Decrease in Traffic at Piczo Social Networking Site
CNET News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy co-wrote this article.
Three former Piczo employees described a company grappling with the meteoric rise of competitors Facebook and Bebo and internal squabbles over the direction of the 3-year-old start-up. The company has also struggled to convince skeptical advertisers of the effectiveness of social networking as an effective ad vehicle--a tough sales pitch for the entire social-networking sector, say insiders. Know for its target audience of teen girls, this social site is now in what management is terming a restructuring as it branches out into a more mature European market. While use of FaceBook is growing this company saw a decline in the past year after a promising start in 2006.
Jeremy Verbo, acting CEO of Piczo, sites the nature of the industry, software development, seasonal changes, and most importantly competition from other big players in the market."We were in the United Kingdom early, and certainly as (Bebo and Facebook) came on, that affected us," Verba said. "Our growth started slowing. But it's a time-spent issue. Our users didn't move on to these other sites. What we're seeing is a lot of overlap. What happened is some of our engagement decreased."
The lay off of employees is like the platuea that occurs in many industries in computer related fields. The saturation of the market leads to a burn out. The ubiquity of these services make them common place.I know that people will often open a Facebook account, Myspace, and play around with other scenes to get a sense of where the flow is. Then the account often sits unattended. Users are simply tired of it, some blog pundits have argued, and they won't stay on any one site too long before moving on to the next big thing. In part the number of visits a site gets is a number factors including last but not least its indexing in a search engine. It should be no wonder that that novility can get you far, but then you better keep getting your name out.In the long run there is no sense of loyalty, but instead an iconographic association occurring in some web places. For example, You Tube is often copied but still remains the largest in an ever growing sea of video playing platforms where for nothing people can get their 15 minutes. People think of it like they do Craig’s List. Its like Googling. You turn your computer on and just do it.
The lesson may be that there is a limit to the market size and smart web developers are coming up not with the latest template but riding the next social software wave.
Any thoughts?
Here is the link:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9877437-7.html?tag=nefd.lede
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