Sexy Widget

Booyah and Foursquare: The Fun Side of Web Meets World

A while back, in what I will call the Sheep Throwing era of the Web, when everyone was starting to bitch about social media being too trivial and inane, and Umair Haque was (unfairly) calling Scoble (and the rest of Silicon Valley) a selfish, naval gazing, frat boy, and O'Reilly was steering his conferences towards a save the world theme, there were a couple of smart people talking about the concept of "Web Meets World."  The concept was simple - instead of fucking around tagging, commenting, and linking to each other's stuff, why don't we make the rubber hit the road, and actually apply these social media / web 2.0 tools to real world issues.  In other words, the web world needed to meet the real world to help solve the world's problems.

Union Square Ventures made a similar Web Meets World observation when announcing its investment in Meetup - the online tool for organizing and managing offline communities.  Here's Union Square Ventures partner Brad Burnham describing Meetup as the original "web meets world" company:

Two things will need to happen if the recent pace of innovation on the web is going to be sustained over the next few years. The next generation of services will need to have an impact on the real world and the real economy, not just an attention economy driven by self expression and discovery online.

Today, the backlash against fun and and non world saving apps seems to have subsided, likely due to Twitter.  Twitter's ability to be trivial, silly, and, yet sporadically, unintentionally useful has made it hip to be lightweight again, as has the success of social gaming companies like Zynga in achieving traction + revenue.

Now, Union Square Ventures lists "playful" as one of it's six guiding principles.  This institutionalized acceptance of "fun" is a big switch from even a year ago.

But let's get back to Web Meets World.  I've always held that the strongest online communities were the ones that had offline extensions of their online relationships.  The WebmasterWorld Forum was my first exposure to an online community that pushed its tentacles out to the offline world.  In 2003, when independent web publishers like myself were trying to make sense of Google's Florida update, the same guys who debated Google's algorithm with me in the forums congregated in Orlando to get drunk, and help each other live and in person.  Online meeting offline, thus making the online community stronger.

And there are plenty of other examples.  I'm convinced that Yelp succeeded while the similarly well funded Insider Pages, Zipingo, and Judy's Book failed in part due to its early emphasis on offline community.  I remember sitting in Zeitgeist in 2005 (?) and having two cute girls approach me and ask me if I wanted to go to a Yelp party.  These parties became the thing of legend, and increased Yelp's rep among urban hipsters, who now generate most of their content.

Again, online pushing out to offline, reinnforcing the online.

Now, I am starting to notice a new aspect to this Web Meets World phenomenon.

Web Meets World is becoming more than just the online relationships moving offline.  Now, there are companies like Foursquare and Booyah (and Brightkite) whose APPS are spanning offline and online.  Here's an excerpt about Foursquare from the Observer:

"If you're having a slamming Saturday night, there's no reason why it shouldn't feel like a game of Legend of Zelda," said Dennis Crowley, who was presenting his new mobile social networking application, Foursquare, on March 9 at the monthly New York Tech Meetup. "What we wanted to do is turn life into a video game. You should be rewarded for going out more times than your friends, and hanging out with new people and going to new restaurants and going to new bars--just experiencing things that you wouldn't normally do."

And here's a description of Booyah from TechCrunch:

Achievements are earned by way of various real-life activities, like going to the gym, uploading photos to Flickr and whatever else we do on a daily basis. They can be shared via Twitter and Facebook if you’re into that sort of thing. Lee compares it to earning merit badges in the Boy Scouts. Booyah Society is more or less a twist on modern Social Networks. It encourages you to share what you’re doing with others in Booyah in an attempt to earn achievements and badges.

These are fun apps - they're not trying to solve the world's problems, but they are trying to integrate themselves into the daily, real lives of their participants via mobile applications.  These apps are trying to make a game out of existing behaviors.  You're doing all this stuff anyway, say Booyah and Foursquare, why not win some points and badges and reputation and keep a digital diary and meet similar people while you're at it.

These companies are not feeding the world's hungry, or beating malaria, or rebuilding New Orleans - in fact, the infamous Keg Standing Scoble critique made by Umair Haque would probably be applicable to (and embraced by) both of these companies.  But their work in binding offline and online worlds is important for our industry.  It's showing us that Web Meets World doesn't have to be heavy and world changing -  people like to keep score, they like to win, and they like to have fun - even in their most mundane activities.  And mobile is providing the recording device. 

