Archive for the ‘interesting reads’ Category
die, birdie; birdie, die! February 8th, 2010
The difference between Twitter and Facebook – and the reason why Facebook will likely be scalable and why Twitter likely won’t – comes down to the medium.
Twitter is ultimately a broadcast medium. Whether 1-1, 1-many, or many-many it invariably stops at just that – the exchange of data. Facebook on the other hand, is an ecosystem. Apart from communication it also creates interaction via “apps”.
The idea of paying real money for symbolic (virtual) value is nothing new – and the latest to pick up on it is Zynga.
On Facebook, people have been, for three years now, encouraged to pay $1 to do a variety of things, from “sending someone beer” (a beer icon, on their facebook page) to feeding your virtual dog (foopets) to buying some designer crop on Farmville.
Zynga is the firm behind Farmville and other games such as Fishville and Cafe World, and is positioned to make a lot of money on Facebook.
I stumbled across this short note discussing their business proposition and model (see below)
In the meanwhile, you can also read this Adweek article, titled “The tweet hereafter”.
I had a real shocker when Farmville published that they managed to raise more than half a million dollars for charity. How did they manage that?
So I did a little research and found amazing things about their business model:
1) Low cost
Creating an application in Facebook is relatively low cost compared to high capital investment industries like infrastructure and manufacturing. You’d just have to outsource the programming to an IT company or even individuals to do so. Moreover, the games are played on a repetitive basis so lesser development goes into building a complex game engine or storyline or graphics (unlike WOW).2) High Margins
Games like Farmville sell items using a virtual currency. Items are sold on a per item basis. Having an intermediate currency disassociates the buyer from the real price of the virtual good/item bought but at the same time, creating the same level of joy of obtaining as a real item. Essentially, Zynga sells “happiness”.3) Sticky games
Games developed by Zynga keeps you coming back for more and entrenches you deeper and deeper as you progress. No one wants to lose an empire after spending so much time invested in it. A4) Customers are the sales force
This has become so much apparent that the feeds on profiles have become spammy in a sense. However, it is tolerable as it works on a permission basis and friends do not mind something if it is posted by yourself. In fact, with the trust set already, the friends looking at the profiles would tend to want to get involved as well. There isn’t a need to even place an advert on Facebook to get more customers. Users do it for Zynga by putting such ads on the highly demanded real estate on their profile page. Another indicator of a strong sales force is the number of reviews outside Facebook itself.5) Repeat Customers
A facebook user does not only play one Zynga game but several of them at the same time. Essentially, Zynga upsells when they can as well as seen by the ads in the games.6) Huge base of Customers
Not everyone will purchase something. Just like me. However, you can see that Farmville alone has about 60 million active users. There are more than 10 games and still more coming up I believe. To make a rough estimation. If 1 in every 600 people makes a regular purchase of $1 daily (really a pinch of salt for many of us), it is already a daily revenue of $100,000 for Farmville.
Tags: digital advertising, facebook, future, Opinion, scalability, social networks, sustainability, twitter
Posted in Opinion, advertising, interesting reads, random musings | Comments (0)
on protest and activism December 7th, 2008
there’s been a lot said and shouted and argued in this past week about us needing to do something. We need to; but it’s always good to have that tempered by what the past has taught us. Came across this on the New York Times, written by one William Ayers, made re-famous by Republicans who said “Obama palled around with terrorists” and stuff, the essay by itself makes good reading, you can find that here
the part of the article I’m referring to is here:
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.
I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.
Tags: activism, history, hope, New York Times, protest, William Ayers
Posted in Politics/Ideas, interesting reads, reflections | Comments (0)
on divinity
December 3rd, 2008
on divinity, originally uploaded by s t e r n f a h r e r.
on divinity, originally uploaded by s t e r n f a h r e r.
“The world is divine because the world is inconsequential. That is why art alone, by being equally inconsequential, is capable of grasping it. It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it—just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations.
The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same seashore. But at least he who consents to his own return and to the return of all things, who becomes an echo and an exalted echo, participates in the divinity of the world.
By this subterfuge, the divinity of man is finally introduced. The rebel, who at first denies God, finally aspires to replace Him.”
- On Metaphysical Rebellion, L’Homme Révolté, Albert Camus
Tags: Camus, divinity, existentialism, rebellion
Posted in Photoblog, Politics/Ideas, interesting reads | Comments (0)
