Just wondering….

So Sun keeps on trying to sell me boxes. I don’t need OpenSolaris, I need solutions! What is the difference? OpenSolaris requires someone who knows how to configure it, manage it, secure it, and adjust it for performance. But newsflash here! I am not a system admin. I am not a dba. And wait for it… I don’t want to be. I am a java developer and all I want for Christmas is a cheap ‘hobbyist’ hosting solution. Such a system will be perfectly adequate until Amplafi has the traffic to justify a more ’serious’ solution.

Today I can get:

• PHP
• (some) webserver to deliver the content
• MySQL
• Zero DBA experience required.
• Zero SysAdmin Knowledge needed(you don’t get a commandline anyhow)
• A just-upload-and-run-experience
• ~$10/month

Why can’t Sun deliver the same thing only running Java 1.6?

Why is that a hosted java application costs a minimum of $80/month? This is so wrong.

Moderator:
Vineet Buch, Partner, BlueRun Ventures

Panelists:

• Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, FORRESTER RESEARCH
• Jason Oberfest, VP Business Development, MYSPACE.COM
• Sergio Monsalve, Principal, NORWEST VENTURE PARTNERS
• Deborah Shultz, Strategist, DEBORAHSCHULTZ.COM

Charlene:
10million uniques/month for general advertising models.
marketing plan can’t just be PR

Jason:
You have to prove engagement. Repeated interaction.

Deb:
Need to measure consumer touch points ( how many im message, email to customers)

Sergio -
Measure the lifetime value of customer. time * usage discounted over time.
net lifetime value of customer ( subtract out acquisition costs)

Vineet -
to get a large audience — go broad.
to get an engaged audience — go deep.

Sergio:
subscription model really works where there is an urgency (dating, job posting)
depth of value proposition.

Vineet:
is a 1m users on a facebook widget good? not so — very short half-life of engagement with facebook apps.

Charlene —
with facebook apps - there is not a strong corrolation between user inviting friends and actual satisfaction with app.

whats to see value in the applications that are valuable.

Sergio -
we have not yet penetrated to the Gen X and Baby Boomer — so hugging and poking is not very useful.

Charlene –
Things there is space for a company to move a review from facebook to amazon.

Deb –
getting and extracting reviews is an issue.

Jason –
apps in myspace are requiring apps earn the ability to reach larger audience based on how initial users react.

Charlene –
Walled Gardens don’t survived — Apple is only sustained exception.

Good business model example–
Sergio -
Affinity Labs - unusual business model — they make money with lead gen. (military.com - stay connected with fellow soldiers, retraining, and jobs)

Charlene -
MerchantCircle - SEO zero aquisition cost. - small business SEO - they get a president of a local chamber of commence to act of a sales person

Deb -
etsy.com
Blogher.com

Panel:
Nicolas Kardas - sr. product manager windows live platform (microsoft)
jim Scheinman (EIR - CRV)
Steve Jang CMO & Hwead of Business Development Imeem)
Mark Silva, Founder/Manage Director Real Branding.

Super models:

facebook, hi5
social media - helping social media companies make money

Next tier:
rockyou and slide
Nicolas Kardas - likes Netflix - people read views.

Dave McClure — Netflix - Social Commence But agrees.

Steve Jang - IMEEM - rockyou, slide have outsourced user authentication and registration (using facebook)
imeem: 25 million uniques/month - .com 75 million uniques/month from widgets (social networks)
meat of revenue - direct sales of ads.
adsense is just for inventory fill.

Mark Silva -
existing traditional ad agencies are big and stupid
Flixster - 25K users will friend a movie
300K users will thumbs up a movie on flixster. Flixter prices ad packages $25K, $50K, $100K packages - makes it easy for ad agencies to do check box ad buys.
ads needs to make themselves relevant on the social graph interrupt ad model is going to go away.

Nicolas: sees social network as a way to know their user. because they know music.

Dave : CPC - pay per click does work on social network. But Flixster is driving brand awareness.

Mark - pay per click - adsense makes sense. (transaction)
CPM -is in resurgence in social media.
Category vertical focused - (flixster)

Jim Scheinman - EIR CRV.
if u want to reach young demographic - (13-35years) you have to go social network sites.
All the teen magazines are shutdowning.
On vertical markets CPM does work.
can we put the brand in from of the users and have consumers be your advocates.

Dave McClure:
long tail of social networking/marketing to amplify a brand.

