Scrabulous
Mar 06, 2008 Make a comment
There is an illegitimate version of Scrabble exploding in popularity on Facebook right now. It's called Scrabulous and it just landed in my network tonight. (Right now I'm winning thanks to "yokel" and "codex.") It has over three million registered users, 700,000 players a day (make that 700,001), and a juicy legal battle brewing. Two brothers from India are earning $25,000 per month in online ad revenue with a Facebook app based square-for-square on a 60 year-old board game currently owned by Hasbro (in the U.S.) and Mattel (abroad).
It's a simple implementation that feels fresh for a few reasons. Board games are social, but not scalable the way they are online. Scrabble is particularly well-suited to friend networks because it's a challenging text-based game played in sequential moves without time limits. People can start up multiple games easily and then play them out over generous lengths of time, a lot like chess players would trade moves over long distances by mail. Since it's so easy to cheat online, a big part of the fun is in holding yourself to the rules of the game and winning with your wits.
It's a wonder Hasbro and Mattel didn't think of this sooner. They do have plans with RealNetworks and Electronic Arts to release online versions of the trademarked game, but it doesn't look like these plans work within a thriving social network like Facebook. With the market for their board games stagnant, you'd think these companies would try to get their games in front of new customers in novel ways. Instead, with grand plans for new packaging and a folding deluxe board, they seem too comfortable where they're at already.
The two brothers who developed Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, are great examples of why the free market applied online works so well: you win by taking risks on a clear goal and trying lots of new things. They loved Scrabble and were frustrated with the options available to play online. They had an entrepreneurial spirit and turned their creation into a business. Eventually they listened to one their users' suggestions and refactored their application for Facebook and voila--it took off. If only Hasbro and Mattel had been as anxious to make their game fun and relevant! It'll be interesting to see how this battle plays out. Will those two companies buy out the Agarwallas or try to shut them down? What would you do if it were your move?
Ref. Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words in the NY Times
Juxtaposition
Feb 27, 2008 1 Comment
Sometimes the littlest things can inspire you. As I got ready for another business trip away from home I stumbled upon a photo experiment by two friends living far apart, titled 3191: A year of evenings. Soon to be printed as a book, Stephanie Barnes and Maria Vettese would each take one photograph every evening to share side by side on their blog. The effect of this simple story on the juxtaposition of the two photographs translates into something much more than the sum of its parts.
It's such a simple technique that it's easy for us to overlook. One image tells a story. Two images together begin to animate each other like frames in a film or panels in a comic.
This reminded me of one of Bryan's old photo experiments called Balance on the ZURBphotos site that, in part, inspired LuckyOliver.
Google Web Search Features
Feb 20, 2008 Make a comment
This goes on our desert island web pages list. That's it--totally plain long list of tools with boring little descriptions way down there below, but it's one of my favorite pages on the web. Why? It embodies the awesome power of the simplest and most ubiquitous web tool in the world: Google's search. Every last one of these tools starts from the same place: that text input with the button that says "Search." Every possibility explodes out from that interface and it does so fast.
Let's look at some of what you can do:
- Books
- Cached links
- Calculator
- Currency Converter
- Definitions of words
- Product search
- Images
- Local business
- Movies
- Q&A
- Search by Number
- Site Search
- Stocks and Quotes
- Travel Info
- Weather
- Web Page Translation
And even that old standby, "I'm Feeling Lucky." We bet you didn't know about half of those, but give some of them a try. Prospective homebuyers, try typing, "1/3 acre in square feet" and see what it returns. Expecting a shipment by UPS or Fedex? Try typing your tracking number into Google instead of fumbling around on those other sites. Want a night out at the movies? Don't start at Fandango, just type in "Juno" at Google and you're on your way.
The fact that all of these technologies can work from the same interface is a major engineering feet. Google's Search technology is incredibly effective at inferring context based on the language of the little string of text you type into that field. Now none of this is news, but this unassuming page tucked deep within Google's Help section reminded me today of 
the depth and simple, clunky beauty in the design of the web's most successful interface.
Go see Google Web Search Features for yourself and play around.
Steve Martin
Feb 19, 2008 Make a comment
I grew up loving Steve Martin's comedy. As a kid I remember his stand up (arrow through the head) and his appearances on Saturday Night Live (King Tut) stretching my bedtime later and later. Never once did it occur to me the immense amount of hard work and risk he put into his comedy act; it all looked so effortless and silly. Over the holiday break I picked up his recent autobiography, Born Standing Up, of which Martin said, "The is something about the genesis [of a career], that I think is worth writing about." For his book he wanted to roll back the clock