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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 10/10/2008
I hate hearing the term “user error”. Good usability testing should eliminate most user error. I am a big proponent of A:B testing with live users. However, often a small usability test can quickly highlight any big problems before you go live so that you are working from a better starting point. Many developers like [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 08/10/2008
I posted earlier this week on which online media companies will survive the ad recession. If you have any doubts about the coming dip, check out the following chart showing how advertising growth has dipped in every past recession from Lehman Brothers/Barclay. The light blue line shows advertising growth rates, and it dips every time [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 08/10/2008
I was talking to the founders of Zintin recently about their iPhone app. Although they had initially expected their dominant usecase to be “keep in touch with your friends”, it rapidly became “meet nearby people”. The Zintin team did a great job of rolling with their users and evolving their product development towards the [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 06/10/2008
As I have mentioned previously, we are entering an overall advertising recession and even online advertising growth has slowed. Notes the LA Times in August: “Advertisers have pulled back in a pretty meaningful way, and display is feeling the brunt of it,” said Clay Moran, a Stanford Group analyst who recently wrote a research report [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 02/10/2008
The online ad market is not immune to the overall advertising recession, and growth has slowed. Many online media companies and ad networks are counting on targeting to help lift CPMs. But Julie Ruvolo reports from the Adweek conference last week that media buyers are still hesitant about highly targeted ad campaigns: In the traditional media-buying [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 01/10/2008
An entrepreneur asked me recently if I was concerned about the impact the credit crunch will have on venture financing for startups. I responded: For high quality companies, the short answer is no. The more nuanced answer is that (i) The credit crunch will impact venture debt (already has) so people can’t count on that to [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 30/09/2008
Neilsen Mobile recently reported on US 2008 Q2 mobile phone usage. They find that the number of calls made per month averages 204 across all users but does not vary all that much with age between 13-54: On the other hand, as stereotypes would suggest, teens drive by far the highest number of text messages per [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 29/09/2008
Virtual Worlds News noted last week that: PayByCash announced … that over 50% of its US transactions were coming from its Ultimate Game Card, a prepaid card that supports over 150 virtual worlds and games, like Club Penguin, Nexon America, and IMVU. Previously U.S. consumers favored PayByCash’s direct debit options… I’d guess one explanation for the transition, [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 25/09/2008
Arctic Startup, quoting an article written in Finnish at Kauppelehti, the leading business magazine in Finland says: The Helsinki based virtual goods operator Sulake saw a profitable first half in 2008. According to Kauppalehti, net profits were around 400 000 euros. The revenues rose approximately 20% to 25,6 million euros for the first 6 months of [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 25/09/2008
Marketing Sherpa notes seven design elements to add to your banner ads to increase click through rates from 25-50%:
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 23/09/2008
Last year I noted how the “performance” aspects of social networks was moving more birthday wishes from private communication channels (e.g. email) to public ones (e.g. Facebook wall posts). This year, the trend is even more pronounced if my own experience is any indication. The number of wall posts went up dramatically. FB private messages also [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 22/09/2008
At AGDC last week Bioware’s Damion Schubert spoke about end-game design in MMOs. Massively notes: Endgame gameplay, elder gameplay, is a mandatory and compelling part of the genre’s equation. In fact, in Damion’s opinion complex elder gameplay exemplifies what makes the massive genre what it is… In reality, says Schubert, MMOs are generally really easy to play. [...]
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Business Wire (Free subscription) | 18/09/2008
CORK, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PCH international, a global supply chain services firm, announced today that it has received $21 million in venture funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners,
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 18/09/2008
Some interesting tidbits about both free to play and subscription MMOGs coming out of the talks at Austin GDC. Min Kim of Nexon says: Not just a Korean thing: “South Korea is still a big market for us,” Kim admits, “but the split is now 50/50 with overseas markets,” which includes the Asian and U.S. markets. On growth [...]
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Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog (Free subscription) | 17/09/2008
Many websites default to the 728×90 (leaderboard) ad size when designing their site. This is a reasonably good option as it has the second highest click through rate of the various standard ad units. But it is possible to do better. Marketing Sherpa researched clickthrough rates by ad size (from largest ad unit to [...]