Jim –
bebo conversion rate from free to premium users is usually < 1%
Steve Jang — 4x 5x click through rate of putting brand on ??? (something - widgets?)
Metrics seem to really be missing with evaluating value of social networks:
is it installs?
is it plays?
“interaction/engagement rate”?
“impressions”

Steve –
Destination websites still have value / the widget side have cool new opportunities.
Dave — saying widgets are “cool” means you don’t have a business model on widgets yet
Mark — sees mobile as a platform not a media.
Jim — overseas mobile is a huge deal.

Dave — Social Commerce is where it will be at — slide and rockyou will be enable someone else’s commerce

Last night, I went to an SVASE talk by Geoffrey Moore of MDV. I won the iPod Touch! Thanks SurfaceInk! (Bit of funniness the talk was held at Microsoft’s campus )

He gave a work-in-progress talk on his effort to update his “Crossing the Chasm” concept.

One of the problems he faced as a VC is how to “value” a Web 2.0 company that is pre-revenue and maybe hasn’t even a clue on how to make money. How much traffic is needed to be “worth” something?

“Value” v. “Worth”

I think Geoffrey’s fundamental problem is that he confuses “value” with “worth”. I don’t believe they are the same thing.

Lets think about “value”. “Value” is an economic term. If your car was to get totaled in an accident. The insurance company determines its value and sends you a check for the car’s “value”. “Value” can be easily priced. Laws exist to help people recover stolen “valuable” property.

Compare that to “worth”. “What is your life worth?” Can you put this in terms of “value”? Can you or anyone give me a finite number for which they will let me shoot them? Probably not. No reincarnation ala WoW.

How much money (”value”) would you give to never see your significant other again? They are still alive, but you just are not allowed to communicate with them? Once again a mismatch — we think in terms of “worth” for personal (especially deep) relationships. Trying to pin an exact “value” (dollar amount) to such a thing is frustratingly impossible.

Anyone who can is probably a sociopath. (IMHO). (As a side note — this is what the courts really struggle with that makes the “big” news.)

Social network sites have no “value”

Fundamentally, I believe that all the current sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. have no “value”. That is not to say that they aren’t worth anything, it’s just that they have no strong “value” to the user.

Reason #1: Does the site represent friends that will bail you out of jail?

At the meeting, I stated and I continue to believe that the absolute traffic numbers are meaningless (unless they are extremely big). What matters most is how many people that a user knows in “real-life” that they with connected using the service. By “real-life”, I mean people that the user would go do something with (movie, dinner, date, etc.) if they were near each other in the physical world. In other words, how strong is the “friendship”?

Fundamentally, does the user have any economic, strong personal tie to the other users they are “friends” with on the web site.

If the answer is no … then I don’t care how many page views a site has — it has no “value” and I believe monetizing it will be difficult.

Reason #2: Facebook and LinkedIn say they have no “value”!

Lets look at the Terms of Service for Facebook:

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice.

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Translation: Facebook can change the rules any time they want - and they can hid the change if they want.

Under Copyright:

When we receive proper Notification of Alleged Copyright Infringement as described in our Facebook Copyright Policy, we promptly remove or disable access to the allegedly infringing material and terminate the accounts of repeate[sic] infringers as described herein in accordance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Translation: If TimeWarner complains about a user - Facebook will unilaterally, without following any legal procedure or due process, destroy information that the user has entered.

Company has adopted a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances and at Company’s sole [italics mine] discretion, members who are deemed to be repeat infringers. Company may also at its sole discretion limit access to the Site and/or terminate the memberships of any users who infringe any intellectual property rights of others, whether or not there is any repeat infringement.

Translation: The user is completely at Facebook’s mercy.

Finally, under the Termination Clause:

The Company may terminate your membership, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the Site or through any Platform Application and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Service or the Site or any Platform Application (or any portion, aspect or feature of the Service or the Site or any Platform Application) for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice, including if it believes that you are under 13, or under 18 and not in high school or college.

Translation: the user account is completely at the mercy of Facebook.

Would you or any sane person buy a car, or a home with this as the ToS?

“We, the bank, think that you are violating the DMCA therefore because TimeWarner complained we are foreclosing on your mortgage. Oh and if you are at work when we foreclose we reserve the right to throw everything into the street and have a semi run over your furniture.”

