If you’re French and in your thirties, you might remember the blogging platform SkyRock. For business, the French also had Viadeo, a LinkedIn competitor that seemed to offer the same functionality. (And perhaps some of it sooner.) If you’re Spainish, Tuenti might ring a bell. For the Dutch, there used to be Hyves.
Each of these companies has their own origin story and demise story. Most of them have dead urls. Yet, at a time, they were the top platforms for their domestic market.
Now, we all know US companies that lost relevance. But they still exist. MySpace is a shadow of its old self, but if you try your old login, it will probably work. (Unless you were smart enough to delete it.)
Each seems to have a unique failure story, but if we examine them, we can see a few trends.
Tuenti
Tuenti had a huge impact on the Spanish speaking market. However, they didn’t sell or use data like American brands.
Eventually, they were bought out by a Latin American TV conglomerate, who used the brand to sell mobile phone services. The potential market was wasted, but the brand still brings in money (which could have probably been brought in without killing the social network.)
The business plans, the ethics of the founders and European regulators meant it was not profitable as a social media platform. At least, that is the official story. The truth is probably that it was bought by people who didn’t see its potential, and so they killed it. Or, perhaps someone in charge had also invested in one of Tuenti’s competitors, and wanted it to die.
Skype
Skype made Estonia famous as a little country that could create a tech giant.
Skype became a word in many languages. When you Google something to look it up, you Skype someone to talk to them over VOIP. Even when you used a Skype competitor, people would say ‘I’ll Skype you on Facebook messenger.’ Well, now that word is being replaced by Zoom.
So what happened? Microsoft bought skype. They were jealous that Skype was more popular than their Microsoft teams product, so they did everything they could to kill the Skype brand. When that didn’t work, Microsoft told skype users that the product would no longer function, and they would have to use Microsoft teams instead.
The result of Microsoft’s sabatogue has been one of the factors leading customers to Zoom.
Viadeo
Viadeo had all of the functions of LinkedIn. At least, the important ones. You could look for jobs, you could connect with friends and colleagues, and you could participate in discussions.
One big difference I noticed between Viadeo and LinkedIn is the Q and A of LinkedIn was better policed. Viadeo was filled with spam. This became worse when it expanded to India without seeming to hire staff that understood the Indian market.
The founders eventually just gave up.
But, if it was like LinkedIn, why didn’t it compete? Well, if we look at American politicians, they quickly populated the American social media platforms. Candidate Obama’s campaign made sure he had a profile on every major (and many minor) american social media platform.
And, Romney, who lost, still had a lot of followers. He tried to sway the business community by having an “Ask me anything” on LinkedIn.
Did any French politician create a page or a profile on Viadeo? Did the founders invite business celebrities or politicians to participate? We didn’t see any. But we saw many of them on LinkedIn, and we see even more now.
Conclusions
As we look at European social media platforms, we find many common mistakes.
- selling out to international conglomerates.
- Failing to obtain free celebrity participation.
- Giving shares to people who do not care about the business model
- Hiring CEOs that do not care about the business model or the audience.
- Lack of global ambition.
- Lack of economic ambition.
- And occassionally, looking for government support in the form of bailouts rather than participation in the community.
- Failing to moderate spam content.
There are other problems, but the main one seems to be the “exit strategy.” Rather than building platforms to last, many companies are built in order to be sold on. This is a fatal flaw, which means they do not reach their full potential.