Being one of the first social networking sites in existence certainly doesn’t establish you as the best or most popular. For this reason, Friendster leaked a video outlining its look and product features. According to TechCrunch, the company is set to release the new product features tomorrow morning. If the below video was meant to get prospective users excited for a revitalized service, they could have approached it from a different angle. Below are the top four reasons Friendster’s new messaging needs to change.
4. It’s You! Up Close and Personal: When you’re trying to brand yourself as an alternative to “generic sites” you might want to come up with messaging that differs from that of a recent $100 million dollar campaign already launched by Yahoo.
3. Your Own Look, Your Own Style: In August, Microsoft was widely criticized for Photoshopping a man’s head and subsequently changing his skin color. In this case, all of the models involved appear to be both racially homogenous and between the ages of 18-30-years-old. Ironically, I would be able to express myself with “[my] own look and [my] own style”; however, the visual message here is that those who do not fit this image would be misfits.
2. [You Can] Send Gifs: If you’re going to show how your network is different from Facebook and MySpace, you should focus on product features that people care about – like mobile uploads, geo-locational applications, news feeds and anything from this decade.
1. Connecting Smiles: This tagline doesn’t conjure images of a fun social network. It does however relate to the tragic fact that up to 1 in 50,000 babies are born as conjoined twins. The phenomenon happens when identical twins’ bodies are fused in utero and the surgery to separate these poor children is often complex and life threatening.
