Classmates, Facebook and Marketing Myopia

For a 35 year old, I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook.  I don't tend to play with many of the aps.  Really with a few exceptions, I use Facebook to reconnect with old friends and classmates. That should sound familiar.  The notion of reconnecting with old friends and classmates.  Classmates.com was formed in 1995, almost a decade before Facebook hit the scene in 2004 (they didn't go live with the non-college crowd until 2006).  Even Reunion.com had a two year head start.  So what happened?  Why did they fall asleep at the wheel? Let's explore that a bit.

When I was in college many moons ago, there was a HBR article floating around known as "Marketing Myopia."  Actually, the article is quite a bit older than I but it saw a resurgence in the early 90's.  Essentially, the article challenged leaders to reevaluate just what business they are in and suggested that managers tend to define their businesses far too narrowly.  Essentially, if you are Greyhound, you better know that Coach isn't necessarily your biggest competition.  You aren't in the busing game, you are in the transportation game.  Perhaps your biggest competition is Amtrak.... or maybe Southwest......  

So, where does Classmates.com come in?  Well, social networking is a fairly recent phenomena.  However, the good folks at Reunion had the first best chance to create a huge online community.  Unfortunately, they defined themselves as purely an online medium to connect old classmates and as such, they missed out on the larger opportunity. When web 2.0 hit, they were completely caught off guard.   Users didn't build functional profiles.  There were no messaging capabilities.  They were linked entirely by external email addresses.  As such their users communicated using external email editors.  Where is the stickiness?  Yes they had frequent visitors.  They were the only game in town for years but no one was using Classmates as their homepage.  What business were they in?  What business should they have been in?

Yes, Facebook's success owes quite a bit to the applications created by external sources.  However, they really have built their legacy by creating a community that caters equally to the teens, twenty somethings, thirty somethings and beyond (my 62 year old mother is on the site daily).  Facebook learned very early to push traditional boundaries and challenge early and often the business they are in.