How do you differentiate a commodity product? Say if you are selling a soap, or a broom, or an email service?
2 decades down the road, with almost every web- hosting service, cable connection, ISP etc providing free email accounts, when more and more machines are joining the internet than ever before, revolutionary things like email end up becoming commodity offering. And this cut throat market for email services necessitates the need to offer differentiated product. I remember a time when India Today group started an email service(mailmetoday.com) where they offered rewards (prizes etc) for using their service! Well, that fizzled out, and so did many other email services when they couldn't offer what people were looking for. Then came a time when we were lured by mammoth Gigabyte sized large email accounts by Google, Yahoo etc, which according to me, was the closest we could have come to price wars, in an already free email service realm
But things began to turn yet again with the advent of web 2.0, social networking and application platforms. The latest and greatest offering now began to offer innovative applications on the email service platforms offered. Yahoo has a lot of apps it offers which add on to the existing email services like Calendars, photo embedding, online storage etc
The way Gmail has approached this is really innovative. It has begun to offer Gmail Contextual Gadgets. Basically these gadgets are small software pieces which work around the 'context' of your email, and enhance the value of the information present in the email itself. These software pieces can be created by third party software makers and can be easily integrated into your Gmail account.This transforms your Gmail inbox into a hub of different software which help you not only read your email, but do the 'next thing' which you would have done, right from your inbox.
lets say you use Yelp to share a possible restaurant to go out for lunch with your friends. You paste restaurant's yelp link in the email and send it to your friends. what your friends receive is not only the link, but also its ratings directly embedded into the email from Yelp's website. No need to click the link to go to Yelp's website!
Lets say you use Twitter a lot. Now you can use it from within gmail by simply adding the gadget to your gmail account! for more such applications click here.
It also helps enterprises by offering many business software services around your enterprise google email! watch this to know more about how Gmail is revolutionizing business software for enterprises.
What this platform offers is a tremendous value around the context of your email. That Google can read your email was no secret, but that it can be used to your advantage is surely a pleasant surprise! In coming months, I see this transforming the common Gmail accounts into a communication hub. Where one will be able to take actions on an email, right from the inbox! Now you can call (with embedded google voice), preview pictures, watch videos, accept invitations, schedule appointments, even perform business activities (as the video link above shows) right from your inbox!
I won't need to go anywhere else from my Gmail inbox, and with the right participation from the third party developers there will be enough apps for everyone to stick to Gmail.
How's that for a differentiated value prop!
2 decades down the road, with almost every web- hosting service, cable connection, ISP etc providing free email accounts, when more and more machines are joining the internet than ever before, revolutionary things like email end up becoming commodity offering. And this cut throat market for email services necessitates the need to offer differentiated product. I remember a time when India Today group started an email service(mailmetoday.com) where they offered rewards (prizes etc) for using their service! Well, that fizzled out, and so did many other email services when they couldn't offer what people were looking for. Then came a time when we were lured by mammoth Gigabyte sized large email accounts by Google, Yahoo etc, which according to me, was the closest we could have come to price wars, in an already free email service realm
But things began to turn yet again with the advent of web 2.0, social networking and application platforms. The latest and greatest offering now began to offer innovative applications on the email service platforms offered. Yahoo has a lot of apps it offers which add on to the existing email services like Calendars, photo embedding, online storage etc
The way Gmail has approached this is really innovative. It has begun to offer Gmail Contextual Gadgets. Basically these gadgets are small software pieces which work around the 'context' of your email, and enhance the value of the information present in the email itself. These software pieces can be created by third party software makers and can be easily integrated into your Gmail account.This transforms your Gmail inbox into a hub of different software which help you not only read your email, but do the 'next thing' which you would have done, right from your inbox.
lets say you use Yelp to share a possible restaurant to go out for lunch with your friends. You paste restaurant's yelp link in the email and send it to your friends. what your friends receive is not only the link, but also its ratings directly embedded into the email from Yelp's website. No need to click the link to go to Yelp's website!
Lets say you use Twitter a lot. Now you can use it from within gmail by simply adding the gadget to your gmail account! for more such applications click here.
It also helps enterprises by offering many business software services around your enterprise google email! watch this to know more about how Gmail is revolutionizing business software for enterprises.
What this platform offers is a tremendous value around the context of your email. That Google can read your email was no secret, but that it can be used to your advantage is surely a pleasant surprise! In coming months, I see this transforming the common Gmail accounts into a communication hub. Where one will be able to take actions on an email, right from the inbox! Now you can call (with embedded google voice), preview pictures, watch videos, accept invitations, schedule appointments, even perform business activities (as the video link above shows) right from your inbox!
I won't need to go anywhere else from my Gmail inbox, and with the right participation from the third party developers there will be enough apps for everyone to stick to Gmail.
How's that for a differentiated value prop!
