Design viral into your product

I attended an advisory board meeting for a friend’s stealth start-up last night and one of the topics of conversation was viral growth and how best to accomplish it. It was a good discussion about a lot of the most successful viral companies on the Web from Twitter to Facebook to social game developers like Zynga, and Playfish. But it also brought to mind what not to do and a point that I brought up is that there are right ways and wrong ways to achieve viral growth. The word “viral” by its very nature is negative – when is the last time you heard someone saw “Sweet, I got a virus”. The key point is that viral growth has to come from the product, and not from a marketing plan.

A great example of what not to do is Tagged, a social network based in San Francisco. Tagged took off like a rocket ship in 2006 and looked to be a high flyer until everyone realized how it was happening. Lots of companies allow you to import your email contacts to make it easier to invite your friends. Tagged took it a step further by automatically sending emails to all of your contacts when you imported your address book. Ex-girlfriends, business colleagues, friends you haven’t talked to in years, and your current boss all suddenly received Tagged invites. The result was incredible growth, but at a price. Tagged recently settled with the Attorney Generals in New York and Texas for spam issues. You could argue that the company has actually done okay since they were able to raise money on the quick growth, but the point is that it was definitely the wrong type of viral growth. The acquired users were not engaged and the service was definitely not sticky. The result was a large bell-shaped visitor graph.

Now, take Zynga as the antithesis to Tagged. Say what you will about the annoyance of Farmville and Cafe World, but over a 100 million players play Zynga games every month, and the company is reportedly on a revenue run rate of $250 million or more in 2009. The key was that Zynga embraced the social tools on Facebook to grow games at an incredible rate. One of those tools was the ability to get users to post items to their Facebook stream with incredible consistency. To do that, Zynga built social integration into their games. For instance, with Mafia Wars, users were encouraged to ask their Facebook friends for assistance on completing missions. Another example is the relative ease with which Zynga allows users to send gift to their friends that are actually playing the game. It sounds very elementary, but Zynga was one of the first to do it and it has allowed games like Texas Hold'em and Farmville to dominate the Facebook gaming landscape.

So while viral growth is really the goal of almost any consumer web company, the reality is that it starts long before the product is launched. It needs to be built into that product from day 1 of concept development. Otherwise, you'll be chasing the elusive viral growth after product launch which is extremely difficult to achieve at that point.

Scamville – Experience from the front lines

Much has been made recently about the monetization efforts of social games within the Facebook environment. Many game makers, most actually until very recently, give users several options to pay for virtual currency and in-game merchandise. These include everything from credit card to PayPal to mobile payments (Zong, MobilePay, etc.), and last but certainly not least, offers. With offers, users can choose to “pay” for a specific amount of currency by completing an offer from an advertiser. In most cases, it’s a win for all involved – the user gets his currency, the game developer gets his revenue, the advertiser gets a new customer, and the payment vendor takes a little off the top for setting the whole thing up. Perfect right?

Well, not always. Many of the offers served up by payment vendors are sketchy at best, and completely fraudulent at their very worst. Such has been the nature of the beast until Michael Arrington brought the whole thing down when he wrote a scathing post entitled Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell, and later challenged former Offerpal CEO, Anu Sukla, during the middle of a panel at the Virtual Goods Summit. The fall-out has been immediate, and far reaching.

1. Offerpal canned Shukla several days later – although it’s impossible to know if this was the reason

2. Facebook brought the hammer down on several ad networks and even took down the newest Zynga game, FishVille, because of the offers it was showing.

3. Zynga first announced that only approved offers would remain within games, and then simply removed all offers - a decision that could cost them tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Personally, I think this shake-out was a long time coming. The sketchiness of some in-game offers has always rubbed me the wrong way, and I think the social gaming industry will be better off as a result. You don’t endear yourself to your users by ripping them off on a regular basis. In fact, the poor user experience of some offer providers is a big reason that we went with Trial Pay for Watercooler games earlier this year.

When deciding on a payment vendor for our Fantasy Football 2009 game, I met with all of the usual suspects in the industry: OfferPal, Gambit, SuperRewards, TrialPay, PeanutLabs, and a few others. We went with Trial Pay because they just had a superior product. Of all the options, they felt more product-driven while the others felt more sales-driven. The difference is that the user experience is a key component of TrialPay’s strategy, while the others seemed to take more of a “revenue at all costs” strategy. I will say that Peanut Labs also has the opportunity to differentiate themselves from the pack. They offer a quality survey product that gives user’s in-game currency in exchange for taking a survey. Unfortunately, that product tends to be overshadowed by their offer wall which at the time contained many of the same scammy offers as the other vendors.

It will be interesting to see how all of this really shakes out. Is this a flash fire that will quickly burn out, returning things to the pre-Arrington way? Or was this the catalyst the industry needed to button things up a little more to protect users. I’m hoping it’s the latter, but we’ll see.

