The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘over-the-last’

A new study by Comscore will be released on Wednesday that may give hope to social gaming startups trying to monetize users. 35% of the survey respondents said that they engage in “marketing actions” to earn virtual currency (such as watching a video, filling out a survey, etc.), and 53% said they be willing to consider marketing action for currency if given the choice.

The study was conducted by Comscore, sponsored by Offerpal, and included responses from 799 Comscore panelists who play games on social networks at least once per month. 54% of panelists play games at least daily.

This is good news for game developers who’ve had their monetization choices somewhat fenced in over the last few months. Gamers 25-34 are the most likely to earn virtual currency for marketing actions, according to the study – 71% of panelists in that age group said they are “very likely” to consider this.

The study also showed that about 30% of panelists don’t have the ability to pay cash for virtual currency. But more than half of all panelists, including a majority of those that can pay cash and a majority of those that cannot pay cash, were willing to consider marketing actions.

The bottom line of the study is that even users who have the ability to pull out their wallet want options when it comes to social games. And as long as they don’t get scammed along the way, we’re just fine with it. Watch a video in exchange for Zynga points? That’s a better deal than the credit card.

One of the cofounders of Zynga, the company’s executive vice president of sales and business development Andrew Trader, is no longer with the company, we’ve confirmed. He has been quietly removed from the company’s management page. Remaining cofounders – Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron and Steve Schoettler, remain.

As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named.

Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment.

Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now.

Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion.

And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.

Ruh roh, some Toyota owners are claiming that the little metal shim installed in their pedals haven’t stopped the cars from fits of sudden acceleration. At least seven complaints have been filed in the last two weeks to the NHTSA stating they are still having the problem. This isn’t going to end well if it’s true

Read more here:
Toyota’s gas pedal fix not working according to some owners

Gossip mongers and sports fans alike are eagerly awaiting Tiger Woods’ press conference tomorrow morning, when he’ll confront the public and apologize for his string of affairs that tarnished both his image as a role model and his endorsement earnings. And, according to one source, you’ll be able to live stream it from the world’s most popular video portal: YouTube.

This is interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s going to get a lot of traffic, as many people will be at work and won’t be able to watch the conference from their TV sets. But it’s also another live video feed on YouTube, which historically has almost exclusively featured recorded content. Over the last year or so, YouTube has been experimenting more often with live feeds, with broadcasts including YouTube Live, numerous political debates and events including President Obama’s record-breaking inauguration, and more recently, earnings webcasts. But the Tiger Woods event, while certainly newsworthy, is a different beast. It’s related more to gossip and sports than it is to our nation’s future or Google news.

It could also be a sign of things to come.  YouTube doesn’t stream these events themselves (they’ve often relied on Akamai), but it’s apparent that they’re becoming more open to featuring live streams on the home page. And even though YouTube’s roots may lie in user-submitted videos, it seems foolish to push users to other video sites whenever they want to see a major event live.

The event starts at 8 AM PST. Other sites that will be streaming the event include Ustream and major news networks.

Update: It’s official, YouTube just announced it here.

EventVue set out three years ago to transform the way people interact with and network during events. Today, sadly, they have announced they are shutting down.

In an overlay message that appears now on the main site, co-founders Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser write:

Dear customers, friends, and fans -

We have made the difficult decision to shut down EventVue.

After our recent relaunch of EventVue to be the best way to experience events in real time, we did not see enough traction to continue.

We have enjoyed the past 3 years of working with all of you and are deeply appreciative of everyone who used our product, sent us feedback, and cheered us on.

The events industry is experiencing a social transformation and we are proud of the work that we did to contribute. We will now cheer on those who are leading the charge.

If you are interested in learning from our entrepreneurial mistakes, you may wish to read the post-mortem on our blog.

Regards,
Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser

Fraser let us know about the shutdown himself via email and wrote, “hopefully other entrepreneurs can learn from our mistakes.” The Boulder, CO-based EventVue was a TechStars company in 2007, and shortly after that got its first round of angel funding.

