5 Biggest Website Wars - Winners vs Losers Explained
May 18, 2015
In this post we will try to explain why winners win and why losers lose. Young internet pioneers need to be warned that if they don’t focus on such strategies, then they may possibly become one of the internet losers.
We are living in the world of the internet; where advertisements are all that matter. The more you advertise, the more you popularize! Those who have been with the internet since the 90’s know the only thing that mattered was fun, and MIRC. The most entertaining ideas win the heart of the people and become popular, even without search engines. Let’s compare some of the old websites that were popularized without search engines and why they lost to their competitors.
GeoCities Defeated by Blogger – WordPress Blog Engine - Other Powerful CMS
GeoCities was the first [and most popular] website to offer free creation of websites, with the latest standards of that time. In 1999, after the site had gained popularity, Yahoo! acquired it. It became even more viral and grew to become the 3rd most visited website in the World Wide Web. Unfortunately for GeoCities, soon Blogger by Google, WordPress and other leading CMS sites were introduced. GeoCities was caught in the battle of internet popularity and ease of use war, and was defeated in 2009. The company announced the shutdown, leaving almost 38 million user-built pages behind. It was a sad moment, and the reason behind it seemed to be a mystery for everyone, but we are now going to explain why it happened.
Explanation:
GeoCities was built on technologies that are now out dated, and have very little to no support for new features like jQuery, flash, QuickTime, WMV, Text, and CSS.
The fact that the users have no control over the back end makes it more complex to edit. Even if GeoCities wants to, they cannot allow it because of their technology. There can be major threats to their whole server.
While on the other hand, Blogger was made on an XML system with complete back end control, introducing widgets and custom widget designing made users happy. Its competitor, WordPress, is a complete solution for the latest industry trends that allows full customization and can be separately installed on any machine running apache.
The monopoly played by these giants are out of control for GeoCities. Google has already gotten its fame as the number one worldwide website. And WordPress has become the most used CMS; even CNN was using WordPress at its peak period.
The technology offered, and the increase in hosting companies offering very cheap rates, make these sites affordable. Their shared hosting encourages developers to step in and make some extra money by using these two tools, while GeoCities offer no flexibility for developers to make their earning using it.
These factors put strain on GeoCities; and in that moment they captured almost all the world-wide developer’s attention. While GeoCities realized they needed to change their work flow and offer larger abilities it was too late for them; the increase in SEO also increased the amount of spam pages created on GeoCities. There was no option for spam treating, and this put a load on their servers and costs.
AltaVista defeated by Google
Who didn’t know the name AltaVista in the 90’s? It was the most popular search engine of that time and in 2003, Yahoo!, another giant, purchased it thinking it would boost their business. Unfortunately it lost ground to Google, and on July 8, 2013 the service was closed by Yahoo! Still, the domain is Yahoo!’s property and redirects to the Yahoo! website.
Explanation:
AltaVista was a big hit, the algorithm it used to search websites was very strong and people adopted it as one of their favorite search engines. It can show different results according to different keywords searched, but after gaining massive popularity, the company did not think to upgrade their technology and search results algorithm. They were busy enjoying their success while Google adopted such algorithms and technology that blew away every search industry in the market.
Alta Vista was full of clutter on the main page, much like Yahoo!, but their main competitor, Google, is the only pure, dedicated search engine. People redirect to many interesting stories on other search engines, but while using Google they just focus on searching. The AdSense introduction of Google, the main monopoly of the game, which won it all for Google. People trying to earn more money use Google to index better. This started the war of blogs and websites striving for first place in Google to get visitors and earn money.
Not only that, but the company solely focused on giving the best results on searches. They made it more convenient for people to get their desired results, hence capturing the other "normal people" market.
If only AltaVista had introduced such functions that attract people and bloggers interest at the right time, they wouldn’t have lost to Google.
Orkut defeated by Facebook
Orkut was one of the most renowned and popular social network sites, especially in Asian Countries. Operated by Google, it had more than millions of people registered, and the site was also keeping up with the technology and marketing. But sometimes technology and marketing is just not a strong enough strategy. Luck can flip the whole game, and that’s what happened to Orkut. It was finally shut down on June 30, 2014.