I suspect that we will see more apps that attempt to log existing offline behavior in a game format in an effort to blend online and offline - this is the fun side of Web Meets World.

iPhone Developer Wanted

My employer, RateItAll, is looking for an iPhone Developer.  Full details here.

Feel free to contact me directly.

Blubet's Slick Two Way Twitter Integration

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "The Outside In Social Media Strategy," in which I point out that while many web apps are working on pushing their content out to Facebook and Twitter, relatively few have explored accepting content from these services:

I've been talking a lot on this blog about maximizing your site's distribution via social media river services like Facebook and Twitter.

And there are LOTS of folks working on this.  In just the past few weeks, Socializr, Digg, Lunch.com, and my employer RateItAll, to name a few, have announced tighter Facebook and Twitter integration.  Spymaster is an even more pronounced example of a service that is uber-optimized for Twitter distribution.

The idea here is pretty simple - find ways to push, or help your users push, your site's activity out into the larger social media rivers, with the hopes of driving clicks back to home base.

Let's call this the Inside Out strategy.

But what would happen if we we flipped this strategy on its head?  What if in addition to optimizing your site's activity for distribution on Facebook and Twitter, you tweaked your service to accept content from activity within those services? 

A new service launched today with a pretty slick implementation of this sort of Outside In strategy.

Blubet is a social betting service where you make bets with your friends (e.g. "I bet the Phillies will win tonight!"), and win points for correct predictions.  Where it gets interesting is that Blubet doesn't care where you place your bets.  You can place them on Blubet.com, or you can place them on Twitter.

Here's how a bet placed on Twitter works:

Once you have synced your Blubet account with Twitter, you can send a direct message to @blubet with your bet.  Blubet processes your bet and updates your status with a link to the bet on Blubet.com.  So in effect, you can play Blubet without leaving Twitter.  Here's what the flow looks like:

In my original post on the subject, I suggested a couple of challenges for this sort of implementation:

"The main hurdles to overcome would seem to be A) The simplicity of the posting format; and B) the character limit."

Blubet's DM implementation is a good, explicit first step.  But as users grow more accustomed to the concept of apps living on top of Twitter, I expect apps to move even more aggressively towards just accepting Twitter content in its natural format, without forcing a DM or a hashtag.

You can see MG Siegler's write up of Blubet here.

Disclosure: Blubet's Director of Product is my wife.

Low Bar, High Ceiling - The Posterous Philosophy

How do you make your web service easy enough so that your mom can use it, yet cool enough so that your hipster, early adopter friends will also use it?

Posterous' Garry Tan calls this vision "Low Bar, High Ceiling" - a curious mix of design principles, product philosophy, and risk taking.

Garry was nice enough to join me and the RateItAll team at our offsite last week to discuss how a web service can make itself accessible and rewarding to a broad number of people, yet feature rich enough to appeal to early adopters.

First, some context on RateItAll.  Like any number of social media sites, RateItAll is in the business of enabling the publishing of user generated content.  Our world is a very specific flavor of UGC - a text review, preferably with some meat to it, associated with a 1-5 star rating, about a specific, structured item.  But it's user generated content nonetheless.

The fewer barriers we put between our user base and the publishing of a review, the better for our business.  Reviews are how we make money, reviews are how we attract new users, and reviews are how we build up long term relationships with our users.

With the possible exception of Twitter, I'm not sure if there is any company that has made content publishing easier than the lightweight blogging platform Posterous. 

In my opinion, Posterous stands out in three areas; 1) its use of email as a content publishing form; 2) its use of "lazy registration" principles; and 3) its elegant design.

There are a couple of philosophy things that really stood out to me from Garry's presentation:

- When people come to Posterous for the first time, Garry doesn't want them to join - he wants them to play with the app first.  Hunch is also a very good example of this philosophy.  Registration is a gradual process, not a hurdle.
- Posterous hides its advanced features (e.g. syncing with FriendFeed) - expert users will know how to find these features, and it's better not to confuse / overwhelm newbie users

I see these twin concepts of gradual registration and discreetly presented advanced features as having broad implications for many social media sites.  (You can see our take on gradual registration HERE).

As a result of this Low Bar, High Ceiling philosophy, Posterous sees a user base that is almost exactly split between expert users, and absolute beginners.

If you can reach both the newbies and the experts, you are really on to something.  And judging from Posterous' growth, they are really on to something. 

You can follow Garry on Twitter HERE.

