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 [...]

Foursquare/Gowalla/Yelp check-in app growth: This is your tenth check-in here, have a free burrito

How do you accelerate growth for checkin-apps? Create a loyalty program for local businesses, and they will promote your checkin app for you AND users will have an incentive to check-in often.

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 [...]