3 ms·

I don't think going viral works as well with busy parents as it does with teens and college students. If you want to focus on busy parents, I think working thi

I don't think going viral works as well with busy parents as it does with teens and college students. If you want to focus on busy parents, I think working this from a different angle would work best. If your service has any special features that you feel are newsworthy, you could try submitting it to local newspapers (used by busy parents much more than the internet still). Another angle to consider: What if you could partner with a camera manufacturer to bundle a client-side program that integrated with your site? If you could convince a manufacturer that your service is worth partnering with, you will see a tremendous amount of growth and revenue (if things are done right). I think in order to successfully market to busy parents, you have to be a seamless link in the chain that links the picture from the moment it's taken to the moment is arrives in grandma's inbox (which represents what the majority of busy parents want to do with their photos - that and archiving). One product I've seen that has this in mind is a wifi-enabled SD card that automatically sent pictures to your network when it was in range. Your service is the next link - the one that brings the images from the computer to the internet, and even to grandma's inbox. Keep that in mind as you go forward and I think you'll do well.

brlewis 19y ago
The seamless chain is actually what people like about the site. It ends up in grandma's inbox in the best possible way. Embarrassingly, the camera-to-internet part of the chain is only seamless on Windows right now. It's a little more manual on Linux and OSX. Still, I'm questioning now whether it's another improvement that the site needs, or if it's marketing. There are even photo frames that support media RSS, so the chain to grandma doesn't have to involve email. I actually give two Media RSS feeds--one text+photos, one photos only. Further, if grandma is comfortable clicking buttons on web pages, she can take over from mom and dad the job of picking good pictures from among many that were taken. Mom or dad just needs to turn on the option.
- dkokelley 19y ago
  You know, I would even remove the linux option from view. I doubt that your customers (busy parents) will be dealing with linux installations. Here's another though I had. Is there a simple rss reader that the grandmothers could install? (I apologize to all who are offended by the term 'grandmothers.' I mean it with the most respect and only to represent the non-technical picture receivers.) You could build something that automatically sends the pictures to the end-user's desktop. Maybe something similar to MSFTs and Google's sidebar program that cycles through the images on the server. Not only does it make the process of receiving photos from loved ones simple (once the program is installed the user only has to wait for their family to upload new images), but it's also a feature that is almost newsworthy and certainly an advantage over the recognized competitors. You could even rotate in advertisements between photos for free accounts.

brlewis 19y ago

The seamless chain is actually what people like about the site. It ends up in grandma's inbox in the best possible way. Embarrassingly, the camera-to-internet part of the chain is only seamless on Windows right now. It's a little more manual on Linux and OSX. Still, I'm questioning now whether it's another improvement that the site needs, or if it's marketing. There are even photo frames that support media RSS, so the chain to grandma doesn't have to involve email. I actually give two Media RSS feeds--one text+photos, one photos only. Further, if grandma is comfortable clicking buttons on web pages, she can take over from mom and dad the job of picking good pictures from among many that were taken. Mom or dad just needs to turn on the option.

dkokelley 19y ago
You know, I would even remove the linux option from view. I doubt that your customers (busy parents) will be dealing with linux installations. Here's another though I had. Is there a simple rss reader that the grandmothers could install? (I apologize to all who are offended by the term 'grandmothers.' I mean it with the most respect and only to represent the non-technical picture receivers.) You could build something that automatically sends the pictures to the end-user's desktop. Maybe something similar to MSFTs and Google's sidebar program that cycles through the images on the server. Not only does it make the process of receiving photos from loved ones simple (once the program is installed the user only has to wait for their family to upload new images), but it's also a feature that is almost newsworthy and certainly an advantage over the recognized competitors. You could even rotate in advertisements between photos for free accounts.