Mark Evans

Jango and Twitter Rock the House. Why?

For the past few days, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Jango.com, which lets you create customized stations to stream music. It’s very cool.

Since Jango launched six months ago, it has attracted more than one million users. Pretty impressive.

Meanwhile, Twitter has tripled its user-base in the last six months. (Twitdir.com is a good place to track the number of users and other metrics.)

The success of Jango and Twitter got me thinking why they’ve managed to become so successful while scores of similar services have nowhere near the same amount of popularity. What makes Jango and Twitter so compelling? Do they have characteristics that others are struggling to achieve?

What Jango and Twitter have in spades is they work really well. They have a straightforward mission, and avoid trying to be all things to all people.

Jango and Twitter are also both user-friendly and addictive. The more you use them, the more you want to use them - and so it goes. Jango, for example, has got me listening to music again, while Twitter has been a pleasant surprise as an effective communications tool (if used with some discipline!)

And more thing: Jango and Twitter are free. Formula: excellent services + user-friendly = free = in theory, popular.

The challenge facing Jango and Twitter is whether they can turn lots of users into lots of money.

Jango, which has raised $2-million from angels, has a business model built on the idea that it will attract lots of users/page views, which it can use to attract advertising. Jango will also make money by selling music and by offering a premium service without ads. (Check out GigaOm, for a post on Jango’s business model, and a look at how other music services are trying to generate revenue.)

Twitter, on the other hand, remains a business model mystery but no one seems to be too worried about it right now. According to people such as Jason Calacanis, it’s all about building critical mass. Once you get critical mass, then Twitter can figure out how to make money - or so it goes.

In the meantime, Jango and Twitter will continue to become increasingly popular as they move beyond early adopters. From a number of different perspectives, they offer some valuable lessons for online companies looking to be successful (at least when it comes to users).

More: WebProNews has an interesting post on how easy it is now to build a Web applicaton by looking at Groupzz.com, a meta-search engine for music.

Update: The New York Times has an interesting story looking at one of the risks of innovation is whether anyone will embrace it.

Technorati Tags: Jango, Twitter