Yahoo's Approach To VoIP Marketing: Viral
We've been saying for quite some time that Skype is a very interesting company that pushes the envelope, but long term they will be far less significant than the Yahoos, Googs, AOLs and MSNs, which have much broader relationships with people, and established bases of customers. On that note, I just got my first inkling of Yahoo's integrated marketing of their VoIP Messenger With Voice. A friend sent me an email from his Yahoo! Mail account, and the tagline ad appended on the bottom said, "Blab-away for as little as 1�/min. Make PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice." That's powerful marketing, because while Skype has viral marketing by word of mouth (keen users recommending it to friends) big portals have not only that kind of viral spread, but also their email users are unwittingly marketing their VoIP to their contacts in thousands of messages. And email is a much more large and active user base. Because they can integrate PC-based VoIP and leverage it with existing services, the big portals are the ones to watch in VoIP.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
