Jerry Chung's Blog

Google Docs was the first online web office suite available in the internet.  It was released in 2005 and the spreadsheet function was also released the next year.  However, Google Docs isn’t the only web app out there that serves this function now.  Recently, my friends who use hotmail started to use SkyDrive to share word documents with me.  I was surprised that there was another company that would want to compete with the initial Google Docs.  Skydrive was just developed last year in June and it utilizes the Microsoft Office suite including powerpoint.  One big limitation to Skydrive is that the user must register a Hotmail account.

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I don’t find Skydrive using any promotional strategies at all.  I tried searching on Youtube for any commercials about it but the term “Skydrive” is already used for many other things that make it hard to look for.  I also don’t see any direct marketing such as emails, commercials, telemarketing etc.  Possibly Skydrive is a free app to use on the internet so they don’t spend that much resources into promoting it.  But I think for it to become successful, they have to make people who are currently using Google docs be aware of the fact that there is an alternative!  However they did create this kind of infomercial back in 2010 about how to use Skydrive.

I guess there is much personal selling in Skydrive.  Since Skydrive offers the ability for users to manipulate their own documents that is linked to their own Hotmail account, I suppose this is more of a personal selling.  Users are able to manage their own documents and create the personal documents which I think is selling on a more personal level.  However, Google Docs offer the same functions.  In all, would you use Skydrive? or Google Docs?