Disqus - Latest Comments for tedr

Re: New Speedway Boogie

tedr — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:31:49 -0000

I thought it was the best song on the cover album ....

Re: Worried about TedR - the michael galpert tumblelog

tedr — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:40:52 -0000

LOLz!

or maybe I should say RAWR!

Re: Age (and ARPPU) ain’t nothing but a number: Data on how age impacts social gaming monetization

andrew_null — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:25:02 -0000

One potential implication is that social gaming is mostly made of 13-30yos anyway, and while the ARPU numbers are high for the 30+ set, it won't counteract the full MASS of young users ;-)

Re: Age (and ARPPU) ain’t nothing but a number: Data on how age impacts social gaming monetization

tedr — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:56:26 -0000

Great post. Thx to Susan, Gambit & Andrew for posting.

I have not been able to gather enough data, but I have a suspicion that adults with children are curtaining their entertainment-related online spending due to the recession even though they haven't reduced their childrens' budgets.

If this is true and the economy rebounds on main street (whenever that is) I bet we'll see the overall spend of the 40+ crowd increase rapidly.

Re: Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs

steaner — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:28:39 -0000

Pandas? Where?

Pleasure, Ted!

Re: Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs

michaelgalpert — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:25:31 -0000

NP keep up the awesome!

Re: Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs

tedr — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 02:16:51 -0000

He! Thx. Wondered where all those followers came from. I'll try and be inspiring and sagacious .... oh look, pandas!

Re: Jay Parkhill

park3 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:01:26 -0000

Hmm. If the hipster fixies can't skid on it I don't think the grating will
work.

Re: Jay Parkhill

tedr — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:00:00 -0000

My untested idea for elevated bike and car lanes would be lanes w/ grating, not cement that ran overhead roughly covering the two center lanes of market st. They would be supported via telephone pole-like support that spanned across the whole of market street.

I have no idea how bikes would get up and down. I'm envisioning some slants off to side streets and stairs, but I doubt there could be very many of them. Maybe you'd get on around Octavia street while market street is still decending?

Re: Social design explosion: Polls, quizzes, reviews, forums, chat, blogs, videos, comments, oh my!

andrew_null — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:03:41 -0000

Yes, I thought of you when I wrote this - the idea of "running out of attention" or attention being the scarcest resource is definitely an interesting idea.

Similarly, I've seen in my work a diminishing returns for advanced features, where you can often remove 50% of the advanced functionality but still preserve almost nearly 100% of the core activity - the activity just goes elsewhere on the site.

Re: Social design explosion: Polls, quizzes, reviews, forums, chat, blogs, videos, comments, oh my!

tedr — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:16:02 -0000

This has been a challenge/reality of ours since about the 2nd year. I'd add to the laundry list votingup/votingdown, questions/answers/advice, gifting, classifieds.

The challenge isn't adding the new features, it's finding the place to promote these new features. You run out of nav space, you run out of homepage space. Basically, you run out of attention. We try and remove low performing features whenever we can to reduce attention dilution. It's very easy to become yahoo and have more content than anyone can find. It's much harder to be wordpress and have just enough. (That's where the API/plugins architecture is so key)

Re: Jay Parkhill

tedr — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:50:57 -0000

Ya know. I think any sturdy fabric and a sewing machine would allow one to crank a ton of these out for <$10.

They won't be so stylish of course ;)

Re: Bit.ly + Google Analytics Campaign Builder Tool

tedr — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:50:49 -0000

Nice.

Re: Why metrics-driven startups overlook brand value

tedr — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:50:25 -0000

Very pertinent entry. You can get 100k uniques from digg in a day, but if less than 0.01% remember your site/service name what have you gained?

Thus we think it's very effective that our brands (Dogster, Catster, Snuzzy) come first, metrics and growth gets built on top of that. This is also a business strategy. It's at lot easier to monetize a brand and build upon that, than to monetize traffic and congeal it into a brand.

