inspiredworlds.com

Listen

Update (14 Feb 2013)

Some additional followup points from the mobile marketing meetup.

1. Storyberg

Slideshare presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/storyberg/release-cohorts-mobile-marketing-meetup-feb-2013

Storyberg helps app developers understand the impact of every release by aligning product development with user engagement.

They’re currently working on an iOS SDK and would like to invite you to sign up to be notified when it’s released!

Signup here to be notified 

2. Crashlytics update

One of the crash reporting tools mentioned was crashlytics. This is an update that came out yesterday:”You may know that a couple weeks ago, Twitter acquired Crashlytics, a mobile crash reporting solution. Today, we thought mobile developers would like to know that Crashlytics is folding its Enterprise features into its main product. This means that developers can now use Crashlytics with no usage costs or limits.Here at Twitter, we love using Crashlytics for mobile crash reporting, and we think that you will too. You can read more about their announcement on their blog [1]

[1] http://www.crashlytics.com/blog/crashlytics-enterprise-is-now-free

Thanks to one of our attendees Matthieu Fyot, Twitonomy for the update.

Listen

We had our third meetup for Mobile Marketing Meetup on “mobile analytics“. About 25 people came to our event at Fishburners, Sydney to hear from 3 talks on analytics. I’ve written a short summary and included the relevant links mentioned in the talks.

1. Crash reporting – Giovanni from WeSync

From the demo, it showed that iTunes crash reports doesn’t seem to work very well, if at all. Hence tools like Crittercism look really useful and you can track where the app crashed, get reports and fix the issue. It looks very similar to the Crashlytics tool (which was bought by Twitter recently). Also check out Crashlog made by Aussie developer Ivan Vanderbyl (and friend of ours!).

https://www.crittercism.com
http://try.crashlytics.com
https://crashlog.io

It was interesting to see that only 2/25 people were using crash reporting tools.

2. Google Analytics – Alwin Chin from Stampii

I thought this was a really good talk. Alwin discussed why they were tracking metrics, use of google analytics for web/mobile and creating custom charts. Stampii were inspired by geckoboard to create a real time dashboard for businesses, and created custom charts using the same technology which was HighCharts / JQuery.  Also some interesting discussion in the end on NFC vs Passbook vs Paywave (creditcard tap system) vs QR codes.

3. Release cohorts – Michael from Storyberg

Cohort analysis is something I’ve come across last year, where you track segments of people from when they sign up. Whereas Storyberg are looking to track users based on feature releases (i.e. release cohorts). Its aimed to be a better tool if you are using lean startup methodology. It does makes sense to be tracking based on feature releases.

At Native Tongue, we’re currently using Flurry and you can set milestones, so we can track if features are being used. I’m not sure if we do a feature release, if we can track the usage in an updated feature though.

Final notes

I got something out of each of these talks and I’m starting to see how different startups are using analytics. I think that analytics is really underrated & underutilised in startups. How can you measure progress if you are not using analytics? You need to be able to track progress, analyse the data and adjust accordingly.

The best thing is that we’re building up knowledge in the mobile & startup community. None of us profess to be experts, since the industry in Australia is fairly young. By sharing what we are doing and the latest things that we’re trying from practitioners in the field, we’ll learn from each other and grow stronger as a group. There’s strength in numbers!

Cheers,

Matt Ho

Listen

Last night we held our 2nd event for Mobile Marketing Meetup. We had 30 people attend (and 40 people register). We grew from the 15 that came to the first meetup. That’s 100% month on month growth! Regardless of the numbers, its really great to find other people working in the mobile space and equally passionate about mobile.

Top app monetisation tactics 

Marc Fine, head of marketing at InMobi gave a talk on “Top app monetisation tactics“. Its based on a webinar that inmobi did recently and the full presentation is here. I thought it was quite good to see what the leaders in this space are doing – Walmart, Zynga, etc.. The presentation was very relevant to me since I’ve been knee deep in metrics all week.My key takeaways are summarised below.

1. What is the value of your customer?

The formula is cost of acquisition < LTV. It might cost you $80 to get a customer but they could be worth $300 via in-app-purchases + ads, then the cost is worth it. The key is understanding the total value of that customer worth.

2. What are the key drivers for your business?

He spoke about metrics such as DAU (daily active users), MAU (monthly active users), ARPU, conversion rates, stickiness. These are the key drivers for Zynga who watch these numbers like a hawk. When they acquired Draw Something, it had DAU of 25 million. The problem was retention of those users which has since dropped to 8 million.

3. Segment your users

A more sophisticated way to do this is to segment your users by identifying patterns of behaviour and use rules to present them offers/ads/incentives.

