Dopplr and Tripit: next-gen strategies ? Part 2

Follow up on my previous post about Dopplr/Tripit (hereafter D/T ).

[Small digression: it's very hard (at least to me) to find the right "voice" for blogging. My natural tendency is to write in details. Unfortunately, I don't the time to afford it in the blog, and it's probable readers can't afford it either. So for the time being, I'll try to be more concise. Let me know what you think :-) ]

So, what are the strategic moves these actors can make to both monetize their users and win ? First, let’s look at the monetization part:

• Sell “classic” ads: no need to expand. Doomed.
• Sell “non-classic” ads (cf the Esther Dyson piece): they would not only compete head to head with each other but also with the innovative travel search engines, which would propose such features as “friend an airline” themselves (only it would be “please let us know your 3 preferred airlines so that they can propose you personalized deals when you search for a travel plan”). This would make them compete in a broader, much more competitive market. They’re both unlikely to win.
• Adopt the transaction way: propose a search engine aggregator right on their site, and charge a %age off each transaction. Same thing: competition more acute, value for users not clear (if they are slightly less usable or competitive than another site, they will lose). Not only that, but the majority of frequent flyers are corporate users and corporate users book through their accredited travel agents (no choice).
• Charge a fee for premium accounts: classic model, charge users a small monthly fee for access to exclusive features. With 2 players competing for the same market, they would need a huge distinctive value to be able to charge this way. As we see below, they don’t .

As with all other social networking implementations, a key part of success is attracting users to get the spiraling effect rolling. How could D/T try to distinguish themselves to attract such users ?

• Add more features ? It’s unlikely one can come up with a feature so unique it isn’t imitable by the other one.
• Look and feel ? Idem.
• Actually, everything else, idem.

Tripit has for it its email extraction feature; Dopplr their look and feel and their commitment to openness (implemented deeper than Tripit’s). Neither has a killer competitive advantage to attract users, and it’s unlikely it even exists (but the future may prove me wrong). So should they do ?

In my opinion, go for the corporate market. Yes, I know, but please bear with me. The should offer corporations a specific set of features exclusive to their company’s employees. The main ones I have in mind would be to get in touch with other, but unknown, employees, while traveling (or at home when others are traveling). Picture this: you’re a young and recent employee of a global organization, stuck for the week-end somewhere you don’t know anyone. But it’s a big location of your company, so you know there are others also there. A tool that lets you signal you’re there and ready to go for lunch/dinner/skiing/whatever with other employees would bring everyone a lot of value.

Think about social networking in terms of costs/benefits: you use tools that lets you extracts more value out of your contacts in less time. Such a tool would let employees extract value out of very loose relationships (don’t even know each other, just employees of the same group) and out of their travel time. The cost / benefits for individuals is great. It is even more significant for said companies, in terms of knowledge sharing, networking, innovation opportunities, etc… (Hey, the only thing in common is their employer, what do you think will occupy 90% of their conversations ?)

Now let’s take our original monetization/attraction questions with this in mind. First, charge employers for access to such features. It is not trivial in terms of data security, and you can price monthly by active users (ie everyone can use it, but companies pay only for the ones who actually use the tool). Done right, this one is an easy sell.

Attraction ? Well, ones you start to have a significant subset of companies onboard, what do you think the employees will use to keep in touch with their friends and families travel plans ? Another tool so that they have the joys to juggle among 2 different apps for doing the same thing ? Right, by going after the corporate market, they would in effect get the spiraling effect in the consumer market (where they can have the transactions model if they want to).

Anyway, that’s my take on it and I would be very interested by any comments on these dynamics; especially if you think I’m wrong, please comment away…

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