After watching Kana's recent run to $164/shr, I decided to take a look at Kana. While comparing Kana's PR to Messagemedia (which was like mixing water with fine wine) I was reminded of that ye ole USA vs CCCP Track Meet #reply-11875624. BTW, I used this analogy so even the simplest of yahooeys could catch my drift, if you know what I mean.
To make a long story short, Kana does not compare to Messagemedia, but it spins its PR to make it appear as if it came in first.
Consider Kana's Statement, "Ten of the Top Twenty Most Visited Sites on the Web Use Kana to Manage their Online Customer Communications" #reply-11882117.
Well, I took a look at the top twenty web sites #reply-11861445 and compared it to their PR and homepage but could only place six of their customers in the top twenty, these being...
4. Lycos
6. Microsoft
7. Excite@Home
10. eBay
15. Xoom.com
17. Cnet
Who the other four are on Kana's list is not important. If you look at the number of unique users on NetRatings #reply-11861445, you'll see the dominant and therefore only important ones are the top three: AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN. I'm sure if these items were clients, Kana would have mentioned them. They are, however, on Messagemedia's list #reply-11637861.
Quantity in clients is not as important as quality of the client when it comes to NetRatings because the distribution isn't normal. In fact, the distribution is more "Poission", (although it isn't, I'll use the Poission chart as a simple way to conceptualize my point. See the top chart here...
math.virginia.edu
The top chart, in a way, illustrates the number of unique users in the top twenty sites. Note, the first three sites on the NetRatings list, (AOL, Yahoo, and MSN) account for 54,009 unique users, while the other seventeen account for about the same number of unique users(61,538). Given the choice between the top three as clients or ten of the remaining seventeen as clients, I submit providing services to the top three generates more revenues, with lower cost of revenues, then any ten of the remaining sites on the top twenty list.
To the typical Yahoo! ten out of twenty sounds pretty good and off the top may be justify 164 bucks. But when you run the numbers, a different picture develops and clearly, the top three rule. Recall, AOL, Yahoo and MSN are clients of Messagemedia.
Consider J Crew #reply-11882282
Instead of putting J Crew on Santa's list, Kana should have put them on their wish list; ie, the ye ole wish for greater "conversion rates"? I'll repeat it here, it doesn't say a lot for Kana's technology, it you know what I mean...
''Filtering technology is one reason sites like Amazon and Drugstore.com had purchase conversion rates of 8.3% and 7.9% in August whereas sites like Reel.com and J. Crew lagged with conversion rates of 3.5% and 3.4%.'' Source: #reply-11652370
The skinny... J Crew has committed to email, the sale has been made. Messagemedia should knock on J Crews door and show them how to double their sales with half the effort and ask them if they are interested.
Anyway, I couldn't find any reason to compel me to own Kana. However, after running to 164, it made me wonder what a real company would do if it caught the up-draft. Accordingly, I have raised my target a tad on MESG, but I can't revealed it 'cuz I'd be in violation of rule 405. |
