50+ essays on viral marketing, social network monetization, product design and more
I finally decided to make a page listing all the reasonable essays I’ve written over the last 2 years on one page, which you can find here.
For the lazy folks, here’s a snapshot of the essays as of today (July 30):
Viral marketing and user acquisition
- Adwords is not enough for success on the consumer web
- Are your SEO efforts working, or failing?
- Bridging your traffic engine with your revenue engine
- Facebook viral marketing: When and why do apps “jump the shark?”
- Is your site really viral? Viral Branding versus Viral Action
- Social network marketing: Getting from zero to critical mass
- Viral marketing is not a marketing strategy
- What’s your viral loop? Understanding the engine of adoption
- 10 obvious strategies to ruthlessly acquire users
- 10 signs you’re a product fanatic
- 25 reasons users STOP using your product: An analysis of customer lifecycle
- Are people like lab rats? Using reward schedules to drive engagement
- Do you ever say, “MySpace is sooo ugly?” This blog’s for you…
- Does Facebook reflect your true friendships? How about e-mail?
- Facebook Apps: Why they’re focused on fun instead of utility
- Is your website a leaky bucket? 4 scenarios for user retention
- Public and private spaces, and why YouTube comments are so awful
- Social gaming design – Bartle types versus Web 2.0 participation pyramid
- Social network death spiral: How Metcalfe’s Law can work against you
- Technology always changes, but people always stay the same
- The design of social spaces
- User retention: Why depending on notification-driven retention sucks
- Users, customers, or audience – what do you call the people that visit your site?
- Why your friends list get polluted over time
- Your site will succeed or fail in the first 10 seconds
Online advertising and social network monetization
- 5 factors that determine your advertising CPM rates
- 5 things that make your social network monetize like crap
- Data portability: Is the social network data you’re hoarding treasure or trash?
- How NOT to calculate ad revenue
- Online advertising during a recession: 5 key trends for ad-based startups
- Vertical ad networks: What are they, and why did Cox just buy Adify for $300MM?
- What’s the value of a user on your site? Why it’s hard to calculate lifetime value for social network audiences
- Your ad-supported Web 2.0 site is actually a B2B enterprise in disguise
- 5 steps towards building a metrics-driven business
- Are you misusing Alexa numbers? (Probably)
- Lessons from the casino industry on engagement metrics and lifetime value
- Obama and McCain: How political marketing has evolved from offline to online
- omg I’m just a startup, I can’t do those fancy analytics!
- Recency Frequency and Monetization (RFM): Optimizing your notifications strategy
- From analog dollars to digital pennies: The crisis in traditional media
- Game design tutorial at the GDC
- MySpace versus Facebook: Analysis of both traffic and ad revenue, using Google Trends
- What every Web 2.0 entrepreneur should know about virtual goods
- Social Gaming Summit: Recap and observations
Entrepreneurship and startup life in San Francisco
- 10 tips for meeting people at industry events
- 5 ways to break past the San Francisco echo-chamber
- Are Web 2.0 startups wasting their time with Web 2.0 early adopters?
- Couple quotes on Facebook in Wired, Fortune, and NYT
- How do you find a badass co-founder, Part 2
- How do you find a badass co-founder?
- Is blogging worth it? What’s the ROI?
- Moving to SF and joining the tech community – Lessons from my first year
- What’s an Entrepreneur-in-Residence?
- What’s broken about online dating?
- What’s broken with online travel?
- What is your W2SAT* score? (*Web 2.0 Startup Aptitude Test)
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