There are plenty of exceptions such as if you are a bottom feeder - and there's nothing wrong with that - but for that business to work you need to be the biggest whale in the ocean, not just a crafty catfish.

Re: tedr*tumblr: @mollybloom tipped me off that Marian Goodell ...

tedr — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:24:47 -0000

Thanks! I fyxed it ;)

Re: http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/04/19/699/

Johnborthwick — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:41:44 -0000

Its interesting that the primary attribute of broadband was not speed (as expected) but always on.

Re: supersonic electronic

tedr — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:33:08 -0000

Your dads art is always stunning. I just want to reach out and grab it.

But do I see you do fine art too. (It's funny what happens when you click beyond the dashboard ;) I saw your post about getting a 300-like design gig so I figured you had mad skillz.

Anyway, I guess that's as far as this comment gets!

Re: http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/04/19/699/

tedr — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:21:00 -0000

Wow. Bravo.

Couple thoughts:

* I think posts (the element behind RSS) would be the first stream. Even on webpage you'd read them as separate but consecutive. But that would be preceded by forums, chat rooms, IRC and mail lists, so maybe I'll leave that up to those that take these things to the mat to decide ;)

* I think we're seeing 2 distinct types of stream users. Those that want to hold the rope and those that watch it go by when they look at it. For lots of people twitter or facebook or flickr doesn't provide enough meaning if they follow too much. FriendFeed seems to be very binary, people love it or don't use, but rarely use just now and then.

* Asynchronous connections are much more (adult) human like. Thanks for that insight.

* You just made me think handheld computers have really blow the doors off the page-based paradigm and
that we're a lot closer to an always-on Internet experience then is generally believed ;)

Thanks for the deep thoughts.

Re: The end of Geocities

gothamgal — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:59:19 -0000

Always good to get the complete picture.

Re: The end of Geocities

tedr — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:46:48 -0000

Thanks for sharing this. Our industry is great at describing the stunning highlights and reticent to recall the lowlights. I really valued reading your and Fred's entries on this part of your career and lives.

Re: 3 key ideas from a recent Freemium dinner conversation

andrew_null — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:06:28 -0000

Ted, i will add your list to the main blog! Thanks for the suggestions.

Re: 3 key ideas from a recent Freemium dinner conversation

tedr — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:55:36 -0000

Some other points I also considered highlights:

* The higher the price point, the less churn/drop-off amongst subscribers.
* Offer users a 30-day free version of the premium right next to offer to join free service. Put the two free offers side by side so people a) know they are making the choice for the premium version, b) less likely to be concerned about a 'catch'
* Offer a money back guarantee period once payment starts.
* On the consumer side do not overlook the emotional motivation to subscribing. Whether it to feel a part of the club, to show your elevated commitment, or to keep moving up the kicking-ass ladder (see Kathy Sierra) subscribing to even utility services such as LinkedIn can have a very strong emotional component.

@matthew: surveying is critical but you have to discount people's stated interest in paying for services by 50% to 75%. It's been our experience that people are 2x to 4x more likely to say they would pay for something when asked in a survey than when confronted with having to take their credit card out.

Re: Too Much Nick

tedr — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:05:40 -0000

Congrats on the deal!!1!!

Re: Bay Area entrepreneurs that I’m following on Twitter

RG — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:37:17 -0000

Hey Ted. Great to bump into here and see that you are still doing well. I recently became an entrepreneur myself and launched (the first site) of my web games network. I hope to make it onto this this list someday too... ;)

Hope to stay in touch.

Rob Giuffre

www.chinesegum.com
http://twitter.com/Game_Of_The_Day
rob@chinesegum.com

Re: Bay Area entrepreneurs that I’m following on Twitter

andrew_null — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:06:18 -0000

And I follow both accounts ;-)

Seriously though, you're one of the only guys out there willing to share real data and substantive ideas - keep it up!