Over the past few months, I’ve been really interested in developing a better understanding for how effective Facebook’s advertising tools are. I’ve done this strictly for my own events business, not for Serious Business. For a total expenditure of slightly over $1,000, I feel like I’ve come up with a few opinions / thoughts on the whole experience:

Facebook fans might have a nebulous value, but Facebook fans respond to targeted communications with benefits (discounts, free stuff). I still don’t know what a Facebook fan is “worth” to me – specifically, I have no idea what the maximum CPA I’d be willing to pay to get an additional Facebook fan. What I do know, though, is that putting out an offer (discount code, free ticket, etc) to your Facebook fan gets real activity. Our most popular posts / messages were ones that offered discounts, deals, or really relevant updates on new speakers. Surprise, surprise – people respond to offers for free stuff or relevant information.

Facebook has a gaggle of products that could be simplified and unified – As a newbie advertiser, Facebook still has too many disjoint products. They have Fan Pages, Events, and Groups. My feeling is that they’re pushing most professional organizations to use Fan Pages. I have a group as well, but the tools for managing it are very basic. And you can’t (as far as I can tell) easily integrate a group into a Fan Page. And Facebook has Events. Events are great, but you can’t link an existing event with your Fan Page – you have to create events from scratch from the Fan Page to make them easy to find for your Fans. That’s something they should fix.

You know what would help? Facebook should pick a locus of activity and I think they have – it’s the Fan Page. Now they just need to make sure that as many of their tools / offerings as possible seamlessly integrate into the Fan Page experience.

Facebook advertising needs the same kind of 3rd party tools ecosystem that Google AdWords has – Overall, I feel like Facebook has really rudimentary tools when it comes to measuring the efficacy of your advertising campaigns and automating the whole bid optimization process. If you’ve spent money on Google Adwords or internet advertising more broadly, you know that there are tons of tools out there to help you maximize the efficacy of your spend, compare performance within and across networks, and to tune your creative. Facebook doesn’t have that tools ecosystem, but they’re still a young company. To make this a truly powerful platform for SME advertisers, Facebook will either need to beef up their tools or create a good 3rd party ecosystem where other people can do that for SMEs and earn a profit doing so. My money is on the company doing the latter – it’s more consistent with many of the things they’ve done to date.

Facebook advertising can deliver real results if you track it properly – For our latest conference, the Virtual Goods Summit, we managed to sell 16 tickets that were directly attributable to Facebook. To be 100% clear, that means that we sold 16 tickets where the transaction was completed by someone who clicked on a link where the referring source was Facebook. If you’re an Eventbrite user, this means that 16 of our tickets came from tracking URLs that were sent to the Facebook audience. Facebook was our second most fruitful channel for customer acquisition – the only channel that outperformed them (based on tracked, directly attributed ticket purchases) was our own mailing list. Not bad for a 5 year old company with a relatively new advertising platform.

Longer term, though, the value of having a strong presence on Facebook is that it is a relatively friction-free way to communicate with people who are interested in your brand. Email is clogged – it has been taken over by spammers. Reaching people through that channel is difficult. It’s hard to get people to give you phone numbers – that’s too private and not disposable. So I do think that having a low-friction channel with high responsiveness is a good thing for people who want to advertise. Facebook, though, will have to bear the responsibility for setting the rules of the road and keeping this channel from getting clogged.

If you want to take part in my FB marketing experiments, become a fan of the Virtual Goods Summit or the Social Gaming Summit. If you have thoughts on your experiences using Facebook’s marketing tools, let me know in the comments.

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This will be a very short blog post. I’ve had Google Wave for about two weeks now and I still can’t identify the core use case the product is seeking to address. I don’t have generic collaboration needs – I have plenty of specific situations where collaboration is helpful, but they’re all fairly custom. For example, I would have been really happy if Google had integrated Google Chat as a persistent sidebar in Google Docs and Spreadsheets – that would be something that would fit the way I already use those products and make them incrementally more useful. Ditto on the ability to leave notes or keep a log of persistent communication over the life of the document. But Google Wave doesn’t seem to be tailored to any of the use cases above. What problem is this trying to solve?

What am I missing? Can someone help me out?

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I’ve been playing with Gist since the beta. After a several week hiatus, I’ve started using the product again. Overall, I think it’s a very good effort at helping people keep up to date with what their friends are doing across the web and helping you stay up to date. The best use case? Checking Gist before you meet up with someone you haven’t seen in awhile. Gist will show you their latest activity on Twitter, LinkedIn, and the web more broadly.