For Papa

It might seem odd for a thirty-eight year old man to still refer to his grandfather as Papa, but grandpa or grandfather always felt too impersonal. No, Fred Jackson was my Papa and he always will be. He was also the most honest, loyal, and hard working man I’ve ever known, and he passed away on November 9, 2009. His body betrayed him over the last several years as it slowly deteriorated from years of heart disease. And unfortunately his mind followed in the last 12 months as dementia caused him to live as much in the past as he did in the present.

His funeral is today and unfortunately I won’t be there. In truth, I think I really said goodbye the last time I saw him a few years ago. It was clear that he was becoming a shell of himself and quite honestly didn’t have much desire to continue living in this world. Modern medicine can be cruel sometimes and it was clear to me that Papa wanted to be done with it. I’m a little relieved that I won’t be there as I can’t imagine my last memory of the man that was my hero being that of a 70 lb body in a casket. I much prefer the good memories…the fun times. The list below is not all encompassing by any means, and it includes things that some people probably find rather mundane, but it’s a list of life experiences that shape my memory of him.

1. The shop. The official name was Jackson Battery & Electric, but to us it was just “the shop”. When we were kids, my sister and I would spend several weeks with my grandparents every summer and much of my time was spent at the shop. I would “help” Papa and he would humor me by letting me mess around with some tools. And I took an endless amount of teasing from the dozens of old men that would come and go throughout the day. It was their hangout and I was in their world…but I loved every minute of it.

2. Chula. Chula started as my Uncle Danny’s dog but somehow she ended up as Papa’s constant companion. And I have to say she was the best dog ever. Well behaved and completely loyal, she went everywhere with Papa and seemed to accept me as an added accessory during the summer. I woke up many mornings at my grandparent’s house to Chula’s stare…no lick, just a stare.

3. Hats. Or caps as most people in Texas call them. When I was a kid, Papa gave me all sorts of caps – generally from Nix Implement or some other random farm equipment or feed store. I didn’t appreciate them once I reached the age when wearing Nix Implement hats were no longer cool and I think that made him a little sad.

4. Rodeos. Most of my current friends would never believe me, but I was quite the cowboy when I was a kid. The highlight of my summer was the Lamesa Rodeo and it was the three greatest nights of the year for me.

5. Bandit. Bandit was Papa’s horse and going with him to the barn after dinner was the perfect end to my day during the summer. Papa would watch proudly as I fed and brushed her exactly as he had taught me.

6. Mimi. Doris and Fred Jackson were married for over 50 years and they loved each other as much the day she died as they day there were married. Papa changed when she died and a day didn’t go by that he didn’t miss her. I always thought it odd that he visited her grave every day when he could still drive, but I guess a love that deep doesn’t fade. I hope my wife and I have what they had.

7. The only grandson. Papa had 7 granddaughters before I finally came around. We always had a special bond as a result, and he showered me with the love and affection that only a grandpa and a grandson can share. It makes me sad that my brother who came around 12 years after me didn’t get to experience the same thing with him.

8. Football games. Papa wasn’t much of a sports fan, but Mimi was. When I played high school football, she would drag him all over Texas to go to some of my games. He never complained or objected when Mimi wanted to visit us.

9. The car. When my sister was 17, Papa bought her a car and drove it to Cleburne to deliver it. He was so proud of it. This was obviously before digital photos, so we had no idea what it looked like until he pulled up in front of our house. It had been described as “sporty” but instead looked like a Pinto on steroids. That AMC Spirit eventually got passed down to me.

10. World War II. Papa didn’t serve in WWII because he failed his physical – flat feet or something like that. But one night he told me a fantastic story about how he left Mimi and his family with the understanding that he was going to the Army and eventually to war. They didn’t have a phone so after he was let go, he couldn’t call Mimi to let her know. So she only found out when she saw him walking up the road to their house. I like to picture how that emotional reunion unfolded, and I think it would make a great short story or novel.

11. The lawn. Papa was intensely proud of his lawn and he didn’t let many people touch it. He would let me mow the back so that it was hidden if I screwed it up. I think I was 17 before he finally let me mow the front.

12. Breakfast. When Mimi and Papa would visit us in Cleburne, the two of us would always go to breakfast early on Saturday mornings. That was just our thing and it was a great time. As I got older I lost interest in it, and I’m sure he really missed it. I would give anything to go back and smack some sense into the teenager that thought he was too cool to have breakfast with his grandpa.

13. Pocket knives. Papa gave me a lot of pocket knives over the years. I’m not sure why as I’ve probably used a pocket knife 5 times in my entire life. But it was something he liked to do. The first thing I’m going to do when I go to Texas for the holidays is try to find some of them…I hope I kept them.

14. Handshakes. When I reached a certain age, probably 15 or 16, Papa no longer offered hugs when I greeted him. He was a man’s man from West Texas and hugging was no longer an option. He would offer me a hearty handshake instead. I had mixed emotions about it at the time because I loved that he saw and respected me as a man, but I also missed hugging my Papa.

Rest in peace Papa…you were the best grandpa a grandson could ask for.