Web Communities Offer Move-In Specials
In the frenzy to build traffic on the Web, community sites are reverting to a tried-and-true marketing tactic to build up their homesteads: bribery.
Got Web pages devoted to a Warner Bros. television show--say, “Babylon 5” or “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”? Then come to AcmeCity, which soon will reward those willing to move their pages to the Warners Bros. site with props used in Warner’s shows or perhaps gift certificates to its online store, said Jim Moloshok, president of Warner Bros. Online.
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“We have access to content that none of the other [community] companies can offer their members,” Moloshok said. “We will go out, find fans and make it worth their while to move.”
Such poaching has become routine among community sites, industry analysts say. Part of the reason is the Internet industry’s mad dash to build traffic and grab the attention of as many people as possible. In the end, whoever has the biggest--and best--collection of member profiles wins in the eyes of advertising sponsors and Wall Street.
Yet Web community firms admit it’s a strange trend, this avid push to throw gifts and cutting-edge software at a notoriously fickle audience. After all, even the biggest publicly held sites, such as GeoCities and Lycos Inc.-owned Tripod, have yet to prove that the business of building communities can turn a profit.
“All the community sites steal from one another,” said Dan Lavin, research director for International Venture Associates in San Mateo, Calif. “If you’re spending 10 hours a week on your community site, you’ll get wind of the stuff someone else is offering. If it’s appealing enough, you’re going to move.”
Nearly all community sites provide the means, and some sort of incentive, for moving a home page from one service to another. GeoCities officials deny that they recruit “home builders,” yet the company’s site does offer the tools needed to port a person’s home page from two of its key rivals, Tripod and Angelfire.
GeoCities attracts homesteaders by offering “the best affiliate network on the Web” through partnerships with CDNow, E-Trade and Amazon.com, said David Bohnett, chairman and founder of the Marina del Rey-based company. Bohnett acknowledged, however, the company has to spend a lot of time and effort to make sure its catalog of software tools remains compelling.
Such incentives are not new. Airlines have long used frequent-flier programs to woo customers into their planes. Grocery stores offer discounts through their “club” cards. And telephone carriers sent consumers into a service-swapping frenzy with promises of everything from airline miles to cash.
“It’s also similar to the poaching we saw in the early days of Internet service providers, where there were very rigorous recruiting programs,” said Kate Delhagen, director of the Internet retail group for Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. “The difference, though, is community members are relatively rootless. And when they do put down roots, they tend to be shallow.”
