MyLife.com – A Marketing Review
By now you’ve probably seen those MyLife.com TV commercials.
These commercials (I saw three of them today alone) usually feature a woman as she does a search for her own name on the website and acts surprised that people are looking for her. She then speculates on who they may be and what they might want to say.
Luckily, we, the average people viewing these commercials, can also see if other people across the country are looking for us as well. All we have to do is visit the website, enter a name, age, and zip code, and then we can see just how many people have searched for our name (or even left a message).
www.MyLife.com — As of February 2011.
But when you watch the commercials and then visit the company’s website, one has to ask if there’s a legitimate use for the site.
Let’s take a look at the marketing and then see what the website really has to offer.
Before any of you ask, I checked on YouTube and couldn’t find any of the TV commercials. None of them. So this marketing review is going to involve on me remembering as much about the commercials as possible, which shouldn’t be hard to do. The commercials were basic and so far I’ve only seen two of them; both are very simple and similar to each other. Please excuse me if I’m recalling any errors when discussing the commercials.
One of the MyLife.com commercials features a young lady typing in her name and logging into the website. She’s absolutely shocked to discover that several (seven?) people are looking for her. The young lady then speculates that one of those people may be an old boyfriend, and he may want to have her back in his life.
That’s it. It’s just speculation about who is seeking her and what he or she may possibly have on his or her mind.
The second commercial features another woman who also does a search for herself, and, surprise, surprise, a few people are actually looking for her too. This other woman (a little bit older) speculates that maybe one of those people may be an old business client.
Once again this person can only guess about which exact people in the state or country are looking for her through this website in particular. Not through Facebook. Not Myspace. Not AOL. Not even through a Google search. No, instead said person used MyLife.com.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
What I’m trying to grasp when I watch the commercials and visit the company’s website is, just what in the hell can you do at MyLife.com that cannot be accomplished through other (almost all of them free) social network websites?
The last time I checked, it’s very easy to look up old friends, classmates, and business clients on a variety of websites. In fact, that’s how I re-connected with my girlfriend. Her name popped into my mind, I looked her up on Facebook, and sure enough there she was. Amazing!
Just for fun I went to MyLife.com and searched for my name and age. The search results yielded 4,655 results within the 25-35 year age range. After adding my zip code (not sure how people who don’t know where I live and don’t know how to contact me are going to know that one), the results only showed four people.
Yes, I am listed there.
Yes, it pulled my profile picture, birthday, and current location from my damn Myspace account. A Myspace account that has not been updated in ages since the Internet masses switched to Facebook years ago.
After that I went back to the main page and registered my name, age, and location with MyLife.com, adding in an e-mail address for the contact information.
MyLife.com — my searched for information
Wow! One hundred people have searched for me on MyLife.com (not to be confused with having one hundred messages waiting). That beats both of the women in those two TV commercials. Let’s see who was looking for me within the past few years. Oh, I need to submit a credit card first? Really? Can’t I even see a few names to see if I can recognize some people? No? Oh well. I’ll just keep my profile visible on the other social network sites. If somebody can find me on MyLife, I’m confident that they can also find me on Facebook and Myspace too.
But that’s just me.
After watching the TV commercials and visiting the website, I still have a hard time finding value or even an incentive for joining MyLife. The problem is that almost anybody who knows how to search on MyLife.com is probably going to know how to also search on Facebook and Myspace.
You can tell by watching the TV commercials that the marketing team has to really stretch to sell the product. The “typical” people thinking about joining the website can only guess about who may be trying to contact them after failing to on the other social networking sites. And sadly, that’s about all that can be made for a selling point.
I’ll be surprised if I keep seeing MyLife.com TV commercials six months from now.
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MyLife is TM by MyLife.com, Inc. and was used without permission.