If I was the CEO of Ruumz... - MalaysianWireless

If I was the CEO of Ruumz…

Update 1: July 23, 1.30pm “A response from the ex-CEO of Ruumz“.

Note: This post represents my personal opinion, nothing else.

Launched on 15 January 2009, Ruumz is a social networking portal that promised to offer a better “social networking experience” than the other social networking portals out there such as Facebook and Friendster.

Sadly, more than a year later Ruumz has failed to accomplish that.

The social networking company behind Ruumz, RuumzNation Sdn Bhd is still “alive” at the time of writing although a large number of the team have “disappeared” or resigned. Some of them where offered VSS while the rest have been absorbed into P1.

Although the domain Ruumz.com is only set to expire in January next year, I’m not sure if Green Packet or P1 will continue to keep the portal alive. However I’m not writing this to talk about the future of Ruumz, but I’m more interested to talk about what the company could have done during the past one year.

You have a plan, execute it!

A simple rule that applies to any companies out there- is stick to what was originally planned but Ruumz choose to take a different path to a different direction. When Ruumz was launched(press release can be downloaded here), they claimed that they are keen to “help spur the growth of the local digital content industry” but nothing much was done.

Some of the interesting stuff that Ruumz planned was the “Application Developer Programme for Malaysian Developers“. This is something that would create a platform for local developers to take their service online rather than knocking on our telco’s door and going through a “pain” process.

The most important thing and a major failure is the fact that Ruumz has failed to work closely with P1. Globally, most social networking company out there does not have this advantage, that is why there is a big gap between social networking and mobile telcos/ISP. Ruumz on the other hand is fully supported by P1 and they could have done something different and grow together as a company. At some point, P1′s customers could be Ruumz users too.

Instead Ruumz chooses to sponsor something like 15 Malaysia and Project Alpha, before even it establish itself and improve their own services. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but if you are going to fund something and do a branding like this, Ruumz.com is going to get huge traffic for sure. But the question here is this- What Ruumz has got to offer to these traffic?

A start-up that started running before it learn how to walk

An estimated half million was wasted in funding 15 Malaysia and even the agreement behind the deal wasn’t properly done. I won’t be talking about that agreement here.

That close to half a million could have been used to improve Ruumz “old 1.0 interface’ which doesn’t even look like a site that is catered for teens. Or at least that half a million could have been used to develop the “Application Developer Programme” which would allow developers to build application via the Ruumz API. This is crucial to keep Ruumz running.

As for Project Alpha, Ruumz could have managed their social media presence online, not run some boring contest which has nothing to do with social media.

The most disappointing thing to me is the charity programme called Ruumz Causes. I got no problem with charity stuff but Ruumz is doing charity way before even it starts making money! So kind of them.

Let’s take a look at one of their most popular service called Music Ruumz. First of all, thumbs up to the people behind it who have managed to get all the music labels together to offer their music service online. But it is disappointing that Ruumz failed to deliver this service to the market, the proper way. It was supposed to be the most easy part but Ruumz choose to make it complicated. If you want to purchase a music on Ruumz, the first thing you need is Internet Explorer (IE) with Active X to use it. Now how many social media users out there would still use IE?

The second problem is the Ruumz online currency that is still being used called “Blings!”. As a consumer, if I were to purchase a music or anything online, Ruumz has to cater to what I have(to pay), not the other way round.

But on Ruumz, you need to purchase Blings and then convert it to some points before you can purchase something. Why can’t I just pay with my phone bill, credit card or through my online banking account? Thanks to Ruumz and its Bling Blings, it is complicated for any users to purchase online.

The last thing I want to highlight here is something that Ruumz promised to be different. During the launch of Ruumz, its CEO claims that in future, users could send an actual flower(or other stuff) online instead of sending picture/image like in Facebook. Now this is something interesting and what Ruumz could have done is to partner with any online stores in Malaysia(about 10 of them out there) and get them to process the payment and request. Imagine if I send someone a flower/greeting cards/pet today and the person receives it within the next 2 days. In Ruumz, I believe there were no progress on this.

Conclusion

I know things could have been different within the company and the management. But from a user perspective, what is promised needs to be fulfilled and Ruumz need to walk the talk.

But I guess it is far too late for that now, unless P1 and Green Packaet wants to allocate new funds for Ruumz and hire a new CEO. I believe that it will be wasting money and resources to keep Ruumz if it continues to do what it has done so far.

I still remember talking about this social networking portal way before it was launched, and I also covered the launch of Ruumz. It is sad that I got to write about Ruumz again now before the possibility of it being closed down anytime soon.

If I was the CEO of Ruumz…..

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XOXO

If ur the CEO; I'd still be working for ruumz…
handsome

The biggest problem of Ruumz is that it was too overly ambitious; growing sideways instead of upwards.

It is correct to have visions and directions; however without the proper base, even the strongest entity would collapse.

I would blame the person who brought the idea without doing any research, not the people who ran it. Hence Kugan, I feel your title is wrong. It should be “If I have millions of dollars…”.

On the bright side, the Ruumz team had shown us the way not to run a social networking website. At least future entrepreneurs would use this million dollar lesson and not making the same mistakes.
http://twitter.com/derrickveejay Derrick Low

Very insightful, Kugan. However, I think the perfect execution plan is to expand it globally, not locally. And basically whatever which is sponsored by Ruumz, it's targeted towards P1, so people do somehow think P1 is a bigger brand than ruumz. The social brand behind P1 itself, should be given considerably more exposure towards the Malaysian general public at the minimal least. For example, the social network, Skyrock, might be unheard of worldwide, however, it is proven to be a major brand in France itself, with users more into it compared to Facebook. So why can't Ruumz see this opportunity and use their methods in order to penetrate into our local Malaysian market? I do have a Ruumz account, however, I'm practically forced to create one a year back in order to gain an interesting offer from P1. That's all about it, after that, my profile had been dumped and dead. So, this is what happens when you do not have the necessary attractions in the social network market. When Ruumz is not only promoted through users of P1, I think it would be able to gain a bigger market share in Malaysia as there's too, a desperate need for legal online media and stuff. Currently, due to the big news of Friendster being bought over by MOL, Friendster gained a bigger limelight in Malaysia compared to Ruumz (although not many people uses it these days). Here's my personal opinion, no offense towards any P1 or Ruumz top management.
http://twitter.com/derrickveejay Derrick Low

But in order to expand it globally, it must be expanded locally first. Forgot to add that in.
Annonymous

When the idea was first brought up, most of the people within Green Packet and P1 (except the bosses) already knew that it would be another big time failure, for a simple reason, how the hell they going to compete with Facebook and twitter. What do they have to attract people going through the hassle again to register and login to their social network? Yes, they are very ambitious and with lots of ideas. BUT they do not have the know-how and the technology.
Ovidia

Looks like you got a reply to your question…Check the ex CEO's answers to your question here http://james.ruumz.com/Blog/Default.aspx?bs=1&b…

Jul201019

Kugan

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