Cy CEO Paul Mercia Answers CocoBob's questions on Competition
Q: What is Cy's general concensus on the recent launch announcement of a competitor named Freeweb ?
"Cybersurf stands behind its technology and services. We provide a far superior and enjoyable service to our subscribers and a far superior desktop technology for advertisers to deliver their messages than any Internet provider (free or not),Internet portal or desktop advertiser in the world."
Q: What are some of the technical and marketing differences between CY and the competition ?
"Compare advertising capabilities:
- 3web has very dynamic ads with full motion and stereo sound. The competition has simple banners ads. Banner ads are not very effective in generating click-throughs. Our ads have generated click-throughs as high as 1000% higher than traditional banner ads.
- The competition does not deliver advertising demographically (You can simply bypass their demographic questionnaire located on the Web). Last time I checked, wasn't that the point?
- 3web has several advertisers (several we sold before launching a specific market). Check on the competition's web site about their advertisers. They don't have any!
- The competition cannot target their advertising to the specific members of a household. The competition offers only one Internet account. They do not let you set up an account for every person in the household.
Q: Financial viability ?
- The competition is not partnered with any major phone company. That's bad news when it comes to their costs.
- The competition uses a service called FreeIPass and therefore does not control their access lines. This has major repercussions.
- The competition will have huge operating costs. "FreeIPass" is not a cost-effective solution when used as a model for free Internet. 3web is allied with Sprint and is therefore able to operate a lot more cost-effectively.
- Advertisers want to target the big markets. Honestly, who cares about targeting people from Wetaskiwin (one of the many small towns listed). Advertisers want to target the major market centers. 3web specifically targets the big markets and captures them. They (CY) currently hold 35% of the ISP market in Alberta and are now the biggest ISP in Alberta (and this from only two centers). 3web will capture at least 35% of the Toronto market.
- 3web has a track record. In fact, other than their web site, how much do you really know about homefreeweb? Check out their “sister” company: nuvocom.com. Who are they kidding?
- 3web has a business model. I haven't been able to find anything resembling one from homefreeweb! Check out their “Media Kit” and see how much real information is in there. Not much.
Q: Marketability ?:
- 3web is the first to market. They were advertising their service well over two weeks ago.
- You don't need to be a current Internet user to use 3web. 3web is available on CD right now, as well as freely available of our web site. The competition requires that you already have Internet access to get their software. By far more of our subscribers have
signed up via the 3web Installation CD they picked up from a distributor than from our website download.
- The competition will only have as many dial-up lines available as the local ISP has available. This means that you're competing with all of their local customers. This also means a lot of busy signals. How will the little local FreeIPass ISPs be able to handle a large demand? 3web does not have these issues.
- 3web allows you to connect at 64Kbps over ISDN. With the competition, you get what the little ISP has available (some are at a blazing 28.8 Kbps!); 3web has quality written all over it."
Q: What the difference between technical support ?
"- If you're not very computer literate, 3web takes care of setting everything up for you, from email to bookmarks to dialup networking settings. The competition does not.
- 3web attracts a large number of first time Internet users in addition to current Internet
users. The competition cannot draw from such a market.
- 3web has distribution partners that have an interest in getting 3web out tothe public as fast as possible. Also note, that the CD distributions are paid for by the distributors, and not by Cybersurf. Cybersurf pays nothing!"
Q: Personnal Observations on Competitor's user interface:
"The competition's software is buggy and obviously incomplete:
- Their buttons take you to various, and unrelated web sites. Other than advertising, they have no other revenue-generating capabilities.
- Their advertising (as I reluctantly call it because they didn't have any real advertisers) brings you to broken web pages. Nice.
- If you want to exit the program, pressing the exit button will simply bring up a browser window telling you how stupid you were to think that pressing the exit button would get you out of the application. Bonus points there.
Ease of use:
- 3web is extremely easy to use and keeps in mind their target audience, which is mostly first-time Internet users.
- Have a problem? 3web's tech support is great and available from 8 AM to midnight seven days a week. I called the competition's “support” (perhaps “lack of support” is a better term) and got a busy signal every single time I called. It seems like someone left
the phone off the hook.
- 3web has its own portal and commerce sites. The competition simply sends you off to Yahoo and Excite, both which are just as easily accessed by 3web or any other Internet connection.
All of this seems to suggest that the competition was caught with their pants down, and was definitely rushed to market, especially with 3web moving into the Toronto market.
Q: HomeFreeWeb Advantages ?
- Has many access points, including Vancouver and Montreal. 3web currently has Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto and their respective surrounding areas (which provide access from eighty centers).
- Their download is small (658K), but it requires that you have a current version of Internet Explorer (18MB) and Dialup Networking. If you don't have those items, their download is a huge and long one.
Q: What's your Summary on the Competion ?
Robert,We welcome competition since it validates our business model, and we have always expected it. Our mandate is to always improve the technology for our advertisers and therefore win over their business (which is the bread and butter of this type of sevice). We had just hoped that our first competitor in the Canadian Market would have been legitimate.
Thanks
Thank you Paul Mercia for your time in answering some of our concerns. |
