Sg2009wc:yourmarket

Title: Knowing your Market (right products for right people

Session: 4-K Bay Area Jan 2009

Convener: Stephanie Bergman

Notes Taker:Mary Beth Campbell

Attendees:

Notes: Case study on AIM Pages (Social network intended to be built on top of AIM’s core audience of teenagers):

Stephanie was product manager on conception/build of product
Flaws in architecture almost immediately were discovered: open source/microformats didn’t matter to target audience, functionality too difficult for average user to understand, no way to communicate within the product at initial launch
Stephanie researched how teens were using AIM to promote new site
MySpace users were comfortable and didn’t necessarily need or ant to change – especially to a new format that didn’t offer the same services they already had
MySpace seeded initial audience by getting “hot women” onto the site, teen boys followed. AIM Pages marketing campaigns went after wrong market
Teens need to figure out and know what to do on a website in seconds – AIM Pages as too complicated

Lessons learned:

AOL made push to web but forgot who their core users were (people who used, and LIKED the AOL client)
Listen to your marketing/pr people
BE your audience as much as possible so you know what they want, what they are interested in, and what speaks to them.