Examples could be:

• Segmenting your users in China and giving them a Chinese welcome message after 5 opens
• US users may give you more of a viral uplift. So after they spend 300 hours, incentivise virality.
• Identifying hardcore users and treating them like your VIP’s and giving them more things to buy

Its about understanding the consumer behaviour and adapting the experience for them. This is where the web was moving towards when I was working at Next Digital. In the last few years, I’ve been hearing more about personalisation, real time, dynamic content, and click streams. We see it already with companies like Amazon, who understand your behaviour and what similar people do. They “chase” you through the website and with followup offers.

3. ARM cycle – Acquisition, Retention and Monetisation.

Its understanding the cycle of that customer. How you get them in the door, how to keep them coming back and how to make money from them. It make sense but its hard to do.

I spoke to Dan and Joe from rushfaster.com.au and they said its a similar principle to what they do for their eCommerce business. Understanding how the customer churns through the cycle and the throughput. I’ve also come across Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics presentation again and it has a similar idea – Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue.

What game companies are doing

I also spoke to Matt Farnell from Appsperse, a mobile ad analytics company based in the Valley a few weeks ago.  They’re currently working with Super Cell on “Clash of The Clans” which is estimated to be doing $700k per day in revenue. He told me that game companies will test out their game in a small Western market, optimise it and then start pumping money into it to advertise it. After it gets high in the app charts from paid advertising, then scale back advertising as the organic downloads come through.

For these techniques to be really interesting, you generally need to have millions of impressions/users to understand the data and create all these rules. At Zynga they have data analysts, customer acquisition teams and tons of data to use. However, Matt believes that startups can replicate some of these techniques that larger game companies are using and use some of the same tools as well.

Bonus – Buzzy.io demo

We had a bonus demo from Mike Gardiner of Buzzy.io. Buzzy is a multi-player, multi-screen game platform. It turns your mobile device into a game controller and you can play it on another screen, against other people. You have to watch the demo to fully appreciate how it works. They’re currently looking for game developers to build games on their platform. It can be used at music festivals, cafes, outdoor events, pubs.

Future

We will take a break over Christmas. We’re looking at holding the next event at the end of January and will most likely talk about “mobile metrics”. I’d like to have a case study with some in-depth analysis as a follow on to this talk. If you know of anyone that may be a good speaker particularly from a startup perspective, please get in touch with me via the contact section of my website.

I’m out like single player games,

Matt Ho

Listen

I’ve recently become more interested in design and user experience. I found a good talk on Responsive Design Workflow which my friend @sherylyulin recently shared. Responsive Design or more specifically, responsive web design has become a very big buzz word in the tech industry, but is actually quite important given where the internet is heading – internet access from anywhere and any device.

What exactly is responsive web design? Wikipedia defines Responsive Web Design (RWD) as “an approach to web design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)”.

With more of the emerging world onboarding onto the internet via mobile and the availability of new and different device form factors, responsive web design has become increasingly more important.

I found some good examples via this Socialdriver post. If you go to the Boston Globe and Smashing Magazine website, you can resize the page by dragging the corner in and out to create smaller or larger dimensions. The design will respond and adapt to the changing size. The design is fluid (by using responsive CSS elements). I also came across this fluid layout style when playing with Twitter Bootstrap.

I have to admit that a lot of mobile websites look really crappy when viewed from my iPhone – the ones specifically designed as mobile websites. The culprits can be found on websites that lie on a m dot domain (e.g. m.hoyts.com.au). They usually seem to have a limited functionality set of the actual website and just look plain ugly – I’ve never liked them. With responsive design, the way that we design websites is changing – there are some things that just won’t work on a mobile device e.g. hover effect.

The thrust of the video is that web design itself is changing but the actual design process itself also needs to change. I’ve been through the design process multiple times at a web design agency, and working for a client can be quite painful because of the back and forth process on design, particularly using photoshop. I do like the approach espoused by the speaker to make it more efficient and to rethink how we do it by going from the wireframes to HTML/CSS/JS prototypes (but show them a JPEG version of it first)

I think that part of the problem is also the emergence of wireframing tools that allow you to make clickable prototypes with actual elements you’d find on an app or website. For example, I’ve used omnigraffle and I was able to re-create an iPhone layout using the exact buttons. I do like the idea of going really basic and using content reference wireframes and sketching. The problem with using actual elements is that it can restrict how you think about the design.

Responsive design and responsive design workflow is some interesting food for thought. The video is at a good pace and the speaker is well spoken, so hope you enjoy it.

