MySpace & Cingular: What About the User Experience?
When I first saw the MySpace - Cingular deal I thought it made a lot of sense. It is very logical for MySpace to head into the mobile arena considering that their target demographic is increasingly mobile and willing to pay $2.99 per month to be hooked into MySpace wherever they are (read: are addicted to MySpace). However, when I started to ponder the deal further something didn’t feel right. What about all of the other cellular providers and their users?
Answer: They’re screwed, at least for now.
While I am not sure whether Cingular has an exclusive and for how long that exclusive might be I still question a deal like this. Sure, MySpace stands to make a good amount of money as does Cingular but all of the loyal MySpace users that use wireless providers other than Cingular are left in the dark. Surely that does not propagate user loyalty and it sets MySpace up for some trouble if Cingular loses ground. In fact, while Cingular is currently the top carrier in the U.S. it is projected that Verizon will surpass Cingular in Q3 2007 if current trends hold (source).
That aside, partnering with just one wireless carrier hurts the user experience and slows adoption. User experience is crucial for a service like MySpace since the user base is fickle and will move at a moments notice to the next best thing. It seems to me that compromising the user experience for a deal that helps the company now is a bit short sighted. Keeping the user experience unbiased should help web services companies in the long run.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Side Note: CBS has also partnered with Cingular for mobile SNL video clips. Cingular is really racking them up!
[...] Original post by Eric Olson for Myspace News MySpace & Cingular: What About the User Experience? [...]
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4 Jan 07 at 12:51 am
“That aside, partnering with just one wireless carrier hurts the user experience and slows adoption.”
I think it depends on how you look at it. I sure in this case Cingular approached MySpace.
MySpace doesn’t have an adoption issue They’re already fairly sticky and as you said, people are hooked.
This is an opportunity for Cingular to leverage someone’s addiction to another organization to try and increase adoption of their own service. Without the exclusivity there would be no reason to chose Cingular over someone else.
MySpace won’t be looking for any new users out of the deal just some more $$$ in the bank.
Ryan Coleman
4 Jan 07 at 11:26 am
Good point Ryan. I agree that MySpace probably isn’t looking for more users out of this deal. I was speaking more to slowing adoption of MySpace Mobile rather than MySpace the site. Also, I think MySpace users that don’t use Cingular will be a little upset that they can’t hop on MySpace mobile leaving room for a comptetor to get into the mix.
Eric Olson
4 Jan 07 at 12:12 pm