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  • Social Gaming Summit 2009 

    Pano 4:02 pm on June 30, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Kudos to Charles Hudson for a splendid job running the Social Gaming Summit. It was a great turnout, over 500 folks showed up well north of the 200 or so they expected.

    A few big takeaways:

    1. There is no ip in casual games. Duplicating each other’s games has been around forever, but now Zynga has turned it into a scaleable business, note Farmville copying Farmtown. Implication — the cost of development of social games is going to go up in order to create barriers of differentiation/e
    2. Game developers are trying to figure out Act 2. Single games companies are turning into publishers and echoing the studio model developed by the movie and video game businesses.
    3. Virality leads to scale, but monetizing scale requires engagement which is more about return rates than session time.
    4. FB Connect is still unproven as a viral channel. FB connect shows great promise, but it does not have the functionality yet that is available through FB apps.
    5. Transparency is a critical culture to create a rising tide and therein float all boats. The market is so large and monetization potential is so huge that everyone can benefit. The more information that is shared about what is working and not, will improve everyone’s chances to build great businesses.
     

  • There is no place like New York City 

    Pano 2:08 am on June 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    I have had a love hate relationship with NYC, having lived there for 20 years from 1983-2003, through some of the best and worst times NYC had to offer.
    But there are moments like the one I experienced yesterday, which cover more than a multitude of problems.
    I walked into the Barnes and Noble on B’way and 82 to hangout, killing some time on my laptop until my old friend Steve got off work.

    Up at the coffee area, I was deep into email and board prep, when I started to notice the conversation of 3 elderly people next to me. They were clearly speaking in German but with a Germanic/Yiddish accent. I could not resist and asked them how long they had been in the States. Their English was heavily accented despite their answer — more than 60 years in the US.

    I was in the presence of survivors of the Holocaust! They were not concentration camp survivors, but survivors nonetheless.

    The elderly, distinguished woman had grown up in Belgium only to flee with her family when she was 14. She noticeably teared up when I asked her if she spoke to schools or other organizations as a way to help us all to never forget. She commented that it was pretty painful to recall.

    The other two men both left Germany right after Krystalnacht as young boys around the ages of 14. They kept repeating to me that no one saw Hitler coming. Despite his book and the increasing noise, no one imagined how evil he was.

    Where else but NYC would you meet Holocaust survivors in a Barnes and Noble, hanging out chatting in Yiddish and German?

    I was very blessed to have my kids spend their formative years growing up in NYC. They met a number of people like the trio yesterday and homeless people as well — that’s another story — all of whom have left an indelible mark on their lives.

    The diversity of NYC is like no other city in the world.

     

  • Freemium Model at a Gas Station 

    Pano 2:40 pm on May 29, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Who would have thought the freemium model would have hit the gas station business, but I saw it today driving back from a great team bonding trip white water rafting in Maine.

    As I approached the gas station, I noticed that there was no credit card facility at the pump. Nor did they tell me that I had to pay first. They let me fill my tank of gas and then wander into the convenience store to pay.

    When I asked the owner (it was a small store) why there was no credit card facility on the pumps (which I had never, ever seen on new pumps), he told me that he makes no money on gas.

    By driving folks into the convenience store he can “upsell them” (my words) on much more profitable items.

    Gas was not just a loss leader, it was a critical gate to get folks to spend more. But importantly, he understood the value of charging after the fact, so that people would get the ease of use pumping their gas first and paying afterward. (I wonder how many of us have been totally frustrated having to pay first!).

    He had to special order the pumps because they don’t come that way.

    Lessons learned:

    1. He understood his customer acquisition costs and his margins at every step in the customer lifecycle
    2. He made it as easy as possible for customers to get their top priority done quickly (key point here!)
    3. He made sure they could pay (a lower priority) with some inconvenience, but not too much
    4. He made sure he had good stuff for folks to buy in their path to paying for gas with minimum fuss
    5. He went to the extra effort to special order the pumps to see his vision through.

    How many times have websites denied me the ability to get my top priority done quickly. Who is likely to spend more — a happy customer or a pissed off customer?

    I wanted to show the new pumps, but google maps only has the old ones.

