Update on FarAwayFish: Signups, members interaction, visitor / user conversion rate, Farawayfish vs legacylocker

April 28, 2009

farawayfish Update on FarAwayFish: Signups, members interaction, visitor / user conversion rate, Farawayfish vs legacylocker

I’ve recently received an email update on the progress on FarAwayFish, Ryan Haynes has told me how they’ve attracted a good number of signups and a huge percentage really developing their personal pages on a daily basis. I’ve also asked them on what they thought of the potential competitor LegacyLocker and what they thought of them. Here’s how it went:

Here’s the email that Ryan Haynes has initially sent me:

Hi Francis,

I hope you are well. I thought I’d give you a little update on farawayfish.com.

The recent launch of the new social-networking website where users create personal profiles and have emails delivered to friends and family after they die has been a resounding success. Already larger than most Facebook groups, farawayfish.com has attracted over 500 sign-ups in little under two months, with 90% of members eagerly developing their personal pages on a daily basis.

Bucking the trend, farawayfish.com has managed to capture a high conversion rate to its innovative offering. Jade Goody was able to write her final memoirs as both a TV programme and autobiography before she died. Now everyday people can now publish their life and memories through video, photography and words after they die and become e-mortal.

Thanks for your support,

Best,

Ryan

When I received this email, I wasn’t so sure on whether or not they were having a Social Network within FarAwayFish and if Jade Goody was a member of their website and published her memories there. So I decided to email them back with these questions and here’s there response:

Hi Francis,

The unique feature allows anyone to post memories, in a similar vain to jade goody – where she completed an autobiography before she died and wrote letters for her close family and friends. She was not a member of the site, but the site allows you to leave similar articles for friends and family once you have died – not everyone has the opportunity to be given book deals, tv shows to record or share their most treasured moments, but web 2.0 techonology does.

Does that answer your question?

Ryan

The response on the Social Networking function is still not clear during this email so I decided to ask again and this time I decided to ask Ryan about what they thought of the well publicized LegacyLocker.

Hi Francis,

Must have been a slight confusion – what we mean by social network function – is leaving behind a profile that goes live for friends and family once you are dead, informing people through emails that can be sent for up to ten years after death.

There appears to be a major difference between farawayfish.com and legacylocker but they are definitely aimed at the same market. Farawayfish.com is not a deposit box but it is a place to store memories (photos/videos/favourite weblinks/emails etc) and share these with friends and family (sending personal emails written before dying automatically sent when you want them to be – this can be birthdays or celebrations). While LegacyLocker appears to be a safety box for passwords and logins – also their messages seem to be only personalised without a dedicated public webpage.

I will find out from the founder about competing with Legacylocker.

Let me know if there are any other thoughts you have in the meantime.

Ryan

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Thank you very much Ryan Haynes for the updates and clearing up certain questions that were unclear to me.

Looks like FarAwayFish is doing quite well, with great number of signups that become really active members. Looking at their alexa stats, I was able to find that users really had more interaction (number of pageviews compared to LegacyLocker). However, LegacyLocker seems to have more visitors that FarAwayFish (although the visitor numbers are inconsistent, but still higher). FarAwayFish team seems to think that LegacyLocker is not their direct competitor (yet), but I believe they’ll soon be competing in this field. The line between direct and indirect competitors in this industry, for me, still seems vague and unclear as a user might just choose one service over the other. It’s good that the market is getting good PR lately and hopefully people are going to be more aware of these services.

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