As much as I like Gist and as useful as I think it can ultimately become, I can’t help but feel that this product would do way more for me if it were more like infrastructure and less like an application. What do I mean? Well, instead of having to go to Gist to get these updates, I wish Gist were more like oxygen – it would show up in my calendar when I opened a meeting, show up in my address book when I looked someone up, and generally integrate with all of the other systems I already use to keep track of people and manage my day. It’s hard to start out as infrastructure without a good representative use case deployment and the web product does that. I just hope that Gist eventually becomes something that’s more infrastructure and less destination – you can’t get there overnight but I hope the company’s aims point in that direction.

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I have been thinking a lot about whether Twitter will ultimately become as fertile a place for social games as Facebook has become over the past 18 months. I have to preface this article by saying that I am not actively involved in building games on the Twitter platform nor do I have any firsthand knowledge as to what’s working on the Twitter platform with respect to games. Below are a set of hypotheses I have about why Facebook is still a better place for social games developers than Twitter:

1. Facebook has much higher engagement than Twitter, whether you measure it by time spent, frequency of login / usage, intensity of interaction, or any other meaningful metric. This makes sense – social networks have more opportunities to engage users than communication utilities do. Rightly or wrongly, my perception is that Facebook users spend a lot more time on Facebook and engage more deeply on that platform than Twitter users do on average. Why do I believe this? Well, I think that one of the primary reasons people continue to hang out on Facebook for ungodly amounts of time is that Facebook does an amazing job of creating context out of content via the use of metadata. For example, looking at pictures on Facebook is often times more interesting than looking at them in other places because you’re likely to get photos that are tagged with socially-useful information (names of people, links to those people’s profiles, comments from other people etc). The same can be said of posted items, status updates, videos, or just about any other type of web content. While Twitpic and other services are great for sharing photos on Twitter, I don’t believe those services create the same kind of social metadata that a well tagged Facebook photo album does. Part of the cool part of consuming content on Facebook is that it offers the opportunity to discover new people who are friends of friends and to better understand your friends’ social patterns.

Another somewhat subtle difference is the way in which both networks make use of passive or casual users. On Twitter, if you’re not tweeting or people aren’t @replying to you, you’re effectively invisible to many people on the service. To some degree, Facebook gets around this problem (to a limited degree) by allowing users to create metadata that involves users who are not active users of the service. For example, tagging a full photo album with friends of yours who are not active on Facebook creates an opportunity for them to be re-engaged when they’re notified about being tagged or when someone else comments to them directly.

Why is this relevant to games? Well, at the end of the day, games (free-to-play games in particular) need engaged users to work. If you have a platform with a lot of registered users who do not engage regularly, that does not strike me as the most fertile place in which to create a games ecosystem.

2. Facebook has an incredibly short loop between discovering games and engaging with them – games can be played “in-stream” in the current Facebook UI. One of the best thing for social games developers working on the Facebook platform is the opportunity to leverage all of Facebook’s communication channels to acquire users. Whether it’s the newsfeed, a notification, or an invite, there are tons of ways to engage game players on social networks. What’s even better, though, is that those users are one click away from playing your game in what looks and feels like the same native experience. Playing Facebook games doesn’t require you to leave Facebook – you just click from within Facebook to an iFrame or other page that looks and feels like you’re still in Facebook (including the Facebook header and nav bar), play until you’re bored or out of energy, and then go back to browsing your news feed or chatting with friends. This both makes user acquisition fairly easy for developers and makes game discovery easy for consumers.

Twitter does not today have this luxury. People access Twitter through a variety of ways (mobile, desktop applications, web apps, IM, etc), none of which provide a consistent UI or discover paradigm. And there isn’t any way to play Twitter games in-stream – most of the games that I’ve seen show up in my Twitter stream require the player to go to a 3rd party site to create an account or otherwise perform game actions. Having to click away from what you’re doing to play or interact with a game introduces more friction than is found on the Facebook platform. It also makes content discovery more difficult – without a graphically rich news feed in which players can “brag” or show what they’re doing, I have to believe it’s harder to show prospective users what the game is like and why they should play.