     

    • ace bhattacharjya 10:45 am on May 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Interesting post, Pano. But I won’t support business models that slow transactions down to benefit them. (Godaddy, j’accuse!). Seems the opposite of user centric design unless the owner thought he was providing a service by selling them things.

      One note: I wonder if he computed the risk of non-paying customers- whether through theft or my accident . Given that he’s doing something that is not currently the norm (pay at the pump), I wonder how many people might drive away without paying at all. A few SUV tankloads later, this alone might break his new business model.

      Ace

      • Pano 10:29 pm on May 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply

        Hey Ace,
        I agree on the point of user design, unless users do want more than just gas but don’t think about it upfront. I think he did compute the cost of non-paying intuitively — these kinds of small towns in Maine have no police force. When I asked how they resolved issues, they chuckled. So I guess the crime rate is really low. When we look at the online world, lots of companies have built big companies by getting to scale first.

  • Flash by any other name is still flash 

    Pano 8:38 pm on May 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    The number of Flash games purporting to differentiate by claiming to modifying flash are legion- almost everyone dies something to make flash more suitable for game development – to the point that the differentiation is now commoditized.

     

  • Google Doesn't Get It -- Pull is not Push 

    Pano 7:51 pm on May 12, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: advertising, search

    The announcement that Google is getting out of the radio business is no surprise.  Not because they could not measure performance of the audio ad business, which of course is not resolvable to a formula that smart engineers can go off an code.

    Rather, they confuse their success in a pull business with businesses that are push driven. The differences are huge and need to be understood — otherwise its a square peg trying to insert itself into a round hole.

    Pull vs Push

    Google ad words is a pull business. Users are searching for something. They are motivated to find it. And when they do they are very likely to act on it. Hence, they have seen huge success because those ads are ads that the user is specifcally interested.

    Contrast those ads to social media ads which are doing very poorly across the board. Why? Users are not looking for what the ads on social networking sites deliver. Without that intention, users will treat ads with hostility.

    Entertainment vs information

    Radio ads are push ads. You are trying to insert a concept into a users mind when they really don’t want the interruption. That is why radio and tv ads have to be entertaining. You need to arrest the users attention to listen or watch the ad.

    Google adwords are really informational. There is no sex appeal to these ads. Just words in a very constrained space. Information is key in adwords. Get your point across fast and get a motivated searcher/buyer to click on your ad.

    Directly trackable vs indirectly measurable

    There is an obvious reason why TV and Radio ads are really not measurable. Advertisers are interrupting the user experience to insert a message. They cannot afford to be even more obnoxious and insist that they push a button, type in a code, call a number, etc. Its enough to get the user to actually listen and retain the messaging of the ad.

    Adwords is entirely trackable because the CT is precisely what the user is wanting to do — Google is doing the user a service instead of interrupting a user experience. It makes a huge difference when the advertising is inherently part of the experience instead of a distraction from it.

    Until Google realizes these basic truths, they will continue to stumble in trying to treat all of advertising as pull when much of the ad business is push.

    I am willing to bet that Gmail ads suffer the same bad performance rates as social media ads. Who wants to be advertised to when you are doing something else entirely. I doubt Google will ever break Gmail ads out for that very reason — they are terrible performing.

    So on top of the very difficult business of trying to track the performance of an audio ad — (btw. what were they thinking in the magazine space that users would type in a URL off of a magazine page to indicate performance. The only thing that proves is what a stupid idea that was.) — they have the impossible task of motivating folks to listen to an ad that is driven by an algorithm instead of human reason.

     

  • 3D is 3D, Not 2D 

    Pano 12:48 pm on April 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 3D

    Getting frustrated by the usurping of the term 3D. Stuff that is clearly not 3D is getting tagged as such. Bweek is an early culprit http://tinyurl.com/c52b5w. Why do I care? Because it confuses the market. Is their work important? Absolutely. Products like Cooliris are very cool and may help redefine the casual UI, but it is not an immersive, synchronous experience — the kind that only 3D tech can provide.

     

  • Telling a Story 

    Pano 12:46 pm on April 14, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Time is short for everyone. Fewer people are being asked to do more and more work. Information overload has hit us hard. The tools to produce jazzy, multimedia presentations are ever stronger.

