Blyk goes from zero to 100k members in 6 months

It has been just six months since ad-funded MVNO, Blyk, went live amid a flurry of excitement and, I’m sorry to say, quite a bit of quiet ridicule from many in the mainstream media.

Well those who have been doubting the Blyk proposition should take a back seat and shut up. It certainly hasn’t been entirely plain-sailing for the MVNO, but then teething problems are to be expected.

100,000 members is a brilliant milestone. They’ve done it. I’m delighted. (See their blog announcement). What’s more, they’ve done this six months ahead of their schedule. Nice.

The key success factor for Blyk is when it comes to talking to their advertisers. This is what sold me on the concept, initially. Advertisers want stats. They need ROI. Any ROI, actually. (Ok, that’s me being a little bit cynical!) Anything that shows consumers responding.

Blyk, obviously, has this in spades. SPADES. In many cases, some advertising they’re doing is getting absolutely amazing response rates in the 30% (or thereabouts) region. Obviously. If you send out interesting and exciting stuff to your subscribers, matched (at least approximately) to their stated interests, you’re going to get some kind of response. Brilliant.

The moment I heard about the response rates I was double-sold on Blyk’s long term ability to survive — in the context of their business model.

There’s a lot to worry about though. Blyk’s members are continually bombarded with offers from the mainstream mobile networks and I’m sure it’s hard for them to ignore nice shiny new handsets and ‘unlimited text’ style deals. Ricky Chotai, our BlykWatch correspondent (there’s another edition due shortly) uses Blyk as his secondary account. That needs to change. Secondary is ok, but I’d like to see the majority of Blyk members swap to using the service as their primary mode of communications.

But with silly internet access pricing and a somewhat limited text/voice bundle, I reckon the MVNO should consider swapping to entirely free — or a small amount free and perhaps ask their members to stump up 20 pounds per month for unlimited use. Something like this.

Consider this sentence from Blyk’s 100k blog post announcement:

Put simply, young people like Blyk because it makes phone bills and contracts a thing of the past …

Well that’s absolutely un-true. It’s an ideal. But reality is, I’m sure, most Blyk members still contend with an account on T-Mobile, Vodafone, o2 and Orange on a regular basis. I’d like to see Blyk really live up to that sentence.

Anyway, congratulations to the Blyk team. I’m delighted to hear of their progress.

More innovation please! More excitement please!