Live Blogging Chris Anderson: Future of a Radical Price

from the Garage Ventures event at Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley.  Chris Anderson is the keynote.

Generation has grown up expecting things to be free.   Young people think it's obvious that stuff is free online.

Older generation thinks it's wrong, economically illiterate.

Half says no way, half says duh.  Free is the most misunderstood word in english language.

Word has two meanings: 1) freedom, free speech; 2) no price

Free as in liberty is good.  Free as in price might be a trick, possibly good.  By combining the two meanings, there is ambiguity.

There is semantic confusion, and historic confusion.

Jell-O gave away Jell-O recipe books door to door.  Would then stock local merchants.

Give away something cool, but that has no value without buying something else.  Gillette is another example. 

Free is not a new economical model - in all these cases, you still have to pay at some point.

What's happened is that we've switched from an economy of atoms, to an economy of bits.

Bits have near 0 costs of production and distribution.

The other thing is that's changed is that it's an deflationary system.  Cost declines are huge.  Bandwidth and storage coming down, as is processing.  Whatever you are doing now, will cost you half as much a year ago.  We've never seen deflation hit as fast and as long as this.  Muscle power to steam power brought things down fast, but then started going back up.  Assembly line, same thing.  These are step changes.

Digital Goods are the first good that are able to keep this deflation up.  These seem like decade long trends. 

Razors to digital swords.

Virtual goods want to be free. Like water wants to flow down hill.  Closer to a force of physics, than a hippie mantra.  It's not philosophy, not moral - it just is.  An effect of processing, storage, distribution going down.

The kids are not wrong, are not spoiled.  They have just internalized digital economics.

Default marginal cost is zero.  But there must be an economic model to explain this right?  No, we don't.  This is new.

In the 1800s some new concepts were discussed and defined.  Competition.  It's obvious now, but then, every product was different (without mass production).  With the rise of the industrial age, you started to see the same stuff being built, and hence competing.

Two economists had different takes.  First economist believed that producers would conspire to limit capacity to preserve price.  Bertrand said no, manufacturers will compete on price, until they got to the marginal cost of production.  Competition will drive prices down.  This was the end of the discussion.

The Internet has brought all this back - it's the most competitive marketplace the world has ever seen.  It's easy to compete.   Near zero cost of production is the norm.

The Internet is largely driven by the underlying cost of production.  If you don't make your stuff free, someone will do it for you.  Music.  We didn't make it free because we are bad, but because we could.  Free tends to win.

Transistors.  RCA sold ahead of the price.  Lost money at first, made gobs at end.  Lose money from everyone, but make it up on volume.

YouTube is not making money today, but it will make money tomorrow.  Odds are it will become profitable.  So will Twitter and Facebook.  You can lose money today, and make it tomorrow because the costs are coming down.

Argument: you can't compete with Free.  This is wrong.  Microsoft competes brilliantly with free.  In the 1970s Bill Gates convinced people to pay for software, not just hardware.  He created a market.  He wrote an open letter to hobbyists.

In the 1980s, MS' competitors started bundling software with computers, with an upgrade plan.  MS releated Microsoft Works.

In the 1990s, MS had to compete with piracy,  Pirates are the animal forces of economics.  MS is against piracy.... but, they didn't crush them.  Bill Gates: China is a developing economy.  We want them to pirate our stuff.  When they are ready to pay,perhaps they'll buy ours.  Lose money now, make it later.

Netscape released a free browser, which MS crushed by bundling IE with operating system.

2000s - MS competed with OpenSource.  You are not selling software - you are selling risk reduction.  You would get an SLA, a phone number.  A promise that somebody would make sure the software worked.  In open source, the RedHat's were doing the same thing.  Selling service and security, contractual support.

Now, they are giving their enterprise software for free to startups.  BizSpark.  It's the chinese pirates all over again.  Lose money now, make it later when the startups start making money.  Free as a form of marketing.

The bane of the Free discussion is the newspaper industry.  It's not free vs. paid, but ad driven versus freeemium.

1. The best model is a mix of paid and free
2. YOu can't charge for exclusives that will just show up later
3. Don't charge for the most popular content
4. Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches
5. The narrower the niche, the better

(alan murray, WSJ)

Freemium is the inversion of the free muffin.  Give away the majority, and charge the niches.

Churn rates are much lower for freemium models than those that charge up front.

Give away the head, sell the tail.

