When it comes to social games, one of the most important keys to success is analytics. Fun gameplay is, of course, a big factor, but tweaking viral loops to boost your userbase can make the difference between a fun game no one plays and a hit. Mixpanel is a startup that’s playing an increasingly bigger role in this space, by offering developers tools to track analytics that go deeper than most other available services, like Google Analytics. Last night, I spoke with co-founder Suhail Doshi about the startup’s latest progress.
The biggest news: Mixpanel recently signed major Chinese social game company Five Minutes, which is behind the hit cross-platform game Happy Farm and has 23 million daily users across all of its games. But Mixpanel doesn’t just do games — other customers include Slide, Justin.tv, and Posterous. Doshi says the amount of data flowing through Mixpanel is rapidly increasing, with “hundreds of millions” of datapoints a month (he declined to give exact figures, but did provide the graph below).
Doshi says that much of Mixpanel’s success stems from its funnel analytics, which allow developers to determine where in their application’s flow users are dropping off, so they can optomize accordingly. Doshi explains that some other services offer funnel analytics as well, but that Mixpanel visualizes it in a way that has struck a chord with developers.
Mixpanel launched out of the Y Combinator program last summer, and got another major vote of confidence in February, when it received seed funding from PayPal and Slide founder Max Levchin and Bebo and Birthday Alarm founder Michael Birch — both of whom have extensive experience in analytics.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 8th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Glam Media, the distributed media network, is rolling out its mobile publishing platform GlamMobile to the U.S. today. The GlamMobile Publisher Platform for iPad and Mobile Devices gives advertisers the ability to reach the largest audience of women online, now on mobile devices. The network, which has been available to users in Japan, allows 1,500 publishers to optimize their sites for the mobile web and offers advertisers cross-platform reach for campaigns.
For advertisers, Glam is offering engaging ad formats on a variety of devices, including formats customized for the iPad without the use of Flash. For publishers, Glam is helping provide additional waysto connect with audiences on the go. Specifically, Glam sees the iPad as an opportunity to bring magazine-like glossy content to the device (a strategy that many online sites and magazines are taking).
The GlamMobile Publisher Platform includes specially formatted mobile sites for content partners, mobile apps for devices like the iPad and iPhone and GlamMobile Display Ads that are optimized for mobile devices and socials adds, using Glam’s Tinker to target social conversions via Facebook and Twitter.
It’s wise for Glam to try to make its publisher network cross platform with a mobile offering. It’s sure to draw even more traffic to Glam’s sites. Today, the Glam Vertical Network has more than 500,000 articles and posts, more than 100,000 videos and upwards of 20 million micro-blog posts.
Glam Media just raised $50 million in funding and announced EBITDA profitability on North American operations and break-even results globally for Q4 2009. The company is also rumoured to be gearing up for an IPO in the next 12 – 18 months.
Written by Leena Rao on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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The FTC is reportedly gearing up to challenge the Google-AdMob deal, due to anti-trust regulations The search giant acquired the popular mobile advertising network for $750 million last Fall. Reports emerged today from Reuters’ sources that the FTC’s lawyers will recommend that the Commission block the deal. We’re not surprised, considering that we heard that Google was taking the unprecedented step of reaching out to AdMob competitors to rally their support around their acquisition of the company, in response to rumors that the FTC could block the deal. Consumer groups have also lobbied to block the deal.
According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, the FTC started assembling a legal team to prepare to block the deal. And the FTC is soliciting statements from the same competitors that Google is lobbying, in an effort to get these companies to testify on the regulatory ramifications of the AdMob acquisition.
Of course, Google claims that AdMob is only one of the many ad networks are competing in the arena and the mobile advertising market is still so young that it’s still unclear who the leader is in the space right now. And of course, Google is quick to point to Apple’s recent acquisition of mobile ad network Quattro Wireless.
It appeared that Google had high ambitions for AdMob, which was one of Google’s largest acquisitions since it bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in 2008. The rise of mobile advertising attracted Google to this space and with the acquisition of AdMob, the search giant could gain a valuable revenue channel. AdMob, which some say is approaching a $100 million business within the next three years, could be an extremely profitable source, especially when the platform is plugged into AdWords and DoubleClick.
Written by Leena Rao on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Location-based social network Loopt has just updated its iPhone and BlackBerry applications, adding a hybrid map feature that allows you to view a single map (seen at right) that plots nearby points of interest, friends, and events all at once. The new update also brings LooptPulse, which the company has already launched for the iPhone and iPad, to the BlackBerry.
LooptPulse, which was first announced last fall, is Loopt’s discovery feature. If there are a lot of Loopt users checking in at a nearby event or restaurant, the service will recommend it to you, even if your friends aren’t necessarily there. Loopt generates some of these recommendations using data from its partners like Zagat, CitySearch, Bing, and Tastingtable (recently added partners include SonicLiving, Zvents, and Metromix).