I’m out like mobile websites,

Matt Ho

Listen

I’ve just spent the majority of my afternoon playing games on my iPhone and iPad. Luckily, I can say its for work =)

Its about attention

As a mobile app development company we need to test the latest apps and learn from the best of what is out there. In terms of attention span, playing games on my iPad and iPhone is incredibly addictive. I’ve just spent over an hour playing Tower Defense and upgraded to the paid version because of the gorgeous graphics and excellent gameplay.

I also downloaded Tiny Wings which two different people told me about, but I didn’t get past the first stage. I might need to try it again, but if its difficult to get past the first stage then it doesn’t build confidence in the user to keep playing with it.

I then paid for Street Fighter 4 Volt. Street Fighter is easily my favourite game of all time and the iPhone version is an excellent translation. Though the controlpad is not exact – you really do need those fireballs and dragon punches to work! My last download was Tapamatic, made by Dinoroar a local Aussie developer which I wasn’t able to understand how it worked.

Mobile competes with PC’s and gaming devices

Its clear that mobile is here to stay and smart phone usage is only going to increase. Its increasingly replacing the other devices that I need to use such as my laptop or PC.

At the E3 conference, the World’s biggest gaming conference held in June, Nintendo stated that their biggest threat was not XBOX or PS3, but the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices. They are competing for attention span inside the household and outside. People don’t want to carry around a Nintendo DS, iPhone and a Kindle. Granted they all serve different purposes, but consumers want ease of use. Give them one device that can do it all.

Mobile development to become a core skill set

Increasingly, I hear from startups that they need mobile development skills, which suggest that it is in high demand. There is currently a gap in the marketplace between web development skills and mobile skills. There are a lot of desktop crew out there but not a lot of mobile experience.

My brother, a developer who’s created several iPhone apps as an experiment, stated that designing for the mobile web should be easily translatable for web developers. This is distinct from mobile app development skills (iOS and Android) which is a more specialised skillset.

Fred Wilson, a VC based in New York had this to say last year:

“A common thing we’ve been seeing recently is outsourcing the development of a blackbbery app or some other kind of mobile app. Right now, that is still a fairly nascent skill set but we are also advising most of our portfolio companies to bring individuals in house to do that work because it appears that mobile app development will be a key skill set for our portfolio companies for some time to come.”

There is a gap that exists now because of the limited experience out there. If you read the tea leaves, I expect that this gap will close in the next few years as mobile development skills become more critical for startups and part of their core skill set for developers.

I’m currently learning python. As soon as I’ve finished with that, and if I’m motivated enough, I want to learn mobile.

BRICI will cause a surge in mobile web

Its clear that the future is mobile and I’ve written about it here for the Next Digital blog. I read a report from the Boston Consulting Group that BRICI countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Russia, Indonesia), are jumping straight from having no internet to mobile web. As one of my ex-colleagues, Vincent Yuhico commented, there is pent up demand for smart phones. There will be a surge in mobile web adoption as more BRICI users come on board.

I have no doubt that entrepreneurs will be there to catch them =)

I’m out like the Nokia 5110,

Matt Ho
@inspiredworlds

Listen

Here are some mobile wireframes that I have been playing with. Its my first attempt to wireframe anything. I call it “PicStagr.am”, a mashup of PicPlz and Instagr.am. These are two photosharing apps that I really like. I’ve also been using Path (love it), Liveshare (cool) and Color (sux).

So I’ve tried to create my own photo app, based on my experiences with these apps. But it pretty much ended up looking like Instagr.am.

Why? Because I really love the UI, look & feel and everything about Instagram. It is just so easy to use, and I have tried to replicate some of the features that I like about it. I believe that elements of it can be used for other mobile apps. The numbers don’t lie, 2.5 million users in 6 months. PicPlz has about 200k users. And hey, they say that imitation is the best form of flattery =)

Wireframe 1: Onboarding of friends

What I really like about instagr.am was how easy it was to onboard your friends. By that I mean how easy to add them to your new social network on Instagr.am. It uses facebook connect, and you can easily see who in your network is using the app. You just touch “add”, and voila!

There’s also an option to select all, but I havent included it. I rarely use any “add all” option. This interface is just so simple, and enticing to just touch the “add button” for all the people you want to include. You don’t have to go to each person’s profile. You already know who they are because you are friends with them on Facebook. Much easier than using a mouse, just tap “add”!

I’ve also included an option to add friends via email that are not in your facebook network of friends.

Wireframe 2: Uploading photos

What I like about Instagr.am, Path and also Dropbox is that they keep the UI really simple. And it looks gorgeous. Same with Airbnb as well. I think there’s been a renewed focus on user centered design and designing things that just look awesome. I believe that Apple helped pave the way for this.

