Mitchell Geere

We all know how to do that, just have people talk about it. Now that is much easier said than done. We tried pushing our companies viraly through Facebook, and Refer a Friend campaigns and so on. Some of us even sent Mike Arrington at TechCrunch mails so that he can talk about us.

Have you considered making due with fewer people using your company initially - start with a small core base - and in them doing so you will gain a larger user base without viral campaigns or Facebook? How about plugging your feedback system into GetSatisfaction.com or systems a like. I find so many new companies from just going onto GetSatisfaction.com to post about a companies service I use. In doing it this way you will be able to grow inline with your customer needs far better than trying to gain a huge customer base off the bat.

What I am getting at is that if your customers, those who love and hate your company, talk about your company in the right places you will be allowing your company to grow organically, which I think is more sustainable. It might take longer for you to gain that 1m customer base but the truth is you will have customers genuinely interested in your business and possibly they will be paying customers.

So to get to my point I think that for you to get your company known you should align yourself with companies that allow your customers to interact with you in a public arena with alot of spectators. Whether the interaction is positive or negative you can control it by how you respond and thus gain new customers. Good or bad exposure is still good. The conversion of someone doesn’t happen when you have good or bad exposure from a customer, or ex-customer even, it comes from how you handle and respond to it.

This morning I decided I will figure out some way to have an iTunes account without being in the US. Fortunately to my elated surprise I noticed my country was added, finally I can enjoy the splendors of downloading music from the giant.

They added 40 countries or so to the list they are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

Now even though none of these are really localized I think in time they will be and I can perhaps finally see iTunes sporting local content like jacSharp, aKing, Plush and so on. This makes me very happy because it will also give me the opportunity to enjoy some music from other countries - that is if they allow the music to move across borders.

The biggest reason why I like iTunes is because of its integration into my iPod etc. However I think places like Apricado and Amie Street will push this market a lot further this is perhaps because iTunes is far to restrictive which saddens me because I love the Apple brand and would love to support them but they just make it so hard most of the time.

I can’t wait for a true global economy, where my location is about as relevant as my hair color. So that I can freely enjoy purchasing movies, music and podcasts that appeal to my taste without the hampering of political borders.

This however has a huge impact on local companies such as Look & Listen and Musica in this industry, and to tell you the truth I am okay with that. When I think up some start-up I really don’t limit my thinking to local only unless of course it really only satisfies a very localized problem, that however is very rare. You will always find someone else somewhere else experiencing the same problems as you do.

The next service I would like to see open a bit more is PayPal, that is such a great service but so restricted. I have a suspision that South Africa not having access to it is due to our banks and the monopoly they run in the finance industry here.

Amendment:
We don’t have access to music and movies only mobile apps. I am rather disappointed now, armed with a new apple id, and credit card loaded I attempted a search for some new tunes and only got the app store screen. Oh well someday soon this will change, I hope.