Two most interesting markets to look at Freemium: Video Games and iPhone Apps

Games are going from silver discs to online.  Games - free to play, but you better if you pay:

1. People will pay to save time. (buy teleportation tool!  save time!)
2. People will pay to lower risk
3. People will pay for things they love
4. People will pay for status (club pengin pets)
5. People will pay if you make them (and they are hooked) (times up!  time to pay)

Microsoft tells you that Open Source is "free like a puppy."

Q: where do you stand on micropyaments?
A: it's failed and failed and failed for two reasons.  One reason is going away (transaction costs).  Second reason is psychological barrier, penny gap.  Harder to make these go away.  I doubt we will see microcents like was originally prophesied, where everything will cost tiny amounts.

Q: What about quality?
A: Quality is funky word.  THe old way is that quality meant production quality. Quality is now about relevance, it's in the eye of the beholder. 

Q: Freemium works for EverNote.  We agree.  Optimistic about the future of the model.  (editor's note: this is not a question). 

A: This is not a question, but here's an observation.  First wave of Internet: big build audiences and slap the old model (ads) on top.  Second stage, be smarter with ads: adsense.  WIth Freemium, you need to build two products: 1) free, and 2) ideally, many paid.

Q: Where's the lockin for expert content?
A: Now it's DRM, but that will die.  With movies, we don't know the answer yet.  Going to near zero cost of production, to near zero cost of consumption.  Netflix you can watch as many as you want for $14.95.  Has to be a volume business.

Q: how will Newspapers use micropayments?
A: I don't think they will.  We know subscriptions well. 

Q: Price falls to marginal cost of production.  Health insurance pricing is more competitive now, because of abundance of information.  How do you last through the free zone to get to the profits?

A: great question.  You need to find the gaps.  Don't tackle Gmail and Yahoo Mail head on.  MS literally tried paying people to search.  Less than free. Startups can't do that.

Q: in a content model, you said 30 day free is not ideal.  WHat's the suggestion?
A: problem is you are giving people a real easy reason to get out.  You give enough free so that they get utility, and then upsell them.  ONce they are engaged it's not spam.

Q: With Wired, you can get stuff for free or pay for it.  Why pay for it?
A: Everything is free, but you get a superior format if you pay.  Print.   The packaging is important.  Online is not as good.  Pictures are thumbnails.  Our model is we convert some fraction of the online to print, because offline is superior.  Problem is not enough know that the print experience is so superior.  How do hint how superior the print side.

Q. Perception of free.  Webkinz - the subscription is bundled into the animal.
A. Also neopets, toy companies.  Game is free to pay, but characters are unlocked by buying code.  Marketing to children is fascinating.

Q.  With tiered service, what are your thoughts on number of tiers?  Before it gets confusing?
A. The upside of 30 day free trial is you can sample and try it.  The bad news is the level of commitment is minimal.   Every product is different - I think two paid tiers is a good level, and one free.

Facebook Launches Widgets with an Eye Towards SEO

In yet another sign that old fashioned, embeddable widgets are experiencing a bit of a rebirth, Facebook today announced Fan Boxes.  Fan Boxes allow a Facebook Page's activity stream and / or fans to be displayed in a sidebar widget on any site.

Here are my initial observations:

• Facebook chose to expose a JavaScript, not Flash, widget.  This means it will work fine on places like Blogger and TypePad, but won't work on places like MySpace, Wordpress, and uh, Facebook.
• Facebook becomes the second widget publisher to use Facebook Connect in a widget.  The first was RateItAll.
• It's interesting to me that Facebook chose not to use any easy add buttons from companies like Clearspring or Gigya.  They just expose the embed code and leave it up to the user to muddle through.
• The activity piece of the widget reminds me of the Plaxo Pulse widget.  Will we see a Facebook User activity widget follow?
• Minimum width for the widget is 200px - this rules out narrow sidebar placement.
• Who says Facebook doesn't care about SEO?  Check out this little, bare link beneath the bottom of the widget.  And they're optimizing for the company / band / public personality name!

In classic Hub & Spoke fashion, Facebook offers a clear incentive to companies, bands, and public personalities to add the Fan Box to their site, blog.  Because Facebook Pages have the ability to publish to the newsfeeds of their fans, the more fans you get, the better your communication channel to your users.  This is the new email distribution list.

For more on the Facebook Fan Boxes, see TechCrunch, Inside Facebook, and the Facebook Blog.