Here, we’ve kept it really simple. I wanted to keep the layout very similar to the first wireframe. Give it a consistent user experience, so the user does not get confused and knows exactly where everything is.

You hold the phone camera in front of the subject and can select one of these four buttons at the bottom:

1. Share to social network: Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr, etc…

2. Filters: What Instagr.am does is that it makes ordinary pictures look extraordinary by giving it an older or tinted look. Potentially their business model could be selling additional filters. Filters that other people don’t have.

3. Camera icon

4. Delete the current pic

Button 1, 2, 4 cannot happen without taking the photo first. I like to keep the camera icon in the middle, because the user will naturally look for it.

I probably should have put a “done” button in Wireframe 1 in the top right hand corner as well. Its pretty much a save button.

Wireframe 3: View Stream

I actually really like what Picplz does with this. Their grid of pics shows the best pics from the public. Your network of pics on PicPlz is actually vertical. You scroll down, but sometimes it takes too long or you don’t want to see too many of a particular person’s photo. I also like how instagr.am also allows for content discovery of cool pics as well.

I like the grid format because it enables you to view a lot of thumbnail pics at once. Similar to how Facebook albums works, you can view them all and select the ones you like.

I’ve tried to keep a consistent format with top banner and bottom banner with the 4 icons.

That’s all for now. I’d love to hear your feedback on my first attempt to do some mobile wireframes and my analysis.

I’m out like digital cameras,

Matt Ho.

Listen

$41 million. Pre-product. Wow.

Listen to this interview from Robert Scoble talking to Bill Nguyen (founder of Lala.com) and Peter Pham (founder of Bill Shrink).

Its very interesting. It discusses the future of mobile and their plan to build a new social graph known as the elastic network. I think its clear that Sequoia invested in the team and not so much the idea – though the idea is ambitious. Photos is only one part of the app. Also, check out this post from GigaOm.

Listen

I just wrote an answer on the profitability of the music subscription model on Silicon Beach. I used Spotify as my example, cause that’s the one I’m familiar with and most high profile. Here is my full answer in case you are not a member of Silicon Beach.

————————

Many organisations are banking on the paid subscription model – from music, news, movies etc..whether its the answer is another question.

Clay Shirky understands this better than most people. He explains the paid content model, comparing music subscription vs news subscription model here:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/why-itunes-is-not-a-workable-mod…

I have also been thinking about the music subscription model today. Apple has a whole ecosystem supporting the music experience. People will pay for this convenience and experience.

In terms of music, lets use Spotify as an example since they are most likely to extract value from the rest of the value chain. Is Spotify profitable?

Spotify has 10million users. News articles suggest they have approx 650,000 paying subscribers (~ 1 in 20 paying).

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/15/spotify-10-million/
http://gigaom.com/2010/11/22/spotify-2010-revenues/

MUSIC REVENUES

90% of users pay $10 Euros/month = $120 Euros yearly
10% of users pay $5 Euros/month = $60 Euros yearly

On a revenue basis, Spotify generated $74m Euros last year on music  subscriptions alone.

ADVERTISING + “VALUE CHAIN” REVENUES

Gigaom reckons that Spotify made $58m in advertising. I take this with a pound of salt cause I don’t see how this could be true. My estimates below are based on the low side.

I project the following revenue streams:

- Advertising (PPC): 10m users x 1% of users click on ads x $0.02 x
365 days = $730k/year

- Ticket sales: $5 commission x 10m users x 1% purchasing yearly =
$500k/year. Using the average Posse commission prices.

- Merchandise: $20 tshirt x 10% commission x 10m users x 1% purchasing
yearly = $200k/year

That’s roughly $76m in revenue.

COSTS

The only cost that’s public is music royalties at $30m. That leaves $46m on table.

I wouldn’t think the operating cost of a lean startup business would be any more than 40% of remaining revenues (assuming 20 staff, low overheads). Opex = $46m x40% = $18m.

Total profit is = 76m – 30m – 18m = $28m profit.

So in short, their music subscription model is profitable.

I’m sure they’ll have other revenue streams from deals with mobile companies. I think that’s where the real value is for Spotify – the mobile apps. People will subscribe to this. They probably need to get it to 10% – 20% of paying users (currently at 5%). Their push into the US is more likely to build a barrier to competition cause it will prevent other people from moving in.

I’m out like Myspace,

Matt Ho.

Listen

Yup I’m a big fan of location based services, particularly foursquare. I’ve blogged about some various news items as well as some improvements that could be made to the service.

Let me break it down for you.