    All of the above suggests that presentations are therefore even harder to make memorable. No one has the time to listen to you drone on and on about something you think is terribly important, but keeps them from the next meeting.

    In other words, the multimedia overload called the Internet has not changed a fundamental, time-immemorial fact — stories , not effects, hold people’s attention during and well after a meeting.   A story is hard to tell, but hugely powerful.

    Even though the book “Beyond Bullet Points” has been out for years, I remain amazed that every person who makes a presentation does consider this as important as bullets to a hunter.

    Here are some of the key highlights you need to follow if you want to make a memorable presentation.

    1. Write your script first in one-two sentence headlines. No graphics, no bullets.
      If it does not make sense and flow in words, it will certainly not flow with graphics.
    2. Think of your presentation as a 3 act play and follow the well-understood notion of the purpose of each Act.
      Stories are stories regardless of where they are told.
    3. Be purposeful about your presentation tenor or tone
      Do you intent to make the tone of your presentation informational, advisory/consultative, forward-looking, retrospective, decisive, inspirational, etc.? Pick one and be consistent in your script. Keep in mind #2 so that you are deliberate about when you hit the high point. For example, informational suggests the high point comes at the end compared to a decisive, action-taking message where the high point is early.
    4. Support each headline with facts, not more theories
      The best way to confuse your audience is to try to prove a theory with another theory. You will take your audience down a rat hole and off of your message very quickly to the point that your audience will have no idea what your original point was.
    5. A picture is worth a thousand words
      Avoid bullets and use pictures instead. Finding the right picture that conveys your headline is hard but invaluable. People remember pictures. We rarely remember words.
    6. Make sure you have a smooth transition between each point/slide.
      Nothing is worse than silence between slides. It shows that you do not have mastery over your subject — you are a slave to the bullets. And that tells your audience — “I don’t need to listen to him/her. I can just read the bullets myself.
    7. Understand up front how much time you have in the meeting and how much time you want to devote to the presentation.
      There is an old saying — Do the demo, lose the sale. The more you talk, the less likely you will be to close any business. If the prospect is not doing the talking, then you will not have a good handle on what they need and might seek from you. you might as well go to Vegas and throw dice — your odds might just be better there.

    Storytelling is an art form. The best story tellers could use any medium to convey their message.  Understand that the tools at our disposal can actually make the job harder because our audience can be awed by a visual or audio effect the first time they see it.

    So if you were the first person that uses video in a presentation you might be in luck, but probably not. They will say “That was really cool” Which is code for “Very interesting presentation but I have no idea how I would use your product or service. “

    Be a story teller. Its a lot more fun.

     

  • Big Hire for Hangout 

    Pano 12:00 pm on March 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: content, Disney, entertainment, Goslin

    In the life of a company, there are moments when the direction it takes is highly influenced by a singular event. I have seen everything from a customer or investor commitment to the hire of the right or wrong person radically change the trajectory of the company.

    For Hangout, the hire of Mike Goslin (http://partners.hangout.net/PressRelease.aspx) is a huge trajectory changer for us. Mike is one of those rare individuals, who spans multiple disciplines across multiple venues. For a startup like Hangout, the value of such a flexible and well-rounded individual cannot be underestimated.

    Mike is an engineer at heart, a mentor and manager in his personality and a businessman in his wallet. At Disney, he started out as an individual contributor in the Theme Parks business, where he learned the ins and outs of creating entertainment experiences using technology — a forerunner of the whole immersive experience now playing out on the web.

    He took that expertise and started the Disney virtual world business, single-handedly. With a small team of 10 guys, he built Toontown as Disney’s first successful casual MMOG for kids. Toontown has become such a success, that Disney grew this business under Mike to over 6 virtual worlds properties with over 300 people working underneath him.

    Mike was instrumental in each of those properties coming to existence — in a sense — an entrepreneur in residence at Disney. But like many large corporations, Disney could not move fast enough for Mike. Getting back to building experiences is where is heart lies. Consequently, Hangout is benefiting tremendously from Mike’s presence in less than 1 week of employment.

    I’ll post again about the kinds of changes we are seeing and expect to see with Mike’s arrival, but I can say that we are bringing world class entertainment mojo to a great technology platform with Mike’s arrival.

