Disqus - Latest Comments for chudson

Re: My Best Estimate for the Size of the Virtual Goods Market in the United States

chudson — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:36:18 -0000

Roman,

Thanks for the good numbers. As I get more of them, I'll update this post.

Re: My Best Estimate for the Size of the Virtual Goods Market in the United States

chudson — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:35:40 -0000

Julio,

Yes, I have a bunch o other questions that I'd like to have answered, particularly about how well the Korean in-country revenues are holding up. As for FB apps, a lot of them do have a meaningful portion of their revenue coming from overseas, but I don't think it's way off base to assume that top performers are still generating $100K domestically.

Re: Will Virtual Gifts Become a Billion Dollar Business?

chudson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:22:41 -0000

Nick, if you're interested in diving deeper on this subject I'm happy to offer you a press pass to the upcoming Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco in October - just let me know. More details available at http://www.vgsummit2008.com - we have a panel dedicated to social networks.

Re: Facebook’s virtual gifts may make more than $40 million this year

chudson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:20:08 -0000

Good article, Eric. We'll be exploring a lot of what makes virtual goods work on social networks and on the web in general at the upcoming Virtual Goods Summit in October (http://www.vgsummit2008.com)

Re: What Will We Do When Growth is No Longer the “In Thing” Anymore? (Web Startups)

chudson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:16:11 -0000

Sure, go ahead and post the conversation - thanks!

Re: What Will We Do When Growth is No Longer the “In Thing” Anymore? (Web Startups)

chudson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:04:57 -0000

Greg,

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. My main point is the following - if you have a business that doesn't generate revenue at tens of millions of unique users, I find it hard to believe that doing 2-3x times as many users would suddenly crack the code.

For businesses that have figured out how to convert traffic into revenue, more traffic is obviously a good thing. For those that haven't, I'm not sure what will happen if growth for growth's sake is no longer sufficient to keep the interest of their investors.

Re: rizzn's personal blog

chudson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:34:36 -0000

Mark,

Nice roundup and thanks for pointing to my post. I do think that we're getting close to a point where a lot of companies who have taken the "trust us, we'll figure out how this all works as a business once we achieve scale" will get called to the carpet. The reason is that they'll have achieved scale and if they haven't figured out something that works at that scale (10s to 100s of millions of uniques), it will be tough to argue that getting even bigger is the answer. Along the way, some companies will figure it out and some won't. But if companies that achieve scale cant turn that advantage into a viable business, it will make things harder for those who are even smaller and pitching the same story.

Re: What can we learn about the iPhone app ecosystem from the Facebook app ecosystem?

chudson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:54:02 -0000

If I were a developer, I think the iPhone app store is a much more interesting revenue generating activity. While the absolute opportunity might be smaller (10ish of million iPhones versus 100ish million people on Facebook), the user behavior is such that people (I think) will be much more willing to transact directly with a developer and pay - you won't have to rely on indirect monetization schemes to build a business. For those looking to bootstrap and build things that look like traditional software businesses (you build something, you ship it, and people pay you cash to use it), the iPhone platform strikes me as more interesting.

I think first movers will have the advantage that they always do - they'll learn what works a lot faster than folks who are not on the platform. A few of them might become "must have" apps that everyone installs as a matter of course as they get an iPhone - too early to tell on that part, though.

Re: Three Statistics That Lie

chudson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:12:46 -0000

I don't think I would say these statistics lie. I think they're just easy to misinterpret. In the earlier days of the web, people got really excited about pageviews. Then they realized there were more meaningful ways to track audience engagement (7-day actives, 30-day actives, unique users per month, etc) - crude tools like pageviews and installs are only good for first-order guesses as to how well a service is doing. I'd argue the statistics you cite (installs, followers, etc) allow lazy people to stay lazy if they choose to rely solely on those without asking more questions about the underlying level of activity.

Re: | Charles Hudson's Weblog

chudson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:00:11 -0000

Greg,

I agree - I think the right end goal for most true generalists is to be the "business founder" of his or her own company at some point. A lot of the generalist track for someone with that ambition is about skill acquisition - knowing enough about a variety of functions to be able to get them done capably until a full team is hired.

I think there are two things that seem to set successful true generalists apart:

1. Enough successful experience in a number of core functions to be able to credibly "stop gap" multiple functions until the company needs a dedicated person. To me, this normally takes a stint or two in each of the core functions and a mastery of the basic tools (how to run a marketing campaign, how to negotiate a deal, how to write a PRD, etc).

2. Enough self awareness to realize that there is always a time to cede part of his or her sphere of tasks to a specialist. Part of what makes being a generalist fun is that you get to do a bit or most of everything. At some point, that just doesn't scale - you have to let go of things.

I have lots of other thoughts on this - maybe I'll turn it into a separate post down the road.

Re: Caltrain Rejecting Wi-Fi for Trains Makes Sense to Me

chudson — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:18:00 -0000

I do agree that working on Caltrain is nice and that Wi-Fi would make it easier for a lot of people to work on the train. I just have two observations as someone who takes the train at least once per week:

1. The only trains where you can really work are the ones that have tables and power outlets. Otherwise, you have to balance a laptop in your lap which is bad for many reasons.

2. Most of the people working on the train have broadband access cards, making the introduction of Wi-Fi superfluous.

I'll also sneak in a 3rd point. A lot of the people I see riding the train at peak times do seem to work for companies who are fine providing them with broadband access cards.

I think Wi-Fi on trains would help. But I'd rather see Caltrain get all of the trains up to par with the current crop that have nice seats and power before they push Wi-Fi.

This whole thing is mute if you plan to use an iPhone or Blackberry to get work done.

Re: Solving the Twitter Business Model Problem - Your Guess is Probably Better than Mine

chudson — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:51:51 -0000

I think there's a marked difference between having a business model that needs scale to be effective and using the need to achieve scale as an excuse to punt on thinking through what model you'll employ once you've achieved scale. I see a lot of the latter and not enough of the former.

Re: Solving the Twitter Business Model Problem - Your Guess is Probably Better than Mine

chudson — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:50:23 -0000

Jason,

I generally think charging 3rd parties is a good way to go. The only problem is that most of the 3rd parties using their service don't seem to be making any money either. I'm not sure how much they'd be able to pay and for how long.

Re: Solving the Twitter Business Model Problem - Your Guess is Probably Better than Mine

chudson — Sun, 25 May 2008 21:39:17 -0000

Marina,

Thanks for the comment. You can already get keyword tracking from other 3rd party services for free already (tweetscan and summize for example) - I'm not sure how Twitter could get people to pay for that.

I think there would have been a great opportunity for a freemium model had Twitter introduced it from the start. I'm not sure what they could introduce now that would get me to pay unless they degraded the free service.

Re: | Charles Hudson's Weblog

chudson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:01:18 -0000

Secondmidnite,

This is a very nice insight - I do agree that we'll need a new or more effective business model if some of these companies are going to become VC-funded success stories.

Re: | Charles Hudson's Weblog

chudson — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:30:15 -0000

Steven,

Very good pints on your comment above. I do think part of the issue is that companies are beginning to achieve valuations that can only be justified if they "break out" and become more mainstream overall. As popular as Twitter is, it has around 1 million or two users - that's hardly huge in Internet terms.