On a related note, it’s taken Facebook developers a long time to figure out the right balance between invites, notifications, and newsfeed items as promotional channels for their applications. Twitter really gives you three options right now – @replies, twitter “status” updates, and DMs. I’m not sure either any of these is necessarily appropriate. I can see the value in DMs as a user-to-user notification system for players who are in games. And I can see why @replies would be a good channel to leverage if you’re a game developer. But do most users want game-related @reply messages? I don’t know. For games like foursquare where the information being published in status updates (location) is generally consistent with what users share naturally, maybe that works.

Feel free to add your thoughts below. Thanks for reading.

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I’ve been using foursquare since March and I have to say that I really like it. Having played with lots of other location-based friend finder applications in the past, I never really found one that worked for me. I lost interest in most of them for the same 3 reasons:

1. Most LBS friend-finder applications don’t offer much value if your friends don’t use them.
2. The primary, and perhaps sole, use case for most location-based friend finders is to track and locate your friends. This is not a use case that I really have.
3. Location acquisition was a slow, painful process on every phone I’ve owned except for my iPhone

I don’t actually think of or use foursquare as a friend-finder / location application. I play it like a casual iPhone game and I think that’s part of the beauty of the application and why I find it so fun and compelling. It’s clear to me that they’ve succeeded in making a location-based game that has good incentives for regular engagement. Below are some thoughts about what I like about the game:

Strong single player mode – foursquare is fun regardless of whether your friends use it or not. The game has some simple single player mechanics that I really enjoy. The process of “checking in” and logging your location is really easy – just click a button and you’re done. The weekly cumulative check in / point system is a game in and of itself – I’m always looking to see how many valid check ins I can get in one week and how that compares to other weeks.

The game is social without requiring my “friends” to play – One of the really nice things about foursquare is that it is social without requiring you to bring in your entire social graph, spam your address book, or otherwise pull in your group of real-world friends. I think the foursquare team was smart to introduce dual leaderboards – one for your city and one for your group of friends. If you don’t want to invite your friends but still want to have a sense for what the foursquare community is doing, you can just check out the public leaderboards. Layering in friends makes for an interesting game-within-a-game of trying to compete with your friends on check ins.

There are also some other clever social game hacks that I think work really well in foursquare. First of all, the leaderboards reset on a regular (weekly) basis. For new users, this is a big deal – no matter when you installed the game and started playing, you still have a chance to rise to the top of a leaderboard in any given week. It also keeps the pressure on top players to continue checking in to maintain a leadership position – you can’t just go big for a week or two and then coast if being a leader is important to you.

The other thing I really like about foursquare is that it is a passive way to keep up with where my friends like to go and hang out without feeling like you’re using a Big Brother type of application. If you don’t want people to know where you are, you don’t have to check in – that makes check ins more meaningful to me as it’s a clear indication that the person checking in actually wants you to know where he or she is. By focusing on self-reported check ins, foursquare gets around the somewhat awkward experience I had using other applications.

Good achievement system: Badges and Mayors – I also think foursquare has done a good job with its achievement system. On the one hand, you have badges, which are what I think of as permanent achievements – once you’ve earned them, they’re yours for as long as you’re a player. And there’s enough variety of badges that it’s hard to imagine collecting them all in a short period of time. Many of the badges are long-term achievements, too – you have to persist at some activity for some period of time (go out x number of nights in a row, check in at y number of places, etc) to earn them. It’s a good medium-to-long term engagement mechanism.

The mayor concept is almost the opposite. It’s a very transient way to reward people for frequency and regularity. But with the mayor concept, you’re only the mayor so long as you are on top in terms of check-ins. I have yet to achieve mayor status anywhere, but I can imagine that I would want to defend my position as mayor for as long as I could once I earned it. Again, I think this is a clever way in which to reward users who engage with the game regularly and it replicates a very common real-world behavior; showing up at a bar, coffee shop, etc enough times until the staff considers you a regular. I have to believe that’s part of what makes it work.

So there you have it. I think foursquare has done a good job of making a really compelling social game based on location check ins. Do you like foursquare? Feel free to leave some comments below.

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I haven’t blogged in nearly 2 months. So much has been going on lately that I haven’t had much time to do blogging – I’ll be back with more posts shortly.

