Adapt or Become Useless

Facebook has seen huge growth recently. My high school alumni group numbers have rapidly shot up in the last three months. I went from seeing five people from my school to over one hundred (for a small, rural school that’s a lot). Everyone’s there — from classmates, to teachers, to parents and grandparents of those same classmates. And it’s blowing sites like Classmates out of the water.

Classmates is pretty limited. You can fill out your profile for free. But if you want to see much else, you have to upgrade your membership. Want to email someone? Upgrade. Leave a wall posting? Upgrade. See who’s visited your profile? Upgrade. The site may get people to pay once or twice, but as users discover they can connect on Facebook for free, renewals are going to drop off.

If your clients can find what you offer somewhere else and it’s free AND a better product, you’ll lose them. You need to offer something they cannot get anywhere else. Or you need to make your product better than the free one. Classmates hasn’t figured that out yet. They’re still under the same old model. They’d better come up with something fast or Facebook may just render them useless.

What are you doing to avoid becoming useless?

image: sxc.hu