January 2010
9 posts
Social Media Strategy 1.0; Assistance Needed!
I’m working with an editorial-based property to help develop its social media strategy and have put together the following outline to kick off our conversation on the topic. I thought it would be interesting to post it here and I’d greatly appreciate any and all feedback. Please note that this is still a work in progress and that there is no budget for social media so this just covers...
Even VC's Should Learn to Fail Fast
For the 3+ years I’ve been in the venture business, my biggest challenges have been building credibility and finding quality deal flow. In many ways they are linked with the better the reputation, the higher quality deals that come across one’s desk. Speaking frankly, I’ve struggled mightily on both accounts and, until recently, relied on bankers and ‘friends’ at...
So what else can the NY Times learn from Zynga?
I’m an avid player of Zynga’s Mafia Wars, having reached level 400 and spent about $100 over the last 12 months. While about half of that money has been used to extend my playing time (e.g. buying more energy) the other half has been used to purchase unique items that either improve my status or character’s abilities. While there has been a lot of talk recently about the NY...
Mark McGwire is a Juiced-up Dave Kingman
My Case for Why Big Mac Doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame
The exclusive purpose of this blog is to write about industry issues as it relates to my job as a digital media venture capitalist; however, Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame status has always bothered me (even before the steroids allegations) so I figured I would use this forum to discuss it in public given all of the news about him in...
The Freemium Revolution
The Emerging Business Model is Working for Games and Music; Will News and Video be Next?
I have written a lot recently about the plethora of new social distribution platforms and the value of the user data that these generate; however, an equally important trend in digital media is the emergence of the freemium model in the US that has been exploited with a great deal of success by the likes of...
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Digital Footprints; Does Blue Horseshoe love...
Implications of Public User Generated Data on Public Company Investing
With the emergence of platforms such as Twitter, Blippy, Gowalla, Facebook, UStream, Flickr, TwitPic, Foursquare, Meetup, Digg, Brightkite, etc, there is now an explosion of public user generated content marking the events of one’s life. Through these lenses, we can now easily see where a person is every day and where he...
PPC Ads Don't Work for 90% of Local Businesses; So...
I came across some information recently around pay per click (PPC) advertising that I found pretty intriguing. Specifically, it confirmed to me that PPC advertising is not a feasible ad format for most small businesses (SMBs) and thus a different product will need to emerge in order for the much expected flood of SMB budgets to move online. Here are the first two data points:
At an industry...
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Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!
How user actions in social media will change the loyalty marketing landscape
Yesterday I saw the following post on Twitter from @lavidalibre:
Just won a $25 BART card from @SFBART for checking in on @foursquare!
While the idea of idea of rewarding loyalty has always been with us, the number of places where people are now able to publicly profess their loyalty to a brand or location is...
Friend, Follow, Foursquare and Find!
How the Explosion of Structured Location Data will Change Local Search
I recently started dabbling with NextStop and what really hit me is how much structured, user-generated content around location there now is on the web. For example, between foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, Twitter, Facebook and now companies like NextStop and Blippy, there is a trail of all the locations that an individual visits,...