In the meantime, it’s my pleasure to announce that we’ve secured a number of fantastic speakers and panelists for the 3rd Annual Virtual Goods Summit, which will take place on October 29-30, 2009 in San Francisco, CA. As an alum of our prior events, it is my pleasure to invite you to join us again in October at VGS09 at the Westin San Francisco on Market Street. As the market opportunity for virtual goods continues to expand and publishers gain a deeper understanding of this new landscape, it’s more important than ever to connect with your colleagues and stay on top of developments in our fast moving market.

I am also excited to tell you about our first major format change for the Virtual Goods Summit. This year, we’ll be offering both a full day of panels and talks (the Virtual Goods Summit on Oct 30th) along with a half-day warmup of informative workshops focused on the fundamentals of success in this market (Virtual Goods Summit University on Oct 29th). I encourage you to join us for both days, and I assure you that you’ll find both sessions informative, enjoyable, and full of actionable ideas and insights.

I’d also like to extend a special thanks to our sponsors, as we couldn’t make VGS09 happen without their support: Offerpal Media, Super Rewards, Viximo, Norwest Venture Partners, Globespan Capital Partners, Blue Run Ventures, Zong, and InComm. If your company is interested in joining us as a sponsor for VGS 2009, please contact David Sachs (david@vgsummit2008.com) for details.

Virtual Goods Summit University – Thursday, October 29, 2009
Virtual Goods Summit – Friday, October 30, 2009
Westin Market Street, San Francisco, CA
Website: http://www.vgsummit.com/2009
Register: http://vgsummit2009.eventbrite.com

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/vgsummit
Be a Fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Virtual-Goods-Summit/234057065290?_fb_noscript=1

Confirmed Speakers and Panelists

• David Wallerstein, Tencent
• John Earner, Playfish
• Bill Wang, Perfect World
• Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partners
• Jameson Hsu, Mochi Media
• Brian Balfour, Viximo
• Adam Caplan, Super Rewards
• Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain
• David Marcus, Zong
• John Smedley, Sony Online Entertainment
• Zhan Ye, GameVision
• Ron Hirson, BOKU
• Siqi Chen, Serious Business
• Shanna Tellerman, Wildpockets
• Geoff Cook, MyYearbook
• Lisa Rutherford, TwoFish
• Robin Chan, XPD Media
• Dave Etling, InComm
• Ludovic Bodin, CMUNE

Virtual Goods Summit University (October 29th)
This year we’ll be offering a half-day seminar designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the key fundamental drivers of virtual goods business models. Our group of experts will cover topics ranging from why virtual goods are effective to the ins and outs of managing a virtual economy. Whether you’re new to the space or just looking for an opportunity to get additional insights and perspectives, we encourage you to join us for the day and learn from some of our industry’s leading thinkers. Space is limited, so register now if you plan to attend. We’re going to cover a lot of critical topics, including the following:

• Virtual Goods – Why and How They Work
• Getting Started with Virtual Goods and Virtual Gifts
• Launching Your Virtual Currency – A Case Study
• Managing and Marketing a Virtual Goods Offering
• Managing a Virtual Economy – What You Need to Know
• The Payments Landscape – Virtual Goods Payment Options
• Optimizing Your Payments Infrastructure – A Publisher Case Study

Virtual Goods Summit (October 30th, 2009)
The 2009 version of the Virtual Goods Summit is on track to be a fantastic event. We’re hard at work in securing a strong lineup of speakers who will come armed with data and perspective to share with all in attendance. If you’re active in the virtual goods space, this is a must-attend event. We’ll announce speakers and a complete agenda shortly, but the day will cover many important topics, including the following:

• Lessons from the Leaders
• Virtual Goods and Social Networks
• Virtual Goods – A Global Perspective
• Blending Microtransactions and Subscriptions – A Case Study
• MMOs and Virtual Worlds
• Payments Infrastructure for Virtual Goods

Other Events of Interest
I’m not directly involved in the organization of the events below, but thought that they might be of interest to you:

Mobilize 09 (September 10, 2009)
Mobilize 09 is a one-day conference that brings together the thought leaders of the next generation mobile web for talk, demonstrations and debate. We’ll examine what it means to have wireless broadband speeds at the Gigabit scale and how the explosion of open platforms create new opportunities beyond the traditional handset, for entrepreneurs, investors and consumers. Readers can get a saving of $260 from the regular ticket price. Use the code MPSOCIALGAMSUM10 at registration or click on this http://mobilize09.eventbrite. com/?discount=MPSOCIALGAMSUM10 to register at the special saver price.