Loopt has been around for much longer than hot location startups like Foursquare and Gowalla, and has more registered users than either of them. But in some senses it’s playing catchup — for years Loopt was a passive service that constantly tracked your location as opposed to the check-in services that have recently caught on. Loopt has now shifted its model to compete more directly with these services, and its Pulse discovery features go beyond what Foursquare currently offers.
Disclosure: Loopt offers a branded TC version of the service here</a.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Sometimes the employees of a company are so consistent in the way they perform a certain task, it seems that's how they must have been trained. Here, without naming names, are these companies' employee manuals...probably.
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Written 2010-04-07 18:00:00 by Streeter Seidell
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Written by CollegeHumor: Recent Articles on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Foursquare fans, you’re going to have to start earning your badges and mayorships the hard way: by actually visiting the places you’re checking into. The red-hot location game has announced that it is implementing a “cheater code” that checks your phone’s GPS signal to determine if you’re actually where you say you are. You’ll still be able to check in wherever you want, but you’ll only be rewarded with badges and points if Foursquare can verify your location.
The move has been a long time coming. Foursquare cheating, which we’ve discussed before, has been around since the service launched. Until recently it didn’t really matter — you might claim a mayorship or two, but they weren’t worth anything so nobody cared. But now that some venues are actually starting to offer discounts and promotions to mayors, these rewards are about more than just bragging rights.
Here’s how Foursquare is describing the system in its post:
What we’d like to do is award points, mayorships and badges only when you’re at the place you say you’re at. Last week we started using a few different tricks using your phone’s GPS to try to verify this. (and if your phone doesn’t use GPS, we use a few different tricks)
Now, we’re never going to NOT let you check-in – you can checkin wherever you want, whenever you want – the idea is simply to not award points, mayorships, badges or venue specials if it looks like you didn’t really earn them.
So why didn’t Foursquare roll out a more restrictive model long ago? The company wanted to avoid the issues its competitor Gowalla has run into: namely, that phone GPS systems aren’t always that accurate (or even working indoors), which could prevent people from checking in at places there were actually at. That kind of false negative is extremely frustrating for users. Foursquare’s compromise is to only attempt to verify your location when it comes to rewarding points and badges — you’ll always be able to tell your friends where you are.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Last December, Google joined the myriad other companies that offer link shortening services with the launch of Goo.gl, the official Google URL Shortener. Today, it’s gotten a nifty new feature: add “.qr” to the end of any shortened link, and Google will generate a QR code for it. For example, the link http://goo.gl/SJhz would become http://goo.gl/SJhz.qr. The new trick was tweeted about earlier today by Google’s chief spam fighter Matt Cutts.
Google has made it clear that it’s a big proponent of QR codes, despite the fact that few people in the United States have used them (I’ve never felt compelled to use one myself, but they’re huge in Japan). QR codes are currently the only effective way to link to an app on Android Market, and Google has mailed QR code stickers to thousands of local businesses across the country (it lets customers quickly look the business up on Google’s business directory). Facebook is also experimenting with QR codes for its location services.
For those looking to try out the new feature, the Goo.gl homepage still says that the service is “currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use”, but it’s plenty easy to start using it yourself. It’s officially available through Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, and you can also find various bookmarklets and browser extensions that let you generate a Goo.gl link.
Written by Jason Kincaid on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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Do your parents not understand technology? Do they ask you stupid questions? Do they send you absurd text messages? Do they use words like "MyFace,""SpaceBook,"or "The World Wide Web?"
If you've got an example of your Parents Just Don't Understanding, submit it here!
And thank God we'll never be as dumb as they are!
My grandparents impressively managed to download and install Skype on their computer so they could talk to me while I'm studying abroad, but they can't figure out the difference between the status feature, and the messaging. My grandpa's status for the past three months has been "Hi. I love your pictures. I will try to Skype phone in a few minutes."
Chris S, Lafayette College
Today, my dad thought that some PSP disks were pogs.
Jordan L
My mom uses the word "tinkle" to describe her phone ringing, eg."My phone just tinkled." Today, she was worried that her phone wasn't ringing when she got texts so she asked me to text her. So I sent her a text, and she sent me one back saying, "Yay, I tinkled!"
Faye J
A few years ago, my grandfather was in the process of writing a book. He needed my help with something, and I noticed that he had several files on his computer titled "Chapter 1-1, Chapter 1-2" and so on. I asked him what the files were and he said that the first number was the chapter and the second one was the page. He was amazed when I showed him that it could all be saved as one file.
Cathi B., Fordham University
My grandma refers to her cellular phone as her "walking phone."
Kristen C, UTSA
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Written 2010-04-07 16:00:00 by Susanna Wolff
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Written by CollegeHumor: Recent Articles on April 7th, 2010 with comments disabled.
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