Amp'd is Going Down

It's been a long slow death, but barring a miracle, today is Amp'ds final day.

Here's the core problem; People don't live in verticals. People aren't only music fans or sports fans or whatever. People live in horizontals. An individual has a breadth of interests. The affinity groups a successful MVNO has to appeal to cannot be vertical interest based. Vertical interest credit card affinity groups work because people carry more than one credit card. People generally don't have more than one cell phone.

While MVNO's are an intrinsically broken model, I can think of some cases where they could work well. Being a "hip cellular carrier" is not one of them.

Tracfone (an MVNO for people with poor/no credit) seems to be doing just fine. If WalMart had an MVNO, I bet it would do well too. They could regularly push SMS or MMS coupons to users. They could trigger custom messages on in-store displays via bluetooth. The mind boggles at what WalMart could do with an MVNO.

Update: Amp'd users get to live for another week

Amp'd files for Bankruptcy, Techcrunch Jumps the Shark

I read yesterday on MoCo News that the lavishly funded MVNO Amp'd has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. I can't say I'm terribly surprised. MVNO's are a risky proposition. They have no technology. There is nothing defensible. They directly compete against their most important suppliers. All they have is their brand.

This morning I read on TechCrunch, in an article that solely cited the MoCo news article, that Amp'd had "imploded" and that TechCrunch was putting them in their "deadpool". If you are going to just copy a story from one of your competitors at least get the facts right and don't make up your own embellishments. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is when you are ceasing operations, chapter 11 is when you are re-orging and continuing operations. Mike Arrington is a lawyer for christ's sake. Was he absent the day in law school when they taught bankruptcy law? Yes I know Arrington didn't write the article, but he is the editor. For me this is really the tipping point of TechCrunch's uselessness as a news source. Last week they totally screwed up the Wallstrip story. Now there's this? They are now merely PR flacks. They've become a less rude ValleyWag (who incidentally, got the story right).