Reason #3: A user cannot sue to get their Facebook account back

To my knowledge, there has never been a successful case that has argued the economic value of a facebook account. There have however been successful cases arguing the “value” of domain names. Until a Facebook account is recognized as having a legal recognized economic value in the law and in front of a judge, it has no “value”. The irony is that the company lawyers in an attempt to protect Facebook the company from liability are in fact devaluing Facebook the experience.

Reason #4: Facebook,etc has not asked the users to assign a “value”

Yes, I know viralness demands things be free. And yes I know that Facebook (and Myspace) spend hours pimping their profile. And time is certainly valuable. But did the user regard that time as valuable? Maybe they were just going to watch TV, or pick their nose?

If I go to Monster.com and I spend the time pimping my resume, I am doing it to get a better job. My monster.com profile has direct, expected, economic value - even though I haven’t paid for it. (”My next job will be $10K more per year.”)

LinkedIn is better off than Facebook and Myspace in this regards. People pimp and get connections in LinkedIn for a direct expected economic payoff.

Reason #5: A user has no standing in bankruptcy court

If revver.com goes out of business and shuts the doors, do I, as a user, have the same rights in bankruptcy court to get back copies of my videos that I uploaded. If a company rented an expresso machine to revver, that company would have rights in the bankruptcy court system to retrieve their property. Until users have equivalent rights - it is really hard to be “valuable”.

Suggestions to the VC community

For all the reasons above - only foolish users trust internet companies with anything of economic “value” — therefore in general most of what web companies offer is “value”-less!

The VC community can and should change this.

1. Get the lawyers out of the way. Say and support in ToS that a Facebook, linkedIn, etc. account has real economic value.
2. Use language that makes a user’s account their property - i.e. can sue if they are deprived of their account.
3. Don’t unilaterally obey DMCA takedown requests. Insist on court orders and due process because otherwise the service (Facebook, LinkedIn) is depriving the user of something of economic “value”.
4. Establish a due process procedure. Create a “court” of dedicated users that will help arbitrate.
5. When shutting down a company — go the extra mile and start establishing a precedent that the users’ data has economic value and attempt to return in some manner their “valuable” goods.
6. Don’t claim ownership of user-entered content. Ask for permission to use it.

Some thoughts on how to judge the “value” of a site:

1. Does virtual actions translate into real-world actions? (Dates, meetings, things of economic value being exchanged)
2. Does the user identify with and defend the site?
3. Does the site defend the users? (Does the love go both ways?)

[Update: From Wired that further supports this contention. I guess Wine Therapy was not "valuable"]

Rick Segal’s explanation of how JLA Ventures does the investment process.

I really wish more vc’s would do this.

This email is an example of everything that is wrong with grassroots organizing today:

To NARP Members, August 9, 2006–

The budget battles of recent years make it clear that Amtrak’s critics are out to get rid of all long distance trains. We can stop them by making noise and demonstrating strong public support for these trains.

NARP is organizing a campaign to form “route teams” to support each long distance route. If you can do even such simple things as talk, walk, phone, and pass out leaflets we need you to join this important campaign that will strengthen and grow these important trains. Organizing ourselves at the local, grass roots level is the way to do this. It is an essential component in our ongoing campaign to preserve and improve the long distance system.

The model for these groups would be the very successful Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization, or Tempo. It has been in existence for nine years and has proven to be an effective voice and advocate for the Texas Eagle, and spurred the formation of a similar group for the Heartland Flyer. Grass roots organizing is what saved the Texas Eagle and its how we’re going to prevail in our fight to protect other routes.

We need volunteers in every area where Amtrak has a station—including cities and towns that have Thruway bus connections. Anyone and everyone who has a little time can make a difference. Some of our ideas for what we would like to see these groups do:

–establish relationships with local businesses, chambers of commerce, and newspaper editorial boards; engage them to promote their train service and also make them aware of the threats outlined above

–reach out to local elected officials and make sure they are aware of the train and the continual threats to Amtrak’s long distance system from Washington

–pass out literature at stations

–get merchants to put posters in store windows

–attend meeting with your Representative and Senator when they have town hall meetings

–raise the general visibility of the train in your community and region.

This is by no means a complete list. Groups may take on other tasks they deem appropriate. In some cases, the teams’ work will strengthen and expand on efforts already under way by Amtrak ticket agents and other people acting individually.

If you would like to volunteer along the Amtrak long distance route you live near, please contact NARP. Include all of your contact information: name, address, phone number and E-mail.

