Facebook, App Platforms, and Game Theory

In this post, I explore how Facebook manages viral channels and how a little game theory might be applied to better manage their platform for developers and end users.

How To Buy Expiring Domain Names: Lessons Learned

Lessons learned buying domain names
I’ve been in the market for some new domain names lately. It isn’t 1997, and it’s not so easy to score a good domain name anymore. A vast number of domains are taken by people who are using them, planning to use them, auctioning them, or plastering algorithmically generated spam links [...]

Newbie Lessons Learned from Trading Volatility using the VXX and VXZ ETNs

I’ve been experimenting with trading volatility on the stock market using ETNs like VXX and VXZ. I learned a few things in the process, and since a few people were curious about this idea and I thought I’d post my learnings for the curious.

A couple of months ago I realized that I wanted to make [...]

Goldman Sachs doesn’t think anyone cares if it is betting against a security it is trying to sell

“What clients or customers are buying is they are buying an exposure,” Blankfein said. “The thing we are selling to them is supposed to give them the risk they want. They are not coming to us to represent what our views are. They probably, the institutional clients we have, wouldn’t care what our views are. [...]

Just in case you wondered where Apple’s revenue comes from

Today, Silicon Alley Insider released their excellent chart of the day for Apple’s latest revenue figures. Note that Apple receives most of their revenue selling devices like the iPhone, not software. But they spend a heck of a lot of software and content (iTunes) in order to stimulate demand and differentiation for their hardware products.
From [...]

Want to increase employment? Make it easy to start, finance, and grow a startup

Thomas L Friedman wrote a short opinion pience in the New York Times today called Start-Ups, Not Bailouts. It’s worth reading and connects to several other trends I’ve witnessed recently regarding regulation and the startup ecosystem.
A short excerpt: “…Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms [...]

Interesting reading: Clay Shirky on the collapse of complex business models

The Collapse of Complex Business Models
“When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method [...]