Floobs Goes After Niche Audiences
Floobs, a Finnish video streaming service, has shifted its focus to niche audiences by starting to work with local community sports associations. The service covered many sports already from the get-go, but now they have made a conscious choice to put all their weight behind the local-community-sports strategy.
The guys behind the service, Kai Lemmetty and Joonas Pekkanen, had played around with the idea already for a while when trying to figure out how the beat the video streaming giants like Qik, Kyte.tv and Flixwagon in their own game. Now the duo has decided to go with something very Finnish: Sports!
Finland is notoriously sports-crazy: Sports has traditionally been the primary way (and many times the only way) to build success stories in the international arena. A tradition that dates back to the post-war years. Traditional or not, what a better way to beat the US video streaming giants than going where they can’t reach. Similarly by working with the amateur associations they can tap into a market that is not interesting enough for the national TV stations. Floobs has already signed many contracts with local sports associations. They have signed up football and floorball association, and planning to expand to table tennis- , skating- and horse riding associations.
The community organizers and local associations are also happy since they now have a forum for those events and games that are too small for the traditional media. They can also take the videos with them to Facebook and to MySpace with a Floobs widget.
A great way to turn what was initially a disadvantage (not located in the eye of the storm in Silicon Valley) to an advantage (going local in your own market).
November 4th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Hmm, I don’t know. I believe that’s a useful opening for Floobs, but scaling that has got to be a challenge as I guess each small event has to be dealt with separately, and I’m not sure how you go global with it. The feeling from this article is that they are specifically targeting Finnish events, which is fair enough, but it is like it’s a lost opportunity not to make it global.
Floobs had, I believe, a technical advantage with the mobile Java software. At some point it felt like Floobs could go head-on against Qik and the like, but time has gone by. So why did that not happen?
I hope I’ll be proved wrong as the Floobs guys have a good attitude and it seemed like they might have potential. Besides, we’re looking forwards to perhaps working with them :-)
November 4th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Kristoffer,
I think the new strategy was a great move by the guys, taken that they were against a war that was if not impossible to win, at least very very hard to win.
No offense to the Floobs guys, but they would not have made it against the giants like Qik and Kyte.tv as it stand. A mobile Java software is of zero to none importance to the users as they only want a service that has great content and is easy to use, regardless of whether one watches or records. You just need to look at the people working at the giants, the people backing the giants (financially or otherwise) or the people using the giants’ service and you get the picture. And let’s not forget how many there is doing all of the above vis-a-vis using Floobs Beta.
That said, I strongly agree with you on the point that one should think big. One should not limit one’s views on only local when you might as well go global with the opportunity you choose to capitalize on. But given the situation where Floobs found itself just a while back, I believe this was a brilliant move from the guys. Especially in an economic situation like this focusing(!) all your money and hours on what is most likely to pay dividends in the future is not a bad choice at all. Rather it shows that you can move with the times and move quickly at that. When the environment changes, be it the economy or your competitors, you survive against the big one by being flexible and quickly to move where they can’t.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
OK, then what about quickly making the site into a global sports service? If that’s going to be the focus then the website needs perhaps a bit of a redesign to reflect that, to make it feel sporty. But there is activity like this all round the world so wouldn’t it be possible to capture that audience on a worldwide scale?
November 4th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Kristoffer,
Good thinking. Let’s hope the Floobs guys are reading. Although capturing audience on a worldwide scale is easier said than done.
Given Floobs target small sports clubs and associations they’d need hundreds of workers in the target countries going out and signing those contracts. For this localization in foreign land and finding local partners the gaming services such as Apaja, Habbo, etc. could have valuable advice.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:08 pm
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