The latest salvo in the fight for owning users’ identities revolves around URLs. Google just earlier this week promoted profile search and with it URLs of the form http://www.google.com/profiles/awenger (when I signed up for gmail a long time ago I thought shorter would be better – now wish I had chosen albertwenger, as I have on most other services). Facebook is clearly getting ready to launch their version more broadly and is apparently asking users whether they would pay to have a specific...

The latest salvo in the fight for owning users’ identities revolves around URLs. Google just earlier this week promoted profile search and with it URLs of the form http://www.google.com/profiles/awenger (when I signed up for gmail a long time ago I thought shorter would be better – now wish I had chosen albertwenger, as I have on most other services). Facebook is clearly getting ready to launch their version more broadly and is apparently asking users whether they would pay to have a specific...

A little while ago, I read Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (on DailyLit of course). In the book, he has the concept of Whuffie, a reputation-based currency that has replaced traditional money in a world of abundance. Since then I have been thinking about whether we might possibly be headed towards a scenario in which we have so much of everything that we can choose to or maybe even have to use mechanisms other than traditional monetary cost/price for making decisions. I be...

A little while ago, I read Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (on DailyLit of course). In the book, he has the concept of Whuffie, a reputation-based currency that has replaced traditional money in a world of abundance. Since then I have been thinking about whether we might possibly be headed towards a scenario in which we have so much of everything that we can choose to or maybe even have to use mechanisms other than traditional monetary cost/price for making decisions. I be...

Yesterday, Techcrunch announced that Mint was adding gameplay to its service in the form of a financial fitness score. The Techcrunch post already pointed to Foursquare as a service that is making very effective use of gameplay to motivate activity and engagement in the system. I have also found this to be true for TheSixtyOne, which awards points for many different kinds of behavior. I believe we will see many more sites adding gameplay components going forward, much like sites added social ...

Yesterday, Techcrunch announced that Mint was adding gameplay to its service in the form of a financial fitness score. The Techcrunch post already pointed to Foursquare as a service that is making very effective use of gameplay to motivate activity and engagement in the system. I have also found this to be true for TheSixtyOne, which awards points for many different kinds of behavior. I believe we will see many more sites adding gameplay components going forward, much like sites added social ...

There were several great comments on my post yesterday on gameplay relating to the data generated and the possible issues with keeping folks engaged. I believe the ideal application of gameplay in a site or service recognizes and works for three distinct groups: devotees, casuals and don’t-cares (I am obviously making these up - suggestions for better ones appreciated). Devotees are the ones who truly care about the gameplay and are on a mission to top a leaderboard or outplay another devotee...

There were several great comments on my post yesterday on gameplay relating to the data generated and the possible issues with keeping folks engaged. I believe the ideal application of gameplay in a site or service recognizes and works for three distinct groups: devotees, casuals and don’t-cares (I am obviously making these up - suggestions for better ones appreciated). Devotees are the ones who truly care about the gameplay and are on a mission to top a leaderboard or outplay another devotee...

In Monday’s post on the Economics of Abundance, I gave “name your price” as an example for how to deal with zero marginal cost. This is a case of voluntary price discrimination, i.e. folks who value something more are more likely to name a higher price. The first question of course is if such a scheme can work at all, that is will anyone pay if paying is entirely voluntary. We know the answer for this to be yes from the Radiohead experiment with about 40% of folks paying (according to Comscor...

In Monday’s post on the Economics of Abundance, I gave “name your price” as an example for how to deal with zero marginal cost. This is a case of voluntary price discrimination, i.e. folks who value something more are more likely to name a higher price. The first question of course is if such a scheme can work at all, that is will anyone pay if paying is entirely voluntary. We know the answer for this to be yes from the Radiohead experiment with about 40% of folks paying (according to Comscor...

The New York Times has a fascinating article today about “shanzai phones” in China. These are knockoffs of existing brands but often come with interesting enhancements, such as support for multiple phone numbers and better cameras. Now one might think of a cell phone as something that is very costly to build and not an area in which one would find knockoffs (unlike, say, designer bags). What makes this possible is the network of parts suppliers that exists in China. Almost all of the global b...

The New York Times has a fascinating article today about “shanzai phones” in China. These are knockoffs of existing brands but often come with interesting enhancements, such as support for multiple phone numbers and better cameras. Now one might think of a cell phone as something that is very costly to build and not an area in which one would find knockoffs (unlike, say, designer bags). What makes this possible is the network of parts suppliers that exists in China. Almost all of the global b...

If you operate a site or service and want to accept identity from large third parties, you encounter a bewildering array of implementations. Some are fairly proprietary, such as Facebook. Others, such as Google, are based on a standard but with a twist. New ones come along, such as Twitter, and present their own versions. This makes building them all a real resource challenge. On top of that there is a real possibility of getting it wrong and creating a usability or worse yet a security probl...

If you operate a site or service and want to accept identity from large third parties, you encounter a bewildering array of implementations. Some are fairly proprietary, such as Facebook. Others, such as Google, are based on a standard but with a twist. New ones come along, such as Twitter, and present their own versions. This makes building them all a real resource challenge. On top of that there is a real possibility of getting it wrong and creating a usability or worse yet a security probl...

A while back I had argued that there was great potential for visual search now that we have a lot of images available. Well now someone has delivered and it is Google Labs with it’s Similar Images prototype. In fact, they did exactly what I had proposed in my original post, which was to make this a refinement to the regular search process, saying:In fact, Google has had a close analogy in text search for a long time. Results from a search have a link for “similar pages.”Well now there is “sim...

A while back I had argued that there was great potential for visual search now that we have a lot of images available. Well now someone has delivered and it is Google Labs with it’s Similar Images prototype. In fact, they did exactly what I had proposed in my original post, which was to make this a refinement to the regular search process, saying:In fact, Google has had a close analogy in text search for a long time. Results from a search have a link for “similar pages.”Well now there is “sim...

This is another post in thinking out loud about the economics of abundant and digital goods. In particular, I am interested in mechanisms that allow producers to recapture some of the consumer surplus even when the price for (a version of) the good is zero. In photography, there is a well established difference between limited edition prints (sometimes a single one) made by the artist and reproductions of the photograph in catalogs or online. I believe it is possible to create a similar mecha...

This is another post in thinking out loud about the economics of abundant and digital goods. In particular, I am interested in mechanisms that allow producers to recapture some of the consumer surplus even when the price for (a version of) the good is zero. In photography, there is a well established difference between limited edition prints (sometimes a single one) made by the artist and reproductions of the photograph in catalogs or online. I believe it is possible to create a similar mecha...

This past Sunday Virginia Heffernan wrote a column in the New York Times magazine about the challenges with reader comments. She points to shortcomings of comment systems as one reason, which I believe is correct (and is why I love using disqus). But more important than that I believe is author engagement with reader comments. Funnily enough that is the first thing that many of the commenters on the online version of the column point out. In fact, reading the online version provided a lot mor...

This past Sunday Virginia Heffernan wrote a column in the New York Times magazine about the challenges with reader comments. She points to shortcomings of comment systems as one reason, which I believe is correct (and is why I love using disqus). But more important than that I believe is author engagement with reader comments. Funnily enough that is the first thing that many of the commenters on the online version of the column point out. In fact, reading the online version provided a lot mor...