Since a key element of the groups will be interaction with local officials, we would prefer those that live along a specific route become involved with that route. However, Thruway Bus connections count as well (e.g. Duluth, MN for the Empire Builder). And, yes, we would love to have participation for the long distance trains that serve stations on the Northeast Corridor!

There are many tasks to do. The first step is to volunteer. We will get back to those who are interested once we gauge overall interest in the program, identify leaders, and begin the effort to organize each route.

It is just one example of many emails that I regularly get. It shows how behind organizations are when it comes to really utilizing the power of the web and social networking tools.

In the email notice these issues:

• A general need to organize people for action at the local level initiated by a national-based organization.
• This email (eventually 16 months late) reached me as someone who is not a member of
  the NARP.
• gives me no ability to take the content of this email and use it to become a local leader in the organization effort; I need NARP to decide I am a leader
• No clear “call to action” - i.e. nothing specific that needs immediate action therefore no urgency for me as individual to respond
• No way to hook existing organization together with NARP’s effort in this area.
• Presumption that NARP will be the “leader” of this effort (and therefore deferred to).
• NARP is attempting to create local organizations without regards to any existing organizations.
• Burden is on NARP staff and volunteers to do top-down organizing (they “decide” who the leaders are)
• “Don’t call us, we will call you” mentality.
• No mechanism for local groups to organize and communicate with each other. All communication funnels through the national NARP organization.

One important implication is the assumption that NARP will be driving the agenda of these local groups because NARP is creating them.

NARP should be really looking for existing organizations with which to connect together. However, existing organizations are not willing to let an external organization such as NARP dictate the message and position. This is true no matter the size of the organization, but is especially true if the other organization is as large or larger than NARP — for example the Sierra Club. But it is precisely because those organizations are established and and influential within their communities that NARP should be including them in their organizational efforts - not trying to create yet another organization.

Exclude existing organizations and their established infrastructure, name recognition and resources results in wasted resources and duplicated efforts.

NARP is not alone in this area. There are many other organizations that repeatedly reorganizing individuals for their agenda. As a result, an socially-involved person may be asked to join 3, 4, or more different organizations. Each new organization requires additional time and energy from the volunteer. Additionally, creating a new organization requires time and energy from NARP before the local organization will be effective.

This is really frustrating when the groups are close to each other in purpose. For example a “clean water” organization and a “clean rivers” organization will have heavy membership overlap.

I am focusing on NARP’s blindspot of only connecting with individuals and not organizations. But it isn’t really their fault. Rather it is the fault of the technology constraints that NARP is forced to use.

All communication technology is focused on connecting individuals to individuals. Furthermore, communication technology is almost exclusively focused on transmission of a message to a destination. Often the initial recipient of a communication is not the final recipient. Existing technology does a poor job of allowing a message to be dynamically transmitted.

Angela Strange
BayPartners
(VC firm)

They have a fund targeted at social networking applications, not just facebook applications.

(Once again notes will be edited as time permits)

---

300 million fund
looking to fund applications that are built on f8 or other social media.

Do you really need money?
Don’t raise the money if you don’t need it.

Raise the minimum needed, trauche the money only take the money in chucks as needed. So if the money is not needed, then equity for later trauches is not given away.

if you’re going to raise then get more than just capital.

criteria
-clarity of your thoughts and ideas. ( need idea in the first 2 sentences ) if need 2 pages, then hard for her to understand reason for product.

entre/team
* strong tech prowess mainly, being able to execute.
prioir track record or indications of potential for first-time

* idea uniqueness/ differentiations/competition/depth — provocative

* business model /sustainability

most interested in apps that may start on f8 but can go outside of f8.

traction ( if already launch)

evidence of high level of engagement/ or growth rates.

for example: may be privacy apps might be

are there any applications that should wait until api matures — as/ no go for it now! Look at any productive apps that could work with f8.

as) there is a market for more utilitatarian apps — like classroom wiki

jury is out on if there is going be any market for utilitarian apps.

communication, shopping or service where you know who you are / connected.

bay partners:

* app
* amazon free hosting/data services
* post lauch services (marketting services)
* not taking board seats

for apps already launched:

1 app with 10 million users is more valuable than 10 apps with 100K users each — pretty easy to get to 100K users and then it dies off — but 10m users is much harder to do.

CTR for apps have not been very good.

earlier losers: anything too complex, so if you think it is a little complex it is probably 10x too complex.

building private social network: for boating enthusiasists.

for apps that have launched value the users $1 - $20/ active user.

convertible note: “caps” — $100K with $1m “cap” then bay partners get 10% when the next round is funded (no matter how much is valuation at that time.)

