Games will incentivize people to take action & stay committed
Examples:
- Solar charging system that reduces carbon footprint and sends updates to social networks to pressure friends to doing same: http://www.changers.com - Back up resolutions with cash - financial disincentives for not completing goals: http://www.stickk.com - Party invites only to people with high Klout scores scientist: http://www.balharbourshops.com
Games will bridge the virtual and physical game environments gap, offering more opportunities to incorporate gaming into everyday life
“Generally speaking, the Internet disrupts media businesses in three ways: It removes barriers to distribution, which previously provided the basis for monetization. It provides an abundance of free content that shapes consumers’ expectations that content should always be free and therefore undermines models based on scarcity. And it grabs a larger share of the time that consumers devote to other media.”
“We have entered a new era, an era where even if TV remains the primary screen for video consumption, the long-term fragmentation of the audience will challenge traditional TV business models in yet another example of media meltdown. Deep convergence between television and Internet has finally arrived and as a result media companies can no longer ignore fundamental differences in the underlying business models and in the enabling technologies’ design principles.”
“The threat of new players entering the broadcasting space by leveraging Internet TV is real, is happening now and is a major issue.”
“New stakeholders such as telcos, web search engines, portals, new media titans such as Apple and Microsoft, and other electronic manufacturers are all looking for a significant stake in the future of TV, even if revenue models for next generation broadcasting remain a mystery to most of them.”
I’ve been playing around with Google Plus for the last few days and am pretty excited about its potential. Having been on Twitter and Facebook for years now, I think Google Plus is well positioned to offer the best of both worlds going forward. (I’m a huge fan of the asymmetric friend/follow dynamic and of filterable ‘Circles’.)
One thing that is clear from Plus is that Google is at war in Social. I, for one, hope Plus gains traction beyond the early adopter/tech set as it officially opens to the public.
Anyhow, it’s worth asking why Google needs/wants Plus to succeed given its web dominance. After all, Google properties are still the most trafficked on the web by a fair margin.
The answer tends to lie, at least partially, in another metric, time spent.
Since Q3 2010, Internet users have spent more time on Facebook than Google — a pretty notable threat for Google’s advertising model (currently, ~97% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising — http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html.) Social is a different beast and social network users, over time, generate a ton of data one could market against. Notably, Facebook can target ads based on age, location, interests, education level, connections, ‘likes’, etc. On the other hand Google historically has been able to target ads based simply on keywords and, to a lesser extent, personal search history.
Therein lies the threat. And the need for a successful Google Plus.
“In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats’.” -Warren Buffett
“We must protect this house!” - Under Armour advertising slogan.
Key Highlights from Berkery Noyes, the ”leading independent investment bank specializing in the information content and technology industries”:
The largest transaction in 1st Half 2011 was Microsoft Corporation’s announced acquisition of Skype Technologies SA, from an investor group lead by Silver Lake Partners, for $9.08 billion.
Google, Inc. was the most active acquirer in 1st Half 2011, with 11 purchases: SageTV, AdMeld Inc., PostRank Inc., Sparkbuy Inc., TalkBin, PushLife Inc., BeatThatQuote.com Ltd., Next New Networks, Inc., FFlick, SayNow and eBook Technologies Inc.
Overall Takeaways:
Online & Mobile M&A activity continues to increase significantly in volume and value
Google & Microsoft are leading the charge in 1H 2011: Google: Most active. Microsoft: Single largest transaction ($9.08B Skype acquisition; represented more than 20% of industry acquisitions by dollar amount in 1H 2011).
During my years in college, I was passionate about helping students learn in the classroom. So much so that I undertook a high school teaching opportunity immediately upon graduation. While I continue to mentor and tutor, my professional interests largely lie elsewhere today.
Last summer, I was fortunate to be in the audience when Roger H. Brown, current president of the Berklee College of Music, gave a talk in Boston to prospective MBA students. Although much of the speech’s content has faded from memory in the past year, Brown’s description of the non-linear path he took and how it endowed him with a unique perspective continues to resonate with me. Like mine, Brown’s first post-graduation job was teaching. He then moved into non-profit management, authored a book, moved into management consulting, moved back to non-profit management, then founded a publicly traded $400 million company that later spun out a social enterprise arm under his leadership.
Last week, I attended the Consortium’s Orientation Program in Minneapolis and interacted with MBA students from various elite schools. There I talked to engineers who sought to be brand managers, investment bankers who sought to be entrepreneurs, consultants who sought to be non-profit leaders, and so on. Non-linearity.
Recently, I’ve begun to think more and more about entrepreneurial ventures, both startups and novel operations within established firms. (One of the reasons for this blog is to collect these thoughts.) In his blog, How to Know If Your Startup Idea is the Next Big Thing, Vin Vacanti posits that “most great companies started with bad ideas” and ‘pivot’ towards good ones in response to customer feedback and recognition of opportunity.
He gave specific examples:
Groupon started as a service called ThePoint to facilitate group action
Instagram started as a location-based service
Flickr started as a web-based multiplayer online game
Facebook started as a picture rating service
Yipit started as a local furniture search site
There are of course more examples:
Paypal started as a cryptography/e-security service
LivingSocial started out making Facebook apps
Twitter started out of Odeo as a way to send group text messages
Pandora started as a business to business music recommendation service called Savage Beast Technologies
And so on…
Non-linearity.
Three days ago, I spoke to an old friend who was pursuing a new venture and sought feedback. While his idea had not yet been validated by a single paying customer, he was prepared to move it forward. One of his options in doing so required loads of capital and time to implement. Another option would take significantly less capital and leave him extremely more flexible to adjust to customer feedback as it came. My advice: Door #2.
My key takeaways:
Stop dreaming and start doing. Per Vacanti: “The perfect idea isn’t coming. You just have to pick a problem you are passionate about and start working on it. Over time, you will evolve your startup into the next big thing.”
Embrace non-linear paths / pivots / strategic shifts. See Roger H. Brown’s career. Also, per Vacanti: “The value lies in your ability to learn from [ ] customers, iterate based on those learnings. Those iterations will determine whether or not your startup will be successful, not the initial idea.”
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Aaron Batalion, co-founder of LivingSocial, discusses the organization’s strategic shifts below. Contains a number of great takeaways relative to actual implementation:
I’m Emeka Ajene and I’m currently pursuing graduate study in business and law at the University of Michigan. This is my personal blog/repository for various things of interest. For more about me, please see: http://about.me/eajene
Feel free to reach me by email (eajene AT gmail DOT com) or leave a comment. Thanks for stopping by.
