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Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen

Analysis on viral marketing, user experience, game design, and online ads


2009 conference schedule for the digital media industryJanuary 5

The 2009 conference season begins
Happy new year! Recently, Jason Oberfest of MySpace put together a great resource of a bunch of digital media tech conferences. I added a couple ad-related conferences, and he agreed to graciously share.

Is this list complete?
Of course this list isn’t complete at all. If there’s anything missing in the list, please leave a link in the comments!

The digital media conference list (so far):

Demos and General Technology

Platforms, apps, and widgets



Will be in Seattle on Jan 8th and 9thJanuary 4

Still on blog vacation - hopefully not for long
Sorry for the lack of posts guys - still semi on blog vacation ;-)

Anyway, I will be in Seattle on the 8th and 9th of January - if anyone wants to meet up while I’m there, here’s where I’m going to be:

  • 8th: Downtown Seattle (free after 5:30pm)
  • 9th: Downtown Bellevue (free after 5:30pm)

If I get any interest, I’ll set up drinks or meet people for coffee or something. Let me know, just shoot me an email at voodoo [at] gmail.

See you there!

AndrewChensBlog?i=XrWmML

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Freemium business model case study: AdultFriendFinder ARPU, churn, and conversion ratesDecember 29 2008

A case study for the Freemium business model
There’s been a lot written about the Freemium model over the years, particularly from Fred Wilson at AVC. Here’a couple articles I’ll recommend on the topic:

Anyway, given the great interest in direct monetization due to the economy, I decided to write a post on the topic as well, focusing on AdultFriendFinder, which has recently released a bunch of great data.

AdultFriendFinder files for IPO
Recently, the holding company FriendFinder Networks, Inc., the owner of AdultFriendFinder (and Penthouse), filed to go public. As such, they released a Form S-1 where they go through many of their overall business metrics - you can read the full SEC documents here.

OK, it’s a lot more boring than you might expect from an adult-oriented conglomerate. It’ll put you to sleep.

There’s a ton of data in the S-1, but I’ll just summarize some of the most interesting st



Twitter links (while still on blog vacation!)December 18 2008

I’m still on blog vacation but I figured I would reblog the links I’ve posted to my twitter account over the last week or two. You can follow me on Twitter if you like these! Many are work unrelated.

Anyway, here we go:

Taking a quick blog vacation…December 1 2008

BRB!

Here are some of the partially-written drafts I have saved in my Wordpress account - no promises on whether or not I’ll finish them though :)

  • Forget about user engagement - just focus on retention!
  • Launching new product features: Metrics for internal distribution
  • The Joel Test for data-driven decisions
  • Do data-driven models lead to uninspired products?
  • Are websites really better than desktop apps for user acquisition?
  • The social gaming business 101: Lifetime value, cost per acquisition, player retention and lifetime value
  • 5 key factors for increasing retention metrics
  • Dual currencies in virtual economies
  • Elements of every virtual items-based social game
  • How to calculate an ARPU and why it’s important
  • 5 common objections to making data-driven decisions
  • “Yet another ad network?” Why the future of advertising points at more networks, not less
  • Are you building features that no one will use?
  • “OMG I’VE JUMPED THE SHARK”: 10 things to do after the TechCrunch crowd has moved on
  • Learning about retention metrics from retail and catalog marketers
  • Designing social networks: Real friends versus online friends
  • Social gaming and BBS door games: Learning from past casual asynchronous games
  • Why “