Klue, I’ve seen the reviews but there's a bigger story and strategy here.
Firstly, you need to consider the 358,000 unique visitors this semester. That’s not that silly first download number they were quoting but real usage MKB are reporting on now.
As a utility type app, students just turn it on and use it. You only get motivated to do a review when you’re unhappy, so all app reviews get a bit biased to the negative. In this case they seem to mostly relate to sign-ons with the colleges using various Single Sign On protocols that need a couple of steps to navigate between the individual college IT system, IM Leagues and Moko platforms which creates the frustration. I think it’s more about building a good customer service function to assist lots of new sign-ups and why a bigger resourced strategic partner could exploit this space more effectively.
But the key for me is to understand MKB’s strategy change with the recent RecIt Plus roll-out. I’ve compared them to a couple of similar products in Teamer and Teamsnap apps focused on the adult and club sports team markets. “Teamer” being out of the UK and in Australia with 3mill users I recall, including myself having used it. “Teamsnap” in the US has some some larger multiple of users. They’ve built their users bottom up at the team and individual level and have both gone to a subscription model to generate cashflow plus advertising on top. (Rec*IT would be a strong competitor to these guys by the way if they successfully scale into the college market then users stay with them as they move out to adult social leagues).
MKB have the opportunity instead to pursue a top-down model, where they market to the College Rec departments (rather than direct to the students), who then mandate the use to their students. So they firstly have to keep the colleges happy and that seems to be the case with the take up and their employment of university relations staff over customer service staff. The Rec*IT Plus app now appears more like the enterprise software that corporates take on, they pay a subscription and then it becomes recurring income and a college relationship they can push other products through their payments systems to students.
The modest number of negative student app reviews versus usage are not that relevant in the context I’m viewing this business.
(20min delay)
