It is hard to predict what happens in markets and contests. But last night, I tweeted that I thought the Nobel prize for economics would be awarded for the field of practical market design. And, that is indeed what the Nobel committee announced today. I got that right and named Al Roth as one of …
The Facebook Billion
One in seven people on the Earth use Facebook. Given that 1.5 billion are under the age of 12, that means one in five and a half eligible people use Facebook. Once we factor in countries that don't have or allow Facebook it gets higher. With its market cap running at $46.8 billion that means …
Facebook examines advertising effectiveness
Facebook has posted an interesting talk by its ad executive, Brad Smallwood, reporting on research they have conducted into the effectiveness of advertising. http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/fbmarketingtalks?layout=4&clip=pla_5b7f92a4-0d8e-4468-a66a-7570e38f92e9&color=0xe7e7e7&autoPlay=false&mute=false&iconColorOver=0x888888&iconColor=0x777777&allowchat=true&height=295&width=480 The first part of the video is most relevant and it lasts about 10 minutes. The summary of the findings is as follows: Impressions create value. 99 percent of sales generated …
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WordPress's evolution as a web publishing platform
WordPress powers this blog. That isn't surprising as WordPress began with the goal of providing a powerful and, indeed, free blogging platform. To be sure, it earns money from premium services but, compared with its predecessors, WordPress is an open platform that gave users and developers the power to slash, hack and design. But now …
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Kickstarter tries to clarify what it's about
As I have written before, I believe that Kickstarter is a novel and important way of allowing innovators and information creators to ensure against some of the risks associated with upfront investment by obtaining some pre-investment signals of demand. Strictly speaking, those signals were supposed to be financial support but ultimately ended up being, for …
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Is there a market for ideas? Apptopia edition
A little while back, Scott Stern and I wrote a paper that asked "Is there a market for ideas?" The paper has since been published but is also available here. The paper noted that while many ideas are traded there do not appear to be organised markets to facilitate such trading. For patents, there have …
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Uber and the delicate business of creating a platform
[This post originally appeared in HBR blogs on 24th August 2012] Over the last year, a new app has been changing the way people get limos in some major cities in the US. Uber — founded by Garrett Camp, Oscar Salazar, and Travis Kalanick, and launched in 2010 in San Francisco — allows people to get and …
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"clearly we definitely could be clearer if there is so much confusion" (How Twitter backed away from a platform strategy)
That was a tweet on August 16 by Ryan Saver, Twitter's platform leader. It was in response to the kerfuffle that emerged regarding Twitter's proposed changes to its API. I saw the discussion and debate emerge on various tech blogs and it was hard to know what to make of it. Marco Arment, who runs …
Can changing the unit of the account save publishing?
That is precisely the claim in a new report, The Economics of Online Advertising, released by ComScore CEO Magid Abraham today. Here is a summary of his claim: The very interesting thing about the online ad market is that it’s the only market where the accounting mechanism that you use will radically change the economic …
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PopVox – building a Civic Profile online
Last week I was teaching “IDEA week” to my mid-career Sloan Fellow executive students. IDEA (innovation-driven entrepreneurial advantage;-)) is a week when we usually explore how innovation provides entrepreneurs with the advantage they need to really build a business that has competitive advantage and can compete with large established firms – either in new markets or …
Digitopoly 