“cap” with no conversion — the next round investors will call and bay partners will say well we won’t want to participate at 10million but we will participate at $5million because other wise the initial 100K invested will be wiped out.
“equal participation (in next round)” is better than First rights.

Presenter:

Sometrics (missing card right now)

---

Claim to give better data on who the best users are.

social metrics - sometrics

more than just traffic
– impressions, uniques, visits … go deeper.

only 10 friends but converts 10 friends — they will have metrics based on action.

some limitations becuse of f8 TOS.

So application could change based on time of day. One of sometric customers didn’t know spread of sex / age distribution.

sometric will also look at location.

sometric is anonymizing and hashing and aggregate the data.

f8 touch points -where in f8 wall, feeds, email, profile wide/narrow, request invite

can’t measure unless pings over to canvas pages.

Users engagement
– Power users — certain actions indicate power users.
2 different power users : influencder - can drive application installs and drive back to canvas page.
in future sometrics will configure and define app

80% case from average user or power users —
average user or power users — who has greater influence?

applications can be able to take the application dates

active users daily/yesterday active change %.

type of users:
power users
participant
viewer (lurker)

rock you — aggressively uses notifications for first few days. but then turns it off once uptake is above a certain level.

Presenter:
Mike Sego
Fluff-Friends

Fastest growing “pets” application on facebook.

---

(Notes will be edited as time permits)

---

Secret to success is being “cute” — emotional connection

Pushing information into newsfeed runs risk of flooding newsfeed with too much information.

First Feature added is increasing number of fluff friends. There is the point of diminishing returns. Going from 1->2 friends is interesting. 26->27 is less interesting.

Part of being cute is that each fluff friends has a story and “cute”.

gifts less interesting at 500 gifts than in beginning.

people join together and have petting groups.

100% of growth was friends seeing fluff friends on profile not newsfeed from growth.

added petting and naming fluff friend.

“Pet Me” — would say “looks like you don’t have ff… would you like to install”

He knows because when f8 api was broken and not having warning dialog pop-up… saw lower growth when f8 api was broke.

The wall is more compelling features of f8

“Don’t poke me … do something useful pet my ff” i

implemented cute verion of tracksor… because you see who petted your friend and when.

Petting is core to experience.

What ff is not:

pokemon - (cock fighting for little warriors?)
pokemon requires lots of enginerring effort.
f8 takes things that are very popular on internet and creates walled events.

gmail is losing market-share to facebook mail!

f8 groups -
f8 photo is crippled version compared to flickr.
just need to hit core features and will be successful on f8
“what are you doing?” is what f8 is all about.
so if you focus on how that question

ff is LAMP ( but Mike Sego - is java developer works on gmail )

social interaction is at the core.

added different features that increase would

As released features — add Moods 2.0 different moods for different ff so people would go to see other ff.

using transparent png (yech) css rendering is really hard because f8 rips up. so he has to hack up css for each browser.

Bubble - people would be having conversation with their ff talking to each other.

added food — released 2 a week … leveled off at 35 foods.. would cost friend.

food is gifting “costs money” — ltewright version of gifting… but found that most people feed their own ff’s not others.

ff had problem with how to earn money — How can I design the next feature to make previous feature

you have 7 seconds to return result to f8 — “Try again”

Using one-on-one hosting … had to shift from shared server to dedicated hosting

LAMP ( mem_cache apc — for mysql )

Added habitats - once again made previous features work better. Biggest feature — huge uptake.

786 different images on the shared vm server.

Using fb photo for the foods. but didn’t upload 786 photos because no way to programmatically load photos.

but this is great because fb

ff starting tacking

merchandising….
goodstorm — lower quality
zazzle — higher quality and will ship international

but only sold 400 shirts.

But need much higher quality

“I want a Liger…”

support cost — message bombing - trying to campaign on getting new features added (

was getting 300 emails a day — started to managing issues with FAQ. FAQ slowed down because link to find developer link.
make effort

facebook forum is useless.. no topics in forums.

so forums are offloaded. but 10000 registered users - 2000000 ff install but acts.

ff-users going to forum add value to the ff-ecosystem.

A lot of people wanted to fighting… (like pokemon)

did not want to do RPG-like things.

didn’t want to compete EA (Mike Sego used to work for EA on Sims)
single player - no p2p
multiplayer -async (works in f8 — no sync communication available)
multiplayer - sync ( much harder on f8 )
massively single player — you are not waiting on anyone else but what they do effects you.

fluff(Race)
number of fluffs per hours.

communities:
* self-expression
* and racing community….power lovers of ff.