Women 2.0 Startup Weekend SF (August 28 to 30, 2009 in San Francisco, CA)
What is Startup Weekend? It is a weekend where you meet like-minded people and start something over the weekend. Come to Startup Weekend to find an idea that resonates with you, join a team, and launch! Startup Weekend is a place to test ideas, contribute to ideas, and meet potential founders. We are bringing together the most innovative, talented, and out-of-the-box entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. This event is open (all genders!). Details http://www.women2.org/ w2sfstartupweekend09/

SNAP Summit: FailCon! (Tuesday October 27th, 2009 in San Francisco, CA)
The producers of SNAP Summit have a great new event lined up to take a light-hearted but productive look at failure: FailCon! They’re bringing together the biggest players in the Web 2.0 industry to talk about the failures they’ve had, what went wrong, how they got over it, and what they learned. These are mistakes we all will make as entrepreneurs, missteps we all will see. And this is the best way to be prepared. This event looks to present some great new content, and be informative and fun. Pick up 15% off tickets at http://snapsummit4.eventbrite. com/?discount=VGS.

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I’ve had Facebook on the brain lately – not surprising given that I work at a company that builds games for the Facebook platform. One of the more interesting things I’ve been trying to figure out is the use case for a “Pay with Facebook” or Facebook payments solution off the Facebook platform.

Changing the way people spend money and pay for things is hard. I’d argue that most people aren’t looking for new ways to pay unless the new payment method either a) enable a class of people who weren’t able to pay before to transact or b) it’s way less friction than competing alternatives. Otherwise, why not just use your current method of payment? I can think of a few payment innovations that succeeded (or are in the early stages of succeeding) and my guess as to why they’ve gotten traction:

• Bill Me Later – Allowed merchants to offer promotional financing and same-as-cash offers to e-commerce customers
• PayPal – Enabled relatively frictionless person-to-person transactions for auctions and other use cases
• Zong / Boku – Simple, fast, easy mobile payments using an existing billing system (the mobile phone)
• PlaySpan / Blackhawk / InComm / GMG – Pre-paid cards enabling teens and other people to pay for digital content (iTunes, free-to-play web games, etc)

I also worked on a payment product, Google Checkout, that is a good product but has not taken off. The reasons for that probably belong in another blog post. Suffice it to say that launching a new payment product, even with the imprimatur of a very strong brand like a Google or Faceboo, does not guarantee broad commercial adoption.

I’ve been reading about how the “Pay with Facebook” option that’s being rolled out to developers might actually be made available to 3rd parties in the same way that Facebook Connect is being rolled out. I’m still not getting the rationale for why off-Facebook payments are a big deal. I do think payment on Facebook could be really interesting because they have the ability to make buying things on Facebook just as simple as Amazon 1-click by storing credentials and integrating payments deeply into trusted applications. Now for my concerns…

Fraud has many faces – having a social graph (might) only address a few - Taking payments is a risky business. You’re always going to experience fraud, whether it’s friendly fraud or truly nefarious activity. Given that you can set up a fake Facebook profile, I’m not entirely convinced that the “verified” nature of Facebook identity is sufficient to reduce nefarious or friendly fraud. I need to be convinced of this argument before I’m willing to buy that merchants would view a “Paid with Facebook” transaction as being more trustworthy than a standard credit card transaction.

Merchants tend to be interested in offering payment options that convert well. Will enough Facebook users payment-enable their accounts to reach critical mass? How is Facebook going to get people to payment-enable their accounts? Sure, those who have purchased virtual goods or credits have a credit card on file with Facebook. But what about the other large percentage of users who don’t have a card or payment source on file? What will Facebook do to induce those users to register and how much will these inducements cost?

Beacon had some things right – the primary benefit of off-Facebook payments is likely to be a tight integration with the newsfeed or social graph – Say what you will about Beacon, the idea of publishing actual purchase or transaction data into a user’s social graph is a really powerful signal and a benefit that no other payment option can currently offer. For some categories that are inherently social (movie tickets, concert tickets, general entertainment and lifestyle purchases, life milestones, etc), the ability to broadcast a transaction could drive additional downstream revenue from people who see that activity and choose to transact. Is this a sufficiently powerful incentive for merchants to adopt off-Facebook payments? Depends on the complexity of integration, rate of adoption by consumers, and the number of downstream transactions they’d need to see to get a reasonable payback on the engineering effort.

