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- On social ad revenuesJuly 17 2008
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Social apps have the very same users of social networks like MySpace and Facebook (more than $100 per user, at last valuation and approximate current user count). On the other hand, social apps largely depend on social networks to acquire and reach users. Further, the industry is young and prone to shake-ups, so a high-beta discount rate must apply.
The social application developer segment is quickly bifurcating into companies that look more and more like a new breed of ad networks and those focused on depth and user engagement first and foremost, the most ambitious companies trying to build something like an “inner-brand” (e.g., “I go to Facebook, where I can SuperPoke! people when I want to be clever,” to toot my own horn).
While there can be some debate as to which one is generating more cash today, it should be obvious that the social ad network model is self-destructive at the limit: a meaningful increase of already abundant page views in the low-eCPM social networking ad market implies further price drops, unless the great ad spend migration really speeds up. The standard “more reach than all of the networks combined” counter-argument makes little sense for ad networks — the social networks have all the incentives to make that not be true before too long; it’s difficult enough for them to monetize their pages.
There are two subtler variants of the social ad network approach currently being tested by v
- Developer incentives in social networking platformsJanuary 29 2008
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Synopsis
Designing a social platform is in some ways similar to designing a competitive multi-player game. The following considers the implications of this similarity in some detail.
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Definitions
Today’s social networking platforms (platform here defined as a social site’s capability to offer third-party software to its users) are already diverse, yet their purpose is the same: providing users with reasons to return to said social site — reducing user fatigue and churn, increasing the elusive fun factor, adding value that the site itself does not have the resources, the expertise, or the inspiration to build.
Developers and the platform (its owners) each have a set of goals. Platform’s ability to achieve its goals is largely predicated on creating an environment where developers can reach as many of theirs as possible.
Platform developers have some or all of these goals:
- Earn money
- Acquire fame
- Procure intellectual stimulation
The goals of the platform, governed by the key purpose described above, are as follows:
- Attract and keep top developer talent
- Encourage development of net-positive products
- Maximize constructive competition among developers
- Minimize objectively net-negative developers & products
The platform owner wields the follo
- Tom Brady for President!January 24 2008
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Some of our products are skin-able, allowing users to express their opinions or state their affiliations within our products. These skins are mostly user submitted, but are published for all users to see and reuse, so we can observe some interesting things about skin usage and popularity.
Here’s the relative popularity of skins referring to NFL players (italicized) and US presidential candidates combined in a single list:
- Brady
- Obama
- Favre
- E.Manning
- P.Manning
- Tomlinson
- Mccain
- Clinton
- Huckabee
- Romney
- Edwards
- Giuliani
The absolute counts are quite large, the skin selection is exclusive (you cannot set more than one), the product audience is an important get-out-the-vote demographic, so the order of this list is at least somewhat significant. I read somewhere that Obama was favored on the internets (or is it just facebook?), and sure enough, he has over twice the “votes” of the next presidential candidate, but Tom Brady can definitely take him — he’s got almost a 20% lead over Barak.
- How to successfully launch a social networking development platform.January 22 2008
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I decided to jot down some observations and thoughts on launching successful social networking development platforms… like the one facebook launched at f8, Bebo’s clone of facebook’s, or the one MySpace will be launching, etc. This is a list of some observations of what facebook (and Bebo) did well pre-, at, and post-launch.
1. Create a feeling of technological openness. Top-notch developers love to know the ins and outs early - seeing the early bugs, unfinished features, etc. Visiting and engaging the CTOs of pre-launch partner companies will create instant camaraderie between the platform development team and the developer community.
2. Treat developers equally, but leverage the best ones by letting them closer in. After launch, quickly giving the technically superior developers direct access to members of the platform team (via a special email address and IM), will allow them to report and help debug real-time performance problems, and further cement the teams’ respect for each other.
3. Plan and manage a community, and introduce a community manager early – ideally, these are pretty technical people that gain fast credibility with hard-core developers. Introduce a few colorful personalities to make developers feel welcome, pre-launch. These people should organize meet-ups, participate in chats, IRC channels, mailing lists, visit companies in person. The key impression to create is that someone from the platform team is
