While the “real” economy has been tumbling for the past two years or so, social applications, online gaming, and the virtual economy have proven to be fairly resilient in the face of the economic slump. Some reasons for this resilience could be that people have more free time, and that they generally don’t mind making small payments on virtual goods. The worldwide virtual goods market (which is a subset of the virtual economy) is estimated to be around $5 billion, with 80% coming from Asia (China, South Korea, and Japan) and only $200 million to 400 million from the US. Several players have emerged to take advantage of this opportunity. Third-party developers on Facebook are projected to make $500 million this year, and while most end users think of social applications (and games) as the only players in the space, there are several others. In this article, I will touch on only one missing piece of the puzzle: the virtual economy. Next week, I will cover some other players which together with social apps and online gaming make up the social media and online gaming ecosystem. Read the full article »

After reviewing social gaming companies, I move on to RockYou and LivingSocial — two very successful companies in the social applications space — to find out more about the similarities and differences between social games and apps.

You can see from the top Facebook apps list here that although they are fundamentally different, apps and games that are popular on Facebook and other social media are generally entertainment-based rather than utility-based. What’s more, on the iPhone, one out of three apps is an entertainment app or a game. Let’s look at some specific similarities and differences. Read the full article »

Social gaming is changing the way games are marketed and distributed. Rather than relying on big publishers and distributors such as Electronic Arts, studios are leveraging the power of social media to virally spread their games. In order to better understand how they have built sustaining businesses, I talked to the CEOs of some of the top social gaming companies. You will see that all of them have different yet successful strategies. Read the full article »

In an earlier post I argued that Google would benefit from acquiring search engines in verticals such as travel, jobs, and products. By doing so, Google can retain “rich” traffic which otherwise might directly go to those search engines for specific needs. Read the full article »

Let’s say you were launching a consumer facing web 2.0product like Yelp, Youtube etc., where network effects are huge and receptiveness at launch can make or break the product or company. Cuil is a great example of a company failing at the launch, though it was more due to bad product than bad marketing. But question remains: How can you rise above the noise with tons of other companies trying to grab the market? I hear you that product should be compelling and differentiated enough for users to use it, however product quality aside, how do you effectively market your product in social media? There are millions of users on social media today. Most influencers can are most likely on social media as are most end users. Industries with large network effects simply cannot afford to ignore social media. Read the full article »

This is first in a series of my guest posts. Whenever I post as a guest author, I will also post a link and excerpt on my personal blog here.

The current economic climate has several people pondering whether to become rich by selling iPhone apps. Like anything else, making money by creating and selling iPhone apps is no easy task. If it were, most people would do it, thus increasing the competition and bringing down the revenue to zero. Sure, it did make some people rich instantly — Steve Demeter made $250,000 in two months — but that is an exception and not a rule. Read the full article »

I rarely praise a product by Microsoft, but Bing forced me to do so. In fact, you will find a bunch of articles in praise of Bing today. Here, rather than discussing the features or UI of Bing, I would discuss a few core issues – namely vertical search and network effects, which will play an important role in the search engines war. Read the full article »

This is not a blog on “in defense of”, but I wanted to paint a picture that is different from what many people tend to think of Facebook. A CEO in one of my classes called Facebook and third party developers “rubbish”. I argue that there are several third party developers who are making tons of cash on Facebook platform. Facebook has built a thriving platform, which is growing fast and can be a great source of additional revenue for Facebook. Read the full article »

With due respect for all Twitter bashers (see here for an example), I would like to make a few comments in defense of Twitter.

I certainly agree that it is easy and tempting to flow with the hype, and internet bubble of late 90’s and recent real estate bubbles are good examples of that. Therefore, I am not going to suggest that Twitter is going to be next Google, though it’s important to note that nobody could have imagined that Google would threaten Microsoft so soon so fast. However, few would disagree that social media is here to stay. Very few understood blogging when it started, but today it has opened up the long tail of journalism. Video sharing has become a phenomenon in itself, and though Youtube is still struggling to make money, there is little doubt that it has opened up a new world of opportunities for wannabe artists, producers, journalists etc. I believe that micro-blogging is also going to create an impact that not many people can anticipate today. Read the full article »