My guess is that those e-commerce sites that have a positive experience with Facebook Connect will be first in line to trial a payments offer as a ride along.

What am I missing? Help me figure this out by leaving a comment.

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I’ve had my Verizon MiFi 2200 for about a week now and I have some early thoughts on what I like and don’t like about the device. For those of you who are not familiar with the MiFi, it basically combines an EVDO laptop card and a wireless router. Think of it as a mini WiFi hotspot in your pocket, with the connection provided via Verizon’s 3G network. I thought I’d share some of my early experiences using the device.

Overall, I like my MiFi a lot. It’s very small (about the size of 6 credit cards stacked on top of each other), it’s really easy to boot up, and it provides fairly reliable wireless coverage. I have a few gripes below, but I think this is a great first generation device.

One word of caution. If you are an existing Verizon Wireless Broadband customer and you have VZAccess Manager already installed on your computer, make sure you delete that program before trying to configure your MiFi. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon before we diagnosed an existing VZAccess Manager installation as the root problem.

I have two primary use cases for my MiFi 2200. Unfortunately for me, one use case shines and one suffers:

Quick, bursty access to WiFi on my iPhone – One of the things I really like to do is download large podcasts on my iPhone 3G. I’ve also been known to enjoy a YouTube video or game on the go as well. Sadly, many of these activities are very taxing over AT&T’s 3G wireless network. Having the ability to quickly get a WiFi network for my iPhone and pull down this data (some of which, like video podcasts, currently require a WiFi connection to grab the data) is a huge help. The MiFi shines in this bursty, quick data grabbing use case. The device generally connects to the Verizon network in about a minute or so, so there’s no waiting around for a connection.

Long session use when traveling (hotels, airports, cafes, etc) – One of the things I liked about my old Verizon data card was that I could have long Internet sessions with minimal disruptions. I could work at an airport, cafe, or hotel room for 60-90 minute stretches before the card would start to flake out. A simple reconnect to the Verizon network would usually solve the problem. Sadly, the MiFi does not seem to work so well in cases where I want to use it for long stretches of time. Because there really isn’t a UI for the device, I have been noticing mystifying drops in coverage. I can’t tell whether it’s an issue with the Verizon 3G network, my computer’s AirPort, or the device itself. After about 30-45 minutes of continuous usage, the MiFi tends to crap out.

I have one modest feature request for the next version of this device. I wish there were a way to put it in “locked mode” where it wouldn’t turn on. I find the on/off switch to be very sensitive and there I have been a few instances where a slight jostling of the device turns it into broadcast mode and I’m unknowingly draining the battery along the way. I wish I could lock the device when it’s not in use so as to not accidentally activate it.

This is a really good device. If you travel frequently and have the need to share a connection across devices, this is a great solution.

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I’ve got a quick blog post / request for input for those of you who read my blog and have an interest in virtual goods. The Virtual Goods Summit is going on it’s 3rd year now and I’m going to make the first major change to the format that we’ve ever undertaken. The more people I talk to, the more I am beginning to believe that there’s a growing divide in terms of what those who are actively in market want to know / hear about at the conference and what those who are newer to the space want to learn. Instead of trying to jam everything into one packed day, we’re going to change things up a bit this year and have a half day of workshops focused on the fundamentals of virtual goods as a supplement to our day-long format. The target market for these workshops is everyone from those who are new to the space to those who are looking to round out their knowledge of the full spectrum of what it takes to succeed with a virtual goods model. We’ve decided to call this track the Virtual Goods Summit University – imaginative, huh?

The Virtual Goods Summit will still continue to focus on the needs of those who are actively in market and pushing the boundaries of what’s doable with a virtual goods model. It seems to me that now’s the time for some segmentation but I’m totally open to feedback about whether or not this is a good idea.

I also wanted to float a list of topics that I think we should cover in the Virtual Goods Summit University – what’s missing? What would you like to hear about if you were to attend the Virtual Goods Summit University?

-Overview of virtual goods and why they work
-Overview of key concepts / terms / jargon
-Managing a virtual economy
-Launching and managing a virtual goods catalog
-Payments and monetization
-Community management and customer service
-Integrating brands and advertisers
-Measuring and tracking your success

As always, comments / feedback are welcome and encouraged.

