Advertising & Monetization: Turning Apps into Dollars

Jim Scheinman (Charles River Ventures), Seth Goldstein (SocialMedia.com), Scott Rafer (Lookery), Troy Young (VideoEgg), Murtaza Hussain (Peanut Labs, Inc)

Jim gave background on current Web 2.0 situation. Can make money now but could see end of good times. Slowdown rather than burst bubble. CURRENT AD MARKET – $21 BILLION IN 2007. $45 billion worldwide.

CPM; CPC; COI; incentives; CPA; non advertising models such as gifts.

Seth – co-founder, CEO; Appsoholic – measures interactions with ads. to make it big need to include big brands.

Troy – bring brands into media such as video (videoegg). video preview can be formatted to any size. when clicked on, it can load large size frame wth video. pays on engagement of large video. so want people to engage page by clicking on.

Scott – getting high value sites. can not get people to register so can not target ads. but FB knows about everyone. try to get them together so ads make sense.

Murtein – market research. used oregon trail. fill out survey to allow movement of wagon on trail.

brands – Seth. no one silver bullet for brand. so no real ad standards yet. everyone is still learning. best apps depend on where ad is placed. i.e. place ad at step 14 in which beatle are you. then they will answer since already invested.
troy dicsussed scaling. TV really easy to buy. like a commodity. but online has fragmentation etc. really hard to make happen over many, many sites. big challenge because banner model is broken. take a long time for big brands.

The Big Picture: Facebook App Stats & Trends, An O’Reilly Update

Roger Magoulas

Lots of stats. 650 apps a week over last 8 months But starting in December 2007 usage has become flat. top 200 usage follows power law. Top 5% has 50% of usage. Top 10% is >90%.

FnWall and SuperWall. One was installed more but the other was used more. Flatness may come more from loss of usage in these two apps than real flatness.

lots of winner take all in different categories. Games mostly have non-winner. others do have 1 winner.

looking at installs vs usage.

Andy –

realtime enabling. use FLickr as container to see photos. allows synchronous. all through the browser. photophlow.com closed beta.

Social Application Development 101: Elements of Style

Jia Shen (RockYou), R. Tyler Ballance (Slide.com)

Jia started. some basic info/stats on social channels (FB, etc.) App verticals – channel, content, quiz,games, gifts, self -expression.

viral multiplier – apps grow without marketing. 1 user causes more than 1 to install. need to track. notifications needed also.

Then need engagement of users. Virality vs engagement – grow outside of core. get users to spread. don’t hurt user experience.

engagement – build user experience. stickiness. prevent uninstalls.

email is important for engagement/reengagement. in profile engagement is also useful. non-user page is even mopre important because it engages them before they install.

OpenSocial – can add functionality. but can monetize? Different model that used to. huge audience. profile vs news-feed. what is the viral channel?

opensocial channels – profile. also main page on FB. but most opensocial channels are up in the air since many are being conservative.

plan is no different than Facebook launch. focus on demographic. instrument virality but focus on Apps that are not dependent on virality.

Tyler – works at slide (used keynote on Mac). will take about FB platform (include Bebo also). need to understand audience. need to be ready for cross-platform development that is more than just specific widgets. FB has had 10 months. Bebo is getting closer. but FB has a lot more to use (i.e. mobile).

transition from widget to apps. can use same codebase going from FB to bebo. FunWall is example. but need to maintain look and feel (myspace is hectic. FB is blue.) but need to maintain branding. example iLike is orange. slide has a banner logo.

FBML tags are important aspects of look and feel.

[Via WebStrategy By Jeremiah]

Widget Strategies Panel:

The four panelists did a great job yesterday handling my barrage of questions in the Widget Strategies and Social Platforms session, Hooman Radfar (Clearspring Technologies, Inc.), Walker Fenton (NewsGator), Pam Webber (Widgetbox), Ben Pashman (Gigya) discussed widgets strategies. I asked each of them to suggest an image or icon that best represents their company (an idea to make the panel more memorable from Pam) and they each suggested the following:

Clearspring was like a cable, as they were a connector
Newsgator was like a kitchen where you come and create
Widgetbox was like a DIY Pottery store where you come in and make your own product
Gigya was like a like a spine, as they were the backbone or infrastructure

While there are many challenges to widgets (and every industry) the panelists did a great job refuting them, demonstrating their expertise in the area, and suggesting how to work around any bumps that we may see. If you want to refute the challenges, I certainly encourage you to leave comments on that post or leave a link demonstrating how you can overcome those. It’s all part of a healthy dialog.

The challenge questions? on the difficulties of measurement, lack of brand control, the hurdles of distribution, and how to monetize the space. I also asked them to share how they help clients develop strategies, and to provide clarity around the most common misconceptions. Each of them shined in their own right.

To hear what the rest of the panel said, Alex Nesbit did a great job live blogging the session. Beth Kanter (who did a great job presenting with passion yesterday) shares her notes from the session. And Peter Kaminski, CTO of SocialText writes on his wiki the high level notes. It makes sense if everyone updated the wiki, rather than having several blog posts it could centralize and make the effort more collaborative and efficient.

Jeremiah demonstrated how to moderate a panel. He had asked each member to come up with an image to represent the company. This required each of them to give some deep thought about what their company was. This is a great exercise for any company. And a couple actually brought nice visual aids. Widgetbox had a wonderful ceramic frog that would also serve as a nice logo for the company.

The questions Jeremiah asked were short, focussed and allowed each company to shine in its answer. Each got a chance to give a nice answer and the panel was not dominated by the most vocal member, as many panels are. Obviously, lots of preparation by Jeremiah was important.

Google & OpenSocial: Let’s Get This Shindig Started

David Glazer (Google)

The cloud is now! He recommends Nick Carr’s book The Big Switch. We want fast, easy access to tools, once the tools are ‘good enough.’

Cloud is getting the computer out of the way in order to increase productivity. The social cloud is to make it easier to interact. And more productive.

People are the Killer App of the web.

Old is new. Email, ftp, gopher, bbs. All big 1.0 apps were social.Used to get news by reading specific dead trees. Now get it from anywhere.

For the dummy – lower the wall between people. Use web to answer social questions – find insurance agent. Find new car. Find new music. Plan a trip.

Authentication – lots of passwords. some important. some not. Who shares the same password?

Lots of places where fragmentation of identity makes it harder to find, interact with friends. Needs to be fixed. Connect to anyone without any barriers.

OpenSocial – lots of people want. hard to figure out where to start. OpenSocial was result. if you can build a web app, you can make it social. Invent it, build it. run it.

What have they learned large breadth of interest. not only socializing networks but also enterprise and hobby communities. Use open source (apache shindig). to get it right – clear mission,open license. engaged community. real-world use. Open works when it is open.

Has to be used. need to have people who could fail if shindig does not work (his makes sure buy-in is complete).

Any app to people is work in progress. But also need to get people to any app.

They just announced the winers of AppNight. Developer analytics won a MacBook that had been engraved with a social network graphic. I want one! Reading Social and Chirpscreen won $2000 Apple gift certificates. Nice. I loved chirpscreen, which made a screen saver out of your social networks (i.e. photos from Flickr, facebook, chirps from Twitter). Best screensaver I have seen in a long time.