    In this market, without both, its going to be increasingly hard to get above the noise. There is no question that Mike puts Hangout in a league all its own.

    More to come…

     

    • RaiulBaztepo 8:30 am on March 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Hello!
      Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
      PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
      See you!
      Your, Raiul Baztepo

    • PiterKokoniz 2:32 pm on April 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Hi !!! ;)
      My name is Piter Kokoniz. oOnly want to tell, that I’v found your blog very interesting
      And want to ask you: is this blog your hobby?
      Sorry for my bad english:)
      Thank you:)
      Your Piter Kokoniz, from Latvia

  • Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation -- Perception vs Reality 

    Pano 1:59 pm on March 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    We all have experiences with how perception often overrides reality. What appears to be true is much more appealing than what is true.

    As I read Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin, I was continually struck by how our perception of the events of the day are far different than the reality.

    The latest reality check was around the Emancipation Proclamation — a historic document and key turning point in the move to end slavery. We all learned in school how this document declared that slaves will be free. And Lincoln looks like an extraordinary hero (which he still was) for writing this document and putting the process in place.

    What is not discussed is the cause of this document — namely military necessity, nor moral indignation or righteous anger. The South was using slaves to man key military support functions, freeing up their soldiers to do battle — in essence greatly expanding the size of their army.

    To counter this, Lincoln pursued the freeing of slaves to fight in the Union army. Had the South kept the slaves on the farm, it is very unlikely that the proclamation would have ever happened during Lincoln’s tenure.

    So, are we taught that Lincoln was the ultimate pragmatic statesman and world leader — much more Metternich than Ghandi? We yearn for Ghandi figures, but we are often best led by Lincolns and Metternichs.

     

  • Blockbuster will be sold for piece parts in less than 2 years 

    Pano 1:21 pm on March 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    I know this sounds either naive or obvious, but my forecast is not based on the advent of netflix and nextflix streaming or some other obvious disintermediator. Its part competition, but its also part bad service on their part. While one or the other could take a long time to bring Blockbuster down, the combination will kill them much faster.

    Blockbuster came out with a great program back called Moviepass in 2002 (or so) to provide unlimited movie watching, provided you take out no more than 3 videos at a time. The selection was usually current and inventory has been generally good and the stores were ubiquitous — all good signs of a successful consumer experience. My family was avid almost daily trekkers to Blockbuster — more than the bank or drugstore or food store.

    But they are losing to the internet on sheer convenience but are still winning on inventory. They have lost to Netflix on inventory and are barely ahead in convenience — convenience is defined as immediacy.

    So I was dumbfounded this weekend when I had to pay for a movie that I could not get at my home store. I had to drive 5 miles and pay retail because my movie pass was not valid across Blockbuster stores. What kind of rule and service is that in the wake of the video streaming and Netflix onslaught?

    But like the corporate dinosaurs they have become, Blockbuster is ignoring the competition instead of creatively responding to it. There is a clear spot Blockbuster could play in — the immediacy of great movies across any Blockbuster store.

    Except they have not responded well. It costs them nothing to link the stores and their website and create a larger critical mass of inventory and value to a local population.

    What are these guys thinking? They are already losing the convenience battle to the Internet and are barely staying ahead of Netflix in terms of immediacy. Whatever advantage they had in inventory is lost by not linking stores. Add the cost of the inventory on their books as compared to streaming and you can figure out that the movie houses will not be able to keep Blockbuster afloat by insisting on DVD sales instead of streaming sales.

    Bye bye movie pass and $240/year. You have served me well, but refuse to evolve.

     

    • Peter 7:39 pm on March 16, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I largely agree. Blockbuster had it good when people where used to driving to a store to rent movies. Things evolved. Netflix came out with movies by mail, and then internet streaming started. Blockbuster recognized both of these, but came to the game late and with products that were not of good quality.

      I used Netflix for awhile, but have now moved onto VUDU. I didn’t like waiting for movies in the mail, so I decided VUDU was the best option. It suits me nicely and usually has the latest movies quickly and in great quality. Both Netflix and Blockbuster can’t deliver that yet.

      The movie rental business is great to watch right now, no pun intended. So many companies are evolving and new technology seems to be coming out everyday. The consumers are winning either way.

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