Cheating death
No matter what race, ethnicity, age group, religion or social status is, I am sure all of us have at one point or another thought about death, or about ways to cheat death, some more creative that others. One way people try to cheat death is through their accomplishments. Beethoven, Einstein, Descartes, all great personalities of the past have bought their way into history through their work, thus cheating death. Others have tried to sell their souls to the devil (Faust), or chose to believe in vampires and hoped for the bite of eternity. I personally build a website - “E-Ternity”. E-Ternity is a place where everyone can become e-ternal, e-mmortal, e-verlasting and so on. Thinking about what the above examples have in common, that is, how all these people have become immortal I found a very interesting answer. I believe that they are still alive, because they have not been forgotten; they live within our memories. Newton talks to me whenever I’m thinking about physics, Beethoven sings to me whenever I’m happy, and Socrates made me realize that each person has a duty towards the city - I then see myself as a brave ant. E-Ternity is a place for Socrates, Einstein and Goethe, but most of all it’s a place for you and me, where we can build our life stories, and share our memories and existences with future generations to come.
Our website is special and unique for it allows you to cheat death in a few easy steps: you create an account, tell us your life story, upload some photos and videos and there you have it: you’ve reserved your place in history. Moreover, unlike history, we do not censure and restrict our guests to Noble Prize laureates or Academy Awards winners; E-Ternity is a community everyone can join. We do have some predictions: we expect that most of our audience will consist of people who own or have access to a computer and to the internet. For the moment we will be able to satisfy the e-mmortality needs of the English, French, German and Romanian speaking people, as the website will be translated into these four languages. We anticipate that there is going to be no age nadir or zenith. Think of our web-site as the Gates of Heaven – everyone is welcome.
E-Ternity vs their E-pehemeral competition : www.ancestry.com, www.virtual-memorials.com, www.rest-in-peace.com
When analyzing my competition I looked at the following three aspects that I think are crucial to the development of the each of the businesses. First I looked at the features of each of the websites, both technical and non-technical. I then analyzed how each of them positioned themselves in the market – what is their way of defining themselves as a business. I finally looked at the financial the financial model each of them is using. This analysis is has been very useful to me because it’s a great way of research that allows you to choose a niche in the market where you are going to position your product. It allows you to incorporate some of the ideas/features of the competition and add onto them, and also gives you an idea where this business is heading.
www.ancestry.com
This website is by far the best competitor of E-Ternity in the market, taking into consideration both the features of the website and the complex financial model that they use. After a quick video tour which guided me through the contents of the website I learned that ancestry.com is a tool that gives you the ability to build your own family tree. They have a user-profile interface, where the user is able to search for information about his ancestor by accessing the US census collection which compiles data from the 1700 – present. Users can edit their ancestor’s profiles by creating an even in the timeline of major events, or by adding photographs and text to his/her profile.
Ancestry.com is a research tool that allows you to find useful information about your ancestors. “ It is like a detective story”. You can also get various information related to the name of the person you are looking for(life expectancy of people with that name, name distribution in the US, occupations, meaning of the name, and newspaper in which that name made the headlines).
Their financial model is quite complex as well. They charge for creating a profile that allows you to access their database. Furthermore, they generate income through ads from other websites and through an online store that sells books, software, photographs and services related to their business.
At a first glance ancestry.com seems the perfect place where for anyone who wants to find out more about his family. A closer analysis reveals the fact that there are some major differences in the concept of the website in relation to E-Ternity. While ancestry.com creates a “detective story” where the user has to search thorough piles of data, and make connections accordingly, E-Ternity offers the user the story of someone’s life, where the user creates his/her story throughout a lifetime. Moreover while ancestry.com talks about the past, E-Ternity talks about the present because here people becom e-mmortal – there is no past tense.
Ancestry.com also differs from E-Ternity in the way that, as a tool the first requires skill to operate, even as a basic level, while the latter is extremely straight-forward.
Finally, the financial model is quite disturbing for the user that does not want access to the database that they offer, or does not want to purchase items from their online store. As a result they narrow their target audience by a huge margin, thus generating less income.
In this way I see that E-Ternity either becoming a joined venture with Ancestry.com because both websites have complementary products because both sites have complementary products and services.
www.virtual-memorials.com
We believe that this website is the second largest competitor of E-Ternity on the market, after ancestry.com. The website also features a user-profile interface, which is very straight-forward and easy to use. The user has the ability to create a memorial in honor of a person they “loved and have lost”. By editing the profile the user can attach video, audio, text and photo format content to the profile. An interesting feature of this website is the unique user access address (i.e. Avron Barr.virtual-memorials.com) and the online user forum.
The financial model is solely based on the membership fee, which varies from $50 to $300 according to the sophistication of the profile. Unlike ancestry.com, virtual-memories.com also offers free membership, where profiles can only have text-based information.
Clearly this website lacks the complexity of ancestry.com, has some serious flaws both in its architecture and financial model. One of the major flaws is that, like ancestry.com it is addressed exclusively to people who are already deceased “A Virtual Memorial is a website created to honor, remember, and share stories and photographs of those we love and have lost.” – Past tense again. A second flaw is rather technical than conceptual and has to do with the limited space the user is granted with – 40 MB. You can see how that can become a serious problem when a video format document of good quality has over 15 MB. Finally the financial model is quite poor, incorporating only membership fee, and excluding possible income from advertising or other related services.
www.rest-in-peace.info
This is our final competitor in our market analysis and we consider it to be the least strong player in the business. It features a simple user-profile interface, edible through text and photographs, and an indexed alphabetical search of the all the users.
Rest-in-peace.info simply define themselves as a provider of online memorial services.
They manage to get a broader target audience by making the website available in two languages: English and German. Like virtual-memorials.com, rest-in-peace also offers a feature that allows the user to access his profile in the following way www.rest-in-peace.info/first name last name.
Their financial model is commission oriented, as they probably charge for referencing death-related services such as homes, funeral directors, market-gardens and chiselers.
Although a player on the market, rest-in-peace.com is clearly far from instituting a threat on E-Ternity, which creates a more user-friendly experience and that has a more complex financial model, able to generate higher revenue.
