Verizon's Sad Attempt To Woo Millennials Falls Flat On Its Face

from the hipster-grandpa dept

We've noted repeatedly how Verizon really wants to pivot from stodgy, old protectionist telco to Millennial-focused media and advertising juggernaut as it makes a broader push for a greater slice of online advertising markets. Company executives apparently believe this is accomplished by ceasing network fiber upgrades, attacking popular consumer protections, repeatedly violating consumer privacy, and gobbling up failed 90's internet brands like Yahoo and AOL.

Except Verizon's hip new brand revolution hasn't been much to write home about.

It technically began with the launch of a doomed "news" website named Sugarstring that imploded after writers revealed they couldn't talk about net neutrality or mass surveillance. The company's acquisition of Yahoo was also plagued with issues, from Yahoo's mammoth, undisclosed hacking scandal to revelations of the company's wholesale spying on user e-mail accounts for the government (not that this latter issue bothered Verizon much).

At the heart of the effort was Verizon's Go90 streaming video service. Launched in 2015 alongside mountains of hype, the Millennial-focused effort avoided using Verizon's brand name for obvious reasons. Unfortunately for Verizon, the service was quickly and repeatedly derided as "a dud" by Verizon's own media partners. In just a few years the effort saw repeated layoffs, and despite several efforts to bring in top talent and relaunch the service, the company this week finally acknowledged that the service will be headed out to pasture:

"Following the creation of Oath, go90 will be discontinued,” a company spokeswoman said in an email. “Verizon will focus on building its digital-first brands at scale in sports, finance, news and entertainment for today’s mobile consumers and tomorrow’s 5G applications.” Representatives of go90 have begun informing content providers about plans to end both the go90 brand and the video streaming app by July 31, online magazine Digiday reported earlier on Thursday citing four sources familiar with the situation. It said go90 will return shows and content rights back to its production partners. Verizon has spent about $1.2 billion on Go90 since its 2015 launch, Digiday reported, citing two sources .

That $1.2 billion would have gone a long way in upgrading those aging, taxpayer-subsidized DSL lines Verizon refuses to upgrade across numerous states. Meanwhile, Verizon's other video efforts have hit some roadblocks as well. The company recently quietly backed away from plans to launch its own live streaming platform, hinting it would likely now be partnering with an existing, unnamed industry player instead of trying to actually be creative, innovative and disruptive itself. This whole actual competition thing is hard.

Needless to say, a generation of being a government-pampered telecom monopoly left Verizon ill-prepared for its marketing and media gambit, and the company's own incompetence and lack of innovative DNA have made for rough sledding early on. The company's history is now littered with failed efforts to actually be innovative and disruptive, including the Verizon app store, its video joint venture with RedBox, and numerous other "me too" initiatives under the discontinued VCAST brand.

Verizon's struggles with head to head competition explains why the company consistently feels the need to tilt the playing field unfairly in its favor, as the company's decade-long attack on net neutrality makes painfully clear.

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Filed Under: competition, go90, innovation, millennials, video

Companies: verizon