Comments on: An iYomu epilogue….

By: Brusilovsky - Visionary or puppet? at diversity.net.nz

Brusilovsky - Visionary or puppet? at diversity.net.nz — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:19:30 +0000

[...] I can’t help but think that TeensInTech is a concept not unlike iYomu (Diversity coverage here) – which never would have got backing from anyone actually in the know about Web [...]

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:17:18 +0000

Businesses with a bad model fail.
Businesses with a good model implemented badly fail.
Businesses with a stupid idea fail.
Businesses that have to give away 1 million dollars because they have no revenue producing traffic fail.
‘Me too’ businesses can both fail and succeed.

R.I.P iYomu

Love, Julian – http://www.julian101.com

By: Falafulu Fisi

Falafulu Fisi — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:42:17 +0000

If fact David Wolf-Rooney is wrong when he stated that ...people came together and found a common space where grown-ups could meet, greet, debate and share interests. I bet he meant to say this: ...people came together and found a common space where suckers/naives/vain could meet, greet, debate and share interests.

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:13:48 +0000

@Phil – from my understanding it was David, some outsourced developers and a bunch of fat cat investors who wouldn’t know the interweb if they fell over it. Sorry but I ain’t got a whole lot of sympathy….

By: Why iYomu, a Social Network for Old People, Expired

Why iYomu, a Social Network for Old People, Expired — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:47:36 +0000

[...] not such a bad concept. Probably iYomu in the end didn’t have enough to differentiate it. As Ben Kepes wrote in his blog today, “iYomu failed because it was a me-too offering with no real degree of [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:04:36 +0000

It can be debated forever, but the simple reason was that the site was slow, sloppy and shite. Filling out long forms to join – bad. Wasting $1m to attract bottom-dweller users only interested in money – bad. Trying to compete with all sorts of services at once (vault – online storage, facebook etc) – bad. Designing it like a dog – bad. Not using the money to employ people who know how to design a good site and keep it fast – bad. And lastly – choosing a ridiculous name that has no flare or meaning – bad.

It’s not that the concept was bad, just overly ambitious from people who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into and then they act surprised when it crashes and burns. Saw this coming the minute I saw the first press release.

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:17:23 +0000

I don’t know – maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age, or maybe I’m just tired after a long week at work, but I can’t help but feel just a little bit sorry for the iYomu crowd.

That this business (it wasn’t just David driving the show) failed so spectacularly makes me feel quite sympathetic to those involved. This was an excellent case study of not doing your homework first and completely mis-reading your market. No one likes to see a home-grown business fail and even though I would be right up there with the rest of the crowd asking “what the hell were you guys thinking???”, I would still like to think that some good can come of it.

Hopefully other starry-eyed business folk with a vague understanding of this inter-web thingy will look at iYomu and recognise the sorts of monumental mistakes that they made. Maybe the failure of one business can serve as a compass for others. Let’s hope so, anyway.