—–

Choice not diverseify because that would say is he done. So chose not to.

has not looked at uninstall numbers.

super actives <5% but they really drive the

you can’t uninstall your ff (because that would be abandoning your ff — so sad )

can’t sell transfer

this middle-age woman whent around every day to pet 100 friends ff.
80% woman — early college

can’t pet a ff more than 5 secs. prevents scriptting but does not alienate hard core users.

fluff-book — is the high page view.

** only now added invites **

hit servers …

trying to stay constant relative to number of f8 users.

monetation will come when f8 makes it happen.

Held 20 Oct 2007.

This batch of notes is not mine, so it will probably not be edited too much.

---

Presenter:
Eric Yieh
RockYou

- Facebook, is 7x more viral than bebo. because of there
- superwall, Xme, zombies/vampires,
- Facebook has: profile, profile action, feed, requests, emails, notifications, wall.
- Should use all of the facebook api, some work better than others
- Rock You also provides an API to the super wall
- Having multiple apps lets you cross advertise, and have one app use the other app.
- Buy advertising to seed various different social networks with your app.
- Viral success factors: simplicity ( does the user get it immediately, keep invites really short), novelty ( has the user seen this invite before?, be the first with your kind of app), social persuasion (reciprocity, ego boost, “your friends will like you better if you install this app”), fun ( most people go to facebook for entertainment rather than work, not too many utility applications).
- rockyou and slide are the heavy hitters in the widget space.
- Must use the social network of facebook, people who wouldn’t otherwise
- “to get an app over 1 million users you must advertise”
- “it will have to hit a bnuch of people in the same high-school before the app spreads to the whole network”
- facebook invites only go out to the direct friends of a particular user.
- Invites are now limited to 10 invites
- FBML invites are not very good, need to have a very strong call to action.
- Want to make it easy to send invites (pre-set the invite text).
- maybe can monetize without having people install an app.
- you have a canvas page that people don’t need to install an app for, this lets you monetize your canvas page. (it’s just like an html page on the web)
- Create applications that require users to communicate.
- Hard part, need to balance uesr acquisition and engagement
- if you send a person to an invite page, they may not use your app.

- which ad network to use?
- pricing
- quality of the ads
- fill rate/campaign size
- want optimization features that let you tweak which ads are displayed
- channel tuning (let you not advertise for competitors)

- rock you has an ad network as well.

- CPI 0.50, cost per install, advertising. i.e. you pay 50 cents per user who installs you
- you need to monetize your app in some other way than selling installs.

- People will need to advertise to launch your app…
- In some cases people have built a small viral app to drive people back to their “real” site.
- advertisements in the middle of the screen are much better than top flier ads

- bebo focussed in UK, dont have a dev platform yet.

- flash autoplay will be allowed.

- should tie your apps across all of the big platforms.
- news feed and mini-feed are both very effective.
- facebook doesn’t let you store user data for more than 24 hours… can only store theire user ids.
- Eric says that you need to do internal studies to figure out what kind of demographic gives you.
- monetization: peanut lab.
- clickthrough rates on facebook are low.
- as soon as a click takes you outside the site, the user closes the window because they don’t want to leave facebook.

- maybe myspace will allow unlimited invites.

- rockyou doesn’t care about their destination web site…. they care more about how many users they have on various social networks.

- Rockyou assumes that all of their users are teenagers and build for the teenage market, whether or not they are teenagers. This is because when people are on facebook, they’re not looking for productivity, they’re looking to hang out with their friends.

- Thinks that the movie studios etc. will build viral facebook apps to advertise new movies soon, instead of having a fancy website.
- “Who can do better than george bush”
- Rock you sold a resident evil branded version of zombies on facebook to sony, and sony’s going to buy again.
- rockyou has relationships with various advertising firms
- anything that distracts from the invite flow will reduce installs of an app.
- advertisers are targeting younger users on the social networks.
- Each platform is building their “own version of the internet”.
- which means that people will rebuild the internet inside each platform. So take the most popular apps from the web and rebuild them inside the platform to make money.
- Make sure to track ROI on a campaign.
- what’s the “hover over” rate.
- branded advertisers are more concerned about the messaging (the layout, the look and feel etc.) rather than necessarily the click through rate.