RafaelXavier

Twitter’s marketing strategy always intrigued me. Recently, I was delighted by an Evan Williams (Twitter’s co-founder) answer. He gave us the privilege to know an excerpt of the early story of his company in his below quora answer.

… contrary to common belief, we didn’t actually launch Twitter at SXSW — SXSW just chose to blow it up.

We launched it nine months before — to a whimper. By the time SXSW 2007 rolled around, we were starting to grow finally and it seemed like all of our users (which were probably in the thousands) were going to Austin that year. So, we did two things to take advantage of the emerging critical mass:

1) We created a Twitter visualizer and negotiated with the festival to put flat panel screens in the hallways. This is something they’d never done before, but we didn’t want a booth on the trade show floor, because we knew hallways is where the action was. We paid $11K for this and set up the TVs ourselves. (This was about the only money Twitter’s *ever* spent on marketing.)

2) We created an event-specific feature, where, you could text ‘join sxsw’ to 40404. Then you would show up on the screens. And, if you weren’t already a Twitter user, you’d automatically be following a half-dozen or so “ambassadors,” who were Twitter users also at SXSW. We advertised this on the screens in the hallways. (I don’t know how many people signed up this way — my recollection is not a lot.)

I don’t know what was the most important factor, but networks are all about critical mass, so doubling down on the momentum seemed like a good idea. And something clicked.

Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon and other executives of his company are pitching investors on an initial public offering, looking to raise over half a billion dollars at a $11.4 billion valuation. Here’s his presentation…

Parallel comment: Yeap, although it’s a big sum, the previous 25bi speculation was way too much.

Good summary
source: mashable

Very interesting post from Seth Sternberg, the CEO and Co-founder of Meebo, on TechCrunch. He discusses how his job changed from 6 years ago to a 200 people company. In a brief, his current job is:

1. Strategy. 2. People. 3. Resource allocation

What does that mean? Read the article at:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/10/job-ceo-200-person-company/

Gostei dessa frase:

“Groupon is essentially holding a portfolio of loans backed by the receivables of small businesses”

Como muitas das lojas/estabelecimentos que entram no GroupOn com as promoções de seus produtos/serviços são pequenos comerciantes procurando levantar um caixa rápido e ir pagando em “prestações” (gastos ao longo do tempo para atender seus clientes), o artigo resume o GroupOn como uma forma de “empréstimo” aos pequenos lojistas, e portanto o GroupOn deteria uma carteira destes credores.

O artigo também fala da força de persuasão que o discurso de poupar o gasto em marketing tem. No entanto, diz que o acordo “win-win” acaba sendo mais groupon-win, lojista-lose.

Boa leitura…

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/why-groupon-is-poised-for-collapse/

Há especulações de que o Groupon abra seu capital em IPO por US$ 25 bilhões. Mas, isto parece muita grana, mesmo pro Groupon. O recordista (highest-valued venture-backed company) até então é o Google que saiu por US$ 24.6 bilhões.

O Groupon tem 2 anos de vida (começou em November 2008). O Google tinha 6 anos qdo abriu IPO.

Adorei essa frase sobre “key to Groupon’s long-term valuation”:

But how many of those customers come back to pay full price? There is no good way of measuring that yet. And that is going to be the key to Groupon’s long-term valuation, whether or not it is creating repeat, loyal customers for merchants or just a stampede of deal-hungry coupon clippers.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/groupon-25-billion/
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/17/groupon-valued-at-25b-that-would-top-google-at-ipo/