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I would not describe myself as a power user of Twitter by any means, but I continue to be fascinated by the amount of energy and time people spend building tools on top of it and generally commenting on how it’s the next next new thing (double nexts were intentional). I do, though, use FriendFeed a fair amount because I like the conversational elements of it and the fact that it has much more visual content (people share pictures, videos, etc – that’s more eye-catching than text). I’ve been thinking a lot about why the real-time web isn’t really working as well for me as I’d like it to and am posting some disjoint thoughts below – feel free to add any comments you have.

So far, I’ve found two really good use cases for Twitter and the real-time web based on the way I like to consume information:

-Following Events – Twitter hashtags are a great way to keep up with the pulse of what’s happening at tech conferences that I can’t attend. It’s way easier for me to follow than liveblogging as it gives me both shorter updates about what’s going on and allows me to easily hear from a wider variety of voices than a single blog can provide.
-Quick pulse of what’s on my friends’ minds – About once or twice a day I’ll see a link that gets retweeted by lots and lots of people I know. That tells me that they’re all reading or at least expressing interest in the content. That’s a good signal to me that I should probably check out whatever it is that they’re passing around.

Aside from those two use cases, I see a few key areas where the latest incarnation of the real-time web isn’t really making my life better, making me more productive, or where I’m having a hard time understanding all of the euphoria:

While the speed with which people can create and publish information continues to increase, I’m gated by my own ability to process information. I only have so many cycles to process new and existing information. While I’m always trying to get better at processing more information more quickly, there’s an upper bound on how fast I can get. Also, I am frequently connected to the Internet but I do log off from time to time. There are lots of real-time web tools that work great if you sit there and babysit them all day, but what about once you’re gone? Or what if something interesting or important happens while you’re away? I’m looking for the real-time web to help me make more sense of the vast streams of information floating around me – increasing the speed of the information coming out of the firehose is interesting but not nearly as useful as helping me prioritize what to read and evaluate first. I don’t necessarily need real-time filters to prioritize information – I’d trade a slower, stronger signal for a weak, fast signal at this point of my usage of the web.

Lots of information is delivered to me in real-time but isn’t really time-sensitive – This is particularly true of the real-time link sharing / re-tweeting use case. Seeing that all of my friends are re-tweeting or sharing a piece of content is a strong signal that it’s important. But that’s not the same as important right this very second. I find that most of the articles I see getting shared on Twitter either started up or end up on Techmeme or some other aggregation service. Seeing them a bit earlier than when they hit my Google Reader is cool but not critical in my information consumption patterns.

I’m not really sure that search is important for ephemeral information – A decent chunk (I’m not willing to hazard a guess) of the information I encounter on the real-time web is ephemeral. Status updates, thoughts, feelings, etc are all really interesting in the moment but can lose relevance over time. Even “breaking news” loses relevance once it’s broken – once a story is broken, I’m more interested in finding the source with the best coverage than I am sticking with the person who broke the story. This makes me wonder whether search is really a big deal for the real-time web. I must be in the minority here because both Google and Twitter seem convinced that search for real-time information is a big opportunity. But I’m having a hard time seeing it. For things that aren’t ephemeral, they can’t hide – they’ll make their way into other places on the web (blogs, websites, structured content that’s easily indexed by search engines, etc). For fluid real-time situations (natural disasters, crises, breaking news, sports, etc), I can see a ton of value in having a real-time window into what’s happening as a story is unfolding.

The one thing about the real-time web that does make sense to me is the disintermediation use case for brands and celebrities. If you’re a celebrity, brand (personal or corporate), or other public figure, there are a lot of people standing between you and the people you’re trying to reach – your own handlers, the media, technology platforms, etc. A lot of real-time web tools allow you to break this dependency in two ways. You don’t need to navigate the maze of people above to reach your constituents or fans (just get them to opt into hearing from you via a less noisy channel than email / print / radio – you know, something like Facebook or Twitter) and you’re not gated by communication caps. If you want to share everything you’re doing, there’s nothing stopping you. The time required to produce and distribute an update is very small. So it’s much easier for brands and celebrities to create a stronger bond with their fans / constituents by cutting out all of the people who stand between them and by sharing the kinds of details and information that has been difficult to surface until now. That’s not a use case that strikes me as being dependent on search. That’s a use case that’s about noiseless, frictionless distribution and communication.

Anyway, that’s a set of fairly disjoint thoughts I have about the real-time web and Twitter. Feel free to leave comments as I love them.

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