Let's just add in a little virality It happens all the time. I’m meeting with an entrepreneur, who is telling me about a really innovative product idea for a consumer website. And I’m liking it. We’re going back and forth on product ideas. And before I know it, we’re approaching the end of our meeting. I then ask them, “So, how are you going to acquire customers.” The most disappointing answer is when they say “Oh, we’ll just make it viral.” Virality is something that has to be engineered from the beginning…and it’s harder to create virality than it is to create a good product. That’s why First Round Capital’s website has always said: “Too many companies treat marketing and sales as a tactical afterthought. Customer acquisition (also called distribution) is the number one challenge facing consumer web properties.
Social Media Gets Professional Agostini v. Felton - Religious Freedom Page R.A. and other teenagers allegedly made and burned a cross on the lawn of the black family that lived across the street. R.A. was charged with disorderly conduct under the St. Paul Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance, which prohibits the displaying of symbols, objects, graffiti, etc. that one "knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in other on the basis or race, color, creed, religion, or gender." The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the statute was not too broad and unallowably content based, and thereby not a violation of the First Amendment because the statute was limited to "fighting words" which are not constitutionally protected anyway. The Court, with no Justices dissenting, ruled that the statute is unconstitutional, as it is a clear violation of the First Amendment. The Court must adhere to the construction of the Minnesota Court, and we accept their ruling that the statute only pertains to "fighting words."
Facebook viral marketing: When and why do apps “jump the shark?” Excel spreadsheet download For those of you who are interested in the gory details, please download the following spreadsheet here: Viral and Retention Excel Model (Click to download) Math warning! This blog post will be a little more technical than usual, so I apologize to those of you who are bored by this. See this image before? That’s what happens when you “jump the shark” and your app goes from successful to completely not successful. Modeling user acquisition First off, let’s look at some ways to model user acquisition. Invite conversion rate % = 10%Average invites per person = 8.00Initial user base = 10,000Carrying capacity = 100,000 (note that these are just example numbers) To understand how these constants work, you basically want to think about how viral marketing works. That means that in the first time period, you have 10k. u(t) = u(0) * (1 + i * conv)^t where u(0) = 10k, i = 8.00, conv = 10%, and t is the # of time periods You may want to read that before going further… Ouch.
Fourteen Social Media Disasters: Learning from the mistakes ... Social media can work wonders for your brand, but it can also spell disaster. A colleague recently asked me for a list of examples of where the wrong post or tweet has damaged a brand’s reputation. I had a few examples on the top of my head, but thought I would do some extra research on the side to see what else I could find. After some research, I produced a deck titled “Social Media 101: Social Media Disasters”. I’ve loaded the deck to Slideshare and have embedded it here: Examples of bad social media can be tracked back to a focus on social media governance by companies. Lack of real-time monitoringNot responding to customer concernsLack of corporate social media policiesEmployees not trained in company policiesLack of professional Social Media managersToo much focus on self-promotion (lack of relationship building)Lack of due diligence before launching social campaigns We can all learn from these mistakes.
5 Ways to Start Learning How to Code Right Now Learning to code is one of the most powerful and satisfying things you can ever do. If you’re a designer, learning to code can help you understand what you’re creating for, and if you’re looking to build a startup from scratch, being a technical founder can make things exponentially easier for you. No matter why you want to learn, the only thing you really need is curiosity. But if you’re just starting out as a novice and don’t know where to begin, there are plenty of ways to get started. We presented this list of 7 ways to start learning how to code right now for free last month, and now we’re back with 5 more ways to start coding for free! iTunes U Apple just recently made some dramatic changes to iTunes U, and Stanford’s set of videos is quite an impressive offering. ➤ iTunes U Kids Ruby We wrote about Kids Ruby this past December and honestly, you’ve got to start them young, right? Now, if you’re not a kid, this software might still be really helpful for you. ➤ Kids Ruby Net Tuts+
The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing Editor’s Note: Dr. Wilson first published this article in 2000. He then updated it in 2005. I admit it. But you have to admire the virus. In a few short generations, a virus population can explode. Viral Marketing Defined What does a virus have to do with marketing? Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing.” The Classic Hotmail Example The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based email services. Give away free email addresses and services;Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: “Get your private, free email at stand back while people email to their own network of friends and associates;Who see the message;Sign up for their own free email service; and thenPropel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates. Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Rebecca Black e o Marketing de Resultado nas Redes Sociais. Quem já teve oportunidade de ir a uma de minhas palestras sabe que sou um fã de carteirinha de Stefhany Absoluta (veja seu novo sucesso!), aquela mesmo do Cross Fox, uma das primeiras web celebridades da cena musical em nosso país. Hoje seu canal no Youtube conta com mais de 13 milhões de acesso e, de certa forma, coroa nossa cultura popular e demonstra na prática um pouco do padrão de consumo web de nosso país. Somente para comparação, o astro Luan Santana, que no ano passado foi quem mais vendeu música nos pais segundo a Associação Brasileira de Produtores de Disco com 232 mil cd´s, têm mais de 60 milhões de acessos a seus vídeos. Nas últimas semanas, um novo fenômeno tomou conta do universo digital. É a simpática e irritante garotinha de 13 anos, Rebecca Black, dona do hit Friday que em pouco mais de um mês superou os 60 milhões de views. Lembro que a comunicação muitas vezes é um estimulo e é o receptor da mensagem que vai definir se o produto é bom ou não.
7 Ways to Learn to Code Right Now for Free Learning to code is one of the most powerful and satisfying things you can ever do. If you’re a designer, learning to code can help you understand what you’re creating for, and if you’re looking to build a startup from scratch, being a technical founder can make things exponentially easier for you. No matter why you want learn, the only thing you really need is curiosity. But if you’re just starting out as a novice and don’t know where to begin, here’s a list of 7 ways to start learning how to code right now for free: 1. Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. ➤ Processing (Reference, Tutorials, Wiki, Forum, Inspiration) 2. Codecademy bills itself as “the easiest way to learn how to code,” and thanks to this startup, learning to code online has never been so accessible. ➤ Codecademy 3. Bloc, a new educational startup, makes it easy for you to start writing in Ruby. ➤ Bloc 4. ➤ Meetup, Hackathons 5.
Going Viral in 6 Questions, Part One: Spymaster Many web apps claim virality; very few actually find it. In a new series exploring the anatomy of truly viral apps, our first specimen is Spymaster, the Twitter- and Facebook-based social game that exploded with tens of thousands of users within hours of the creators throwing up a simple page and absolutely no media coverage. From creating addiction to managing site traffic, read on to learn how they did it and what they're doing next. What kinds of outreach did you do during the early days? Chris Abad, CEO of Irata Labs, the company that developed Spymaster, revealed that their early promotions were extremely minimal "We threw up a splash page, but didn't talk about it too much. To give some context, Abad told me that I personally had signed up for the game within a couple hours of its launch; by that point, I had already seen a few tweets and a DM about the site and was completely intrigued. "The media buzz (there was a lot in the first few weeks of Spymaster)... provided the fuel.
Here's To The Crazy Ones