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iLetYou.com - person-to-person DVD and Game rentals

iLetYou is a brand new service, launched out of San Diego on April 24th. Unlike traditional “swap-shop” services like Peerflix, ZunaFish or SwitchPlanet, or centralized rental systems like NetFlix, iLetYou (a) provides a platform to enable “casual renting” by individuals, to individuals, and (b) provides a platform for local video stores to do online rentals (more on this later).

Anyone can sign up and add movies or games from their collection (or inventory) to their iLetYou “store,” making them available for rental by others. You can set your own prices, and you can also set up bundles & bundle pricing for multiple-disc orders. Bundling encourages users to rent multiple discs from the same location, saving on the mailing overhead associated with online rentals.

Mailing is still a neccessity; You can supply your own packaging, or you can buy two-way disc mailers from iLetYou, which strikes me as a much better idea at 100 mailers for $24 .

Renters can leave feedback on those they have rented from; I’m not sure if stores can similarly leave feedback on customers (did they return on time? Did they ship back in quality packaging?)

Renting is a simple matter of searching and adding to your shopping cart.

Unlike many similar services (see SwitchPlanet, for example), iLetYou uses real dollars - you can add money to your account via credit card, which is then used to rent discs. I assume there’s a revenue cash-out feature for those doing the renting as well.

Business Model Musings

iLetYou has a straightforward transaction-cut model, taking a small bite out of each rental - SpringWise points to that fee being around $0.40 USD. Its the best of both worlds for iLetYou - they get the volume-revenue relationship of per-transaction fees, without incurring the same volume-overhead that - for example - NetFlix has; iLetYou essentially farms out infrastructure and inventory to individuals, paying for it with their rental-fee sharing arrangement.

The biggest thing that I see for iLetYou is the monetization of the corner rental shop. There must be thousands and thousands of these stores across North America, each sitting on hundreds or thousands of DVD’s and Games - a virtual inventory of millions of discs, which iLetYou provides the platform to aggregate. Its the perfect “long tail” play - iLetYou offers a way for these small stores to easily participate in the online economy, while also offering renters access to a potentially huge & diverse inventory.

On paper, iLetYou sounds like a disruptive business model - particularly for NetFlix. In the real-world, however, it faces the formidable challenge of marketing - making the service mainstream, giving it top of mind awareness, converting users from competing services, and ensuring quality transactions across the network will all be key. This is almost where I’d advocate a VC investment - seed money for marketing, help in crafting a marketing strategy, and access to VC’s networks of influence for deal cutting. Caveat: I’ve never dealt with a VC, or even met one - I’m just basing that suggestion on my understanding of the value VC’s offer to startups in terms of knowledge, money, and networks.

Suggestion

A quick one: Hook up with the DVD Catalogging sites. There’s a bunch of services out there that let movie fans & fanatics enter their collections online. A quick googling found Listology, Intervocative DVD Profiler, DVD Tracker, and My Movies. Build hooks into these (and similar) services to make it easy for their users to port discs from their collection over to iLetYou.

In Summary

If iLetYou can grow awareness and membership, it will have legs - until the market falls out from under physical media ten years from now (IMHO). Until then - it looks like a great alternative to existing options with the potential to shake things up for established players like Netflix.

Other Coverage

1. The Fox16 Geek Speek blog covers the highlights.
2. Andrew at AdvisorGarage has some hyperbolically positive coverage, also noting the risk from renting from unknown individuals.
3. RubyLearning talks about the Indian Rails shop that put together iLetYou.
4. 2livefools provide a good iLetYou overview.
5. The World Around Us covers iLetYou, and points the reader to SpringWise, who does the same.

apple, discs, dvd, games, iletyou, inventory, local video stores, movies, netflix, peerflix, ps2, switchplanet, xbox, xbox360 zunafish

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ArkALMIGHTY: Religious-themed, Movie-promotional, John Goodman-starring, Good Deeds Social Network

The title sums it. “Evan Almighty” - the new comedic take on the Noah-and-his-Ark story - is spawing all manner of… “unique” marketing efforts in a bid by the movie studios to appeal to the American religious population - which, if you count people going to church once a month or more, is 66% of the country.