First Foursquare Mayor Meetup in Australia

I participated in #officemayor, where Microsoft were doing a promotion to hand out copies of Office 2010. You had a to be a mayor of a venue and you needed to checkin at the venue in Martin Place to get a free copy. Unfortunately, my phone and Optus didn’t want to co-operate, however I did manage to show them my treasured Mayorships and collect my free copy of Office 2010.

Officemayor at Martin Place

The problem was that there wasn’t much mingling or stickiness about this event. Most people came, saw, collected and left within 5 minutes. What they did though was broadcast the event to their social network, creating a ripple effect about it. Whether these same people are going to twitter/blog/etc… about the use of Office 2010 and to upgrade from Office 2007 is another matter. As a launch event it was not bad. Another issue is that not many people other than the digerati know about foursquare so it was a limited audience as not all connect their foursquare check-ins to twitter or facebook (to be honest I find these updates annoying in these news streams).

Foursquare Day Meetup

I also went to the first Foursquare Day meetup at Bar 333 a few months ago. It was on 16 April or 16/4 to Americans… so 4 Square… get it? Whilst there were a few people mocking me for going and the fact that there were only a few people attending made it hard to find. I actually had to go around and ask a few people if they were there for the event.

I think about 12 people turned up, and I had brought 3 friends along that also use the service. Hey it won’t be long before the rest of the crowd are on foursquare (just like how they joined twitter). All I can say is this – there are people that use it and those that demonstrate their passion for it – we call these people fanboys =)

NBA final badges

Also importantly, I discovered how to get two badges during the NBA finals. If you shouted “Go Lakers” or “Go Celtics” on foursquare, you could obtain the badges. Pretty awesome to have the 4 leaf clover as a badge. And you know I had to get both badges!

Location Based Stickers

I’m not so sold on these foursquare stickers that can be placed on shop windows / doors / walls. It kinda looks tacky. I do like the concept of notifying people physically before you enter that it is a foursquare venue. It doesn’t mean that the restaurant or bar is actually good or whether the special is good value. I prefer those crowdsourced comments.

Though the definition of good is relative, so how can we combat this?

If those comments are from people that frequent those types of venues or restaurants, we can attribute a value or a priority to them.

Robert Scoble talks about this and you look at Quora, the new Q&A service. We should be placing a premium on those that have expertise in a particular subject matter or experience.

I drink a lot of milkshakes, in fact its my favourite drink. I’ve had more than my fair share and I’ve had it all around the world. So my tip on whether a milkshake is good or not in a particular restaurant means a lot more than the average joe. A few years ago, my colleague and I were working at the BNP Paribas building on Elizabeth Street. I stumbled across this cafe inside the building that made the most awesome bannana milkshake I had in a long time. And I told her it was good (TRUST!). She had one sip of it and beamed the widest smile and said “you’re right! Its good!!”. Of course, I know my shakes. Now if you ask me about coffee, I have no idea. I never drink the stuff.

I do occassionally have the odd cappucino when I’m in a cafe, but my tip on whether the coffee is good or not doesn’t really mean much. But my tip on milkshakes, YOU BETTER BELIEVE DAT!

Its like those Zagat stickers you see everywhere in New York. It means its been rated by Zagat. So what? It doesn’t mean it was rated highly. We need to be ranking these crowdsourced tips and leveraging off our social networks of people that are like us. We should be able to vote on those tips to increase that peer’s expertise (and vote down if they suck). The more that they frequent cafes, the higher the value should be. It doesn’t necessarily mean there is a direct correlation, but I would tend to trust someone that drinks a lot of coffee at cafes more than someone who drinks it occasionally.

Next post will be about pre check-in as opposed to post check-in service.

I’m out like the Celtics,

Matthew Ho

Listen

Just a few thoughts in my head right now.

Nokia's camera phone

Phone Lifecycle vs Consumer Lifecycle

In the world of mobile, the product lifecycle has not really changed much. What has really changed is the consumer lifecycle. Sure phones aren’t made like they were used to like my first phone the NOKIA 5110*.

Our expectations, desires, and wants have dramatically shortened. This has been driven by a culture of consumerism, faster software releases, hardware tweaks and more choice of models backed by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. Its a culture which Apple has thrived on, by introducing iPods that needed to be replaced every year and I believe this has had a flow on effect to the iPhone.

Hey I’m no different, I’m hanging out to get the HTC Desire. And I’ve only had my HTC Dream for a a bit more than a year. My previous Nokia phone lasted more than several years including several overseas trips. Now I need more heft, cause I want to run Froyo 2.2 and apps that require more processing power. I *need” it because I have an Android blog called GhostInTheDroid. Thats what I tell myself.

I’m out like the 5110

Matt Ho

*This was a classic, no nonsense phone that still works.