antonella.esteves wrote:
>
> Gerhard,
> Thanks so much for your response, it actually addresses my question very well.
> Now, got more questions...you mention the trend to access non-menue sites
> is increasing. I suppose the ratio of official to unofficial sites is one
> of the drivers behind this...yet, how strong of a trend is it?
I think the driver is that at the very beginning of imode there were
around 50 official sites and exactly zero katte sites. The ratio
of non-official + official site traffic has been increasing ever
since as users find out more about the non-official sites.
> Do you think this one of the drivers behind DoCoMo's decision to 'relax'
> its policies towards the katte sites?
I don't think DoCoMo can have much of a policy towards katte sites -
however they profit from the traffic of course, so they want to encourage
them in the same way they want to encourage anything which increases the
value and the usage of imode and their other services :)
> I suppose there is some kind of network effect that makes the wall-garden
> model less and less suitable for the long term...
AOL is doing rather well ... and so is DoCoMo: as long as subscribers see
a value in the walled-garden the flowers inside the walled garden will blossom...
In Tokyo there is Yoyogi-koen which is free for all to enter, next to it is
Meiji-Jingu-Gyoen, which costs about YEN 300 to enter, and they have beautiful
flowers there and a tea house with red umbrellas and a beautiful view:
it's a real-world non-cyber walled garden! Both are always full of
people:
people go to the free Yoyogi-koen to sleep on the grass, play football
etc,
and some pay YEN 300 to enter Meiji-Jingu-Gyoen to have the beautiful
views
and see the flowers, and drink macha (ceremonial green tea) with a great
view.
Both seem to survive well.
Gerhard
http://www.eurotechnology.com/
> Thanks indeed for your response.
>
> Regards,
> Antonella.
>
> My guess is that this is one of those statements which can
> lead to never ending email group discussions.
>
> Essentially, there are around 1000 "official menu sites, and
> an uncountable number of other sites (probably on the order
> of 50,000 by now).
>
> It will depend how you define "best used". In terms of traffic,
> approx. 1/2 (trend decreasing) of the traffic goes to menue
> sites and about 1/2 (trend increasing) to non-menue (katte) sites.
>
> There are some excellent sites in both cathegories, so I guess
> there are "excellently used" sites in both cathegories.
>
> Personally I use both official and katte sites, and I guess
> so do most other imode users.
>
> Gerhard Fasol
> http://www.eurotechnology.com//
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Received on Wed Mar 21 11:59:55 2001