In his lengthy and heartfelt farewell post, Johnson lays out a number of mistakes the company made over the years that led to the shutdown today. The key ones he highlights are:

Our Deadly Strategic Mistakes:

- tried to build a sales effort too early, with too weak of a product after initial financing

- waited too long to address the “nice to have” problem

- went after enterprise sales model with a non-recurring, small price

- didn’t make eventvue self-serve to let anyone come and get it

Our Deadly Cultural Mistakes:

- didn’t focus on learning & failing fast until it was too late

- didn’t care/focus enough about discovering how to market eventvue

- made compromises in early hiring decisions – choose expediency over talent/competency

He ends the post on an upbeat note, “EventVue has been a fun journey.  Thanks again to everyone who has supported us over the last few years.  You should follow us (Rob, Josh) to see what’s next.“

Over the last year or so we’ve seen quite a few throwbacks to the old school NES-style game in the form of Mega Man 9 & 10 , Bionic Commando: Rearmed , and most recently Dark Void Zero . Meanwhile, the “real” games these have been intended as mere adjuncts to have been almost universally panned

More:
It’s a bit sad when promotional de-makes of games are better than the games themselves

Over the last few months Google has been very generously offering free Wi-Fi to travelers at dozens of airports across the country as a sign of holiday cheer. Now it’s becoming clear that their motivations are not purely benevolent: we’re getting multiple reports that when you log into Google’s free Wi-Fi service at some airports, you’re immediately forwared to Google.com/Phone, Google’s new mobile webstore that now sells the Nexus One. Well played, Google. Well played.

This is yet another example of the unconventional marketing blitz that Google has ready for its first phone, which also includes a prominent ad on Google’s famously spartan homepage.

You can’t really fault Google for doing this. After all, they are giving airport Wi-Fi (which often costs $5-10 or more) away for free. And other free airport Wifi certainly isn’t afraid to plaster your screen with ads. We’ve reached out to Google to see if the redirect is happening at every free airport Wi-Fi hotspot, or only at some of them.

Update: A Google spokesperson confirms that some WIFi users are directed to the web store, but says that Google also directs some users to other promotions depending on browser type, their existing settings and cookies.

Thanks to Charlie White for the tip

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

On December 14, one man woke up to find himself infested in a world with zombies. Or at least, he’s tweeting like it is.

This man, Gus, in Miami, Florida has been tweeting relentlessly for the past month as if the world is at and end. Or as he puts it in his bio, “Zombies are everywhere and this is my diary of the apocalypse.” Among other things, he’s documented his first zombie scratch (and relief that he was still human afterwards), his scavenging for food at abandoned gas stations, and of course, plenty of zombie sightings.

To add to the tale, Gus is even taking somewhat elaborate TwitPics of his adventure. For example, here’s a picture of a dead person (covered in blood) that Gus lifted some keys from. He’s also made a video, of some zombies apparently chasing him, that you can barely see.

Overall, a solid effort, and something that should keep the zombie-crazed Internet amused until Gus’ inevitable demise at the hands of zombies.

[thanks Franco]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Students at the University of Colorado at Boulder will soon be constructing a tiny spacecraft to observe space weather in the near-Earth orbit. The project is funded by a $840k grant from the National Science Foundation and is just the latest project in a long line of student-built spacecraft over the last 50 years for LASP, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Originally posted here:
Students at CU to team up, build tiny spacecraft

In case you need the backstory, watch this video that shows how HP’s new webcams discriminate against those with dark skin. Interesting, eh? HP no doubt got a bunch of emails over the last couple days and issued a response that basically says it was caused by the algorithm not properly measuring the light between the eyes and upper cheek. HP’s solution : “try to increase the light to the face while decreasing the amount of light in the background.” [ thanks for the tip , Tony]

Read the original:
HP responds about its racist webcams