That statistic, and a very interesting read, come to you courtesey of the New York Times movies section (”Makers of Comedy Film Aim for Religious Audience“) which has a great discussion on the fallout from Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” - namely that there’s a lot of cash to be made from religion.

Anyway, ArkALMIGHTY aims to be a broker of “acts of random kindness” - “Got a Need? Post It!” the site opines; “Can you fulfill a need? Get to it!” In fact, John Goodman himself ambles across the screen (powered by hdmedia.ca) the first time you land to share the message. The site appears to be targeted principally at teenagers - all of the stock-ish photography at least is centred firmly on attractive, young, predominantly-white & latino people. There’s plenty of “Evan Almighty” ads scattered across the site as well.

Visitors to the site are encouraged to join and either find their church community, or register their church - “launching their ark” - which once launched, creates a community bulletin board-like landing page:

ArkALMIGHTY begins with registering your church on our site. As with everything associated with ArkALMIGHTY, registration is FREE. When registration is complete, your church will have its own, personalized ArkALMIGHTY web page where members can post, browse and fulfill the needs of your congregation. Once your ArkALMIGHTY page is up and running, visitors will be able to read about the success stories within your own church and receive regular reminders of how they can do good on a daily basis. [From: How to Launch Your Ark]

ArkALMIGHTY also works hard to extend their reach off of the web and into your physical community, sending the first person to register a church a whopping crate of ArkALMIGHTY branded material in the mail…

Wait by the mailbox. Because you’re about to receive a FREE Ark Kit, valued at $125, with everything you need to launch ArkALMIGHTY in your church. Inside you’ll find t-shirts, hats, curriculum, an ArkALMIGHTY banner, outreach materials, instructions, and so much other good stuff you’ll think it’s Christmas! [From: How to Launch Your Ark]

In Summary…

The advertising & language across the site makes the whole affair a not-very-subtle ploy to increase top-of-mind awareness of the “Bruce/Evan Almighty” movie franchise. Whether promoting good deeds or not, I personally consider spirituality off-limits as a branding venue. ArkALMIGHTY has a weird effect in that sense: I feel compelled to reject it on the basis of its exploitative nature, yet find it difficult to do so given that there is “good” functionality coming out of. I compare it to the whole furor over selling naming rights to stadiums - is it better to have a branded statium, or no stadium at all?

Fundamentally, however, the web is different. If there is a need or want for a site like this, the barriers to entry are essentially none. Anyone, anywhere could run a site like this on a standalone basis. I know a church appeal in my neighborhood would find pleny of volunteer coders, designers, and webhosts capable of putting it all together for free, and creating a site focused on good deeds, as opposed to “these good deeds bought to you by…”

For those interested, there are authentic faith-based networking opportunities out there - see HolyPal, 5loaves, and Xianz (which has ArkALMIGHTY adverts on it) for examples.

As a social networking phenomenon, I have no idea how well the site will do, or whether its success will outlast the movie. When “Evan Almighty” is off the new release list, will ArkALMIGHTY persist as a standalone ad-driven social network? Or will it be shut down?

Whatever the case, it has been successful in driving discussion about the site and the movie, if nothing else. See: GetReligion, Bob’s Blog n’ Blather, MovieMarketingMadness, ChangeYourWorld, Paleoevangelical, Camy’s Loft, Lake Neuron, and The Blog that Ties for examples.

DISCLAIMER - I personally am not religious; Agnostic at best, I frequently consider questions of sprituality but have yet to stumble upon the definitive answers to the questions about god and the meaning of life. If I do, I’ll post here.

5loaves, arkalmighty, branding, catholic, christianity, evanalmighty, faith, holypal, jesus, marketing movies

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