Piczo hit by social networking slowdown

<< Facebook claims no user drop - someone is lying | Home | Facebook – insight from an 18yr old female college student >>

Piczo hit by social networking slowdown

Sunday, February 24, 2008 7:00 AM | Social Social Media Facebook MySpace Social Networking

piczo.com

Yesterday I was surfing through the news and ran across an item on c|net news, regarding Piczo having problems due to the “social slowdown”. I hate to say it but I don’t think the alleged slowdown in social networking is to blame for Piczo having problems. I think they targeted the wrong demographic (teenage girl) and possibly management problems are to blame.

Has anyone else concluded that maybe piczo's problem is the demographic targeting of flaky minded (i.e. indecisive, fickle, etc.) teenage girls?

For those that are unaware Piczo is a social network for teenage girls and among much fanfare in 2006 the company has seen layoffs, executive and employee turnovers. That, coupled with a drop in users and traffic isn’t helping matters any.

From what I have been able to gather Piczo’s traffic is currently on par with what it had been previously on several occasions in 2006 and 2007.

piczo.com page views

The young, teenage female demographic is, I would think, one of the hardest demographics to target. I have a bit of firsthand insight to this demographic. I have a daughter that just recently turned eighteen and I often asked her questions about what her and her friend’s thoughts of various sites, what they were “into”. I had never heard her make mention of Piczo. Then again, you know young girls. They want to be where their friends are. It could be a group influence that keeps them on the more popular social networks, but then again you can never be certain with teenage girls.

My daughter is very active socially online (MySpace, Facebook, and even Bebo at one time). If a site or service is popular, you can bet she has heard about it or is using it. I am not sure what Piczo is doing wrong to attract users, but they are doing something wrong. Maybe it is the overzealous use of flash on piczo.com that is turning users away. I admit I am the curious type and went over there for a look see. It take but a moment for me to close the browser window (but again that's just me).

piczo.com reach

It appears that Piczo’s reach is increasing slightly from where is what is in mid 2006, so I am a bit confused as to why mainstream media is being so negative about Piczo.

As always I would love to read your comments about Piczo!

4 Comments

Comments

Posted by A PICZO USER OF 4 YEARS on 4/6/2008 8:39 PM: I'm trying to add a comment about Piczo explaining why they are in a slowdown. It's because everyone is leaving.
Posted by A PICZO USER OF 4 YEARS on 4/6/2008 8:44 PM: Piczo has gone down hill over the last year because of all their ridiculous new features they keep introducing! They were neither asked for or wanted and have caused many problems for everyone.

They treat their users like little children though most of us are over 16 (except for the under aged users) and they don't listen to what we want! They've changed things so much which have caused huge drops in visitors to our sites so what's the point in having a site if no-one is going to visit.

Piczo has become selfish and it is their actions that have caused many people to leave.

There is also a big problem with haters and stealers and Piczo are very slow to deal with complaints and/or take action against sites where this has occurred.
Posted by A PICZO USER OF 4 YEARS on 4/6/2008 8:50 PM: I have been a Piczo member for 4 years now. Piczo has only been running for 5 years so I know what it was like in the beginning and know how it is now.

Many people who have been a user for as long as I have wish it was how it used to be and not as it is now!

Piczo introduced a whole set of new features in 2007/8 and members have been leaving by the bucket loads!

They introduce features we don't want or need or asked for. When they add these new featuers, it always causes problems with our sites. Things don't work properly, things go missing etc.

They never give us what we really want, only what they think we want! We have all campaigned for various introductions to Piczo and all have fallen on deaf ears.

For years we have all been asking for a blocking facility so we can block haters and stealers from our sites. Many of us with our own Piczo sites who create our own graphics and tutorials on how to use Piczo etc used to get many hits a day from visitors until Piczo decided to introduce their own graphics and tutorials. Many members hits were dramatically reduced because of this and lots of members left as they felt cheated by Piczo. Then they introduced a messaging system whereby members on your friends list could send you messages to your Piczo inbox (that we never asked for). This turned out to be a nightmare.

There are many of us with thousands of names on our friends list which meant we were being bombarded daily by hundreds of messages from fellow Piczo users about really stupid things as well as chain letters, hate messages about others sites etc. It was an absolute nightmare. Again many people left because of this problem and have to stress that it really was a problem!

Piczo also introduced a Piczo zone area where you could upload your work for others to use from the zone but that ended up a disaster. Visitors stopped visiting sites and only visited the zone for whatever they were looking for. It was also a haven for stealers.

Because Piczo introduced their own tuts and graphics, newbies will now visit them and not us which was a very unpopular move on their part. Many people left because of this.

There is also a massive problem with stealing and hacking. Piczo are extremely slow in reacting to complaints and you have to be really persistent with them to get anything done.

Piczo has gone down hill over the last year and everyone has noticed it. So many people have left or are leaving.

When you log on now, you have to wait ages to get in to your site. We all think this is because we are made to read all the ads on the login page first.

Then you get in to your site and more ads are everywhere. This makes our sites look very ugly and some of the ads are huge which cover up everything we have on our pages! Another reason why people have left.

Piczo have a long way to go to make things right and they know they have a problem!

If Piczo got rid of the messaging system, the Piczo zone and removed their hold on tuts/graphics and codes etc and let the Piczo users choose where they get their goodies from, then things might pick up again.

If it carries on as it is, more and more will leave and soon all they will be left with are the under aged users who use Piczo!
Posted by sammy on 6/11/2008 11:57 AM: i have used piczo for a long time and i love it!

why are you all saying this about piczo? if you actually looked you could see that there are site that have blends, buttons, icons, awards and way more so whats the point in being like that? the sites are great piczo improves all the time.

if you are a starter and you want to make your own site you should use piczo then move on to something bigger.

piczo is great for people who want to start on web site designing. then when they are readdy they may want to have more of a challenge and move to a different web site building prosess.

i have never come across someone who wants to hack your site. and if you do YOU CAN BLOCK THEM!!!

so please stop with the stupid coments