Explanation:
Orkut was the biggest social networking site in its era, but due to a leak in privacy and fake/spam profiles, it became a violent place to survive. At that same time Facebook started offering a better system that is now known as "timeline".
It was hard to write on scrapbooks and it was limited to text and images in initial periods but Facebook works differently, showing each other’s life at your home with the share system. This made Facebook more valuable to popularity seekers and viral product marketing.
Orkut could not show a photo to multiple people, you had to go and view each of their scrapbooks. While Orkut offered a group system, which was also limited, people had to click on a group to see what’s going on, but on the other hand, Facebook offers much more viral tools with the page like system. When you post on a page it gains popularity automatically by showing it on everyone’s home page who had previously liked your page.
The strategy adopted by Facebook known as Viral System was the major success of the company over Orkut or any other social networking system like Yahoo 360 and Hotmail Profiles.
With the introduction of the chat system in Facebook, the site became even more popular. Users could not only share their pictures with their friends but they could now see when they are online and chat with them easily.
Orkut offer less privacy options, while Facebook offers all of the privacy required. Orkut tried to compete with Facebook but ended up in rumors as plagiarizing, copying the tactics of Facebook. Orkut couldn't keep up with the demand on the system and workflow would need to be fully changed before being able to act like Facebook.
In the end Facebook wins the war, and it’s the only major defeat in Google’s History.
HotJobs defeated by Locals
HotJobs was acquired by Yahoo! in 2002. It was a job search engine that offered other resourceful things for job seekers. After failing in the initial years due to the growth of local job sites, it was acquired by Monster Worldwide in 2010, and then eventually it closed.
Explanation:
It was an understood reality, that the launching of this website gained immense popularity, but then, with the significant increase in local job portals, there was a decrease in the popularity of HotJobs Yahoo!. While the company was striving in technology by buying different products to stand in the market, they quickly made a good decision to sell the company to Monster Worldwide.
The website search for all jobs has filters that can be handy but cannot find data from every local website. Companies had more proven results using local jobs sites than using HotJobs.
What HotJobs could become at that time was Linked In, but no strategy had been adopted, and Yahoo! was already bearing more than enough useless products, so it quickly sold HotJobs.
Then Monster came along and put an end to all of it.
RocketMail Defeated by Hotmail and Gmail
Who hasn't heard of RocketMail? It was the first major free webmail service, and used by billions of people. After battling and cornering Hotmail for a brief period of time, it become a gemstone in the eyes of Yahoo! Yahoo! acquired the company in 1997 for $92 million, and assimilated the engine into their Yahoo Mail system.
RocketMail was changed into Yahoo! Mail, a big power with the support of Y Messenger, and they almost led the market for nearly 5 years. After the introduction of Hotmail Profile system and Hotmail Messenger, a similar strategy was adopted by Microsoft, allowing them to start cornering it. After the introduction of Gmail, the simplest mail ever, and their ultra-powerful techniques with smart monopolies, Gmail became entirely undefeatable in webmail market.
Explanation:
RocketMail was boosted by Yahoo! implementing and merging it into one place. Yahoo! Mail put all of the focus on giving people chat and better mail service, forgetting about marketing and other major strategies, and this was later the cause of their defeat.
RocketMail was one of the most popular and fastest webmail engines of that time. Yahoo! integrated chat within the mail system which made it more bulky, while on the other hand, Gmail offered minimal setup and is still the lightest popular webmail service.
The offering of Adsense and blogger account creation, with adwords, later forced people to have their Gmail account as one of the business accounts.
Gmail was new and not known, while Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts were used for fun, chat sessions. Putting these email addresses on business cards made an odd impression. MSN soon realized it and started offering Live and other domain names and Yahoo! began re-offering their original RocketMail accounts. Unfortunately, the realization was too late, and at that time Gmail gained almost 80% of the market, defeating every webmail service on the list.