems to be gaining traction for a company like Plaxo, but for most second generation social networks, it seems to be moving in the opposite direction. My prediction: in the future, one or two serious social networks will occupy dominant positions and play the same role as that of your local White Pages of telephone numbers. There will be lots of communities, some dominant, some local in nature, some a combination of the two, that will play meaningful roles in how people interact (including dating).

With any luck, the definitions for a social network and online community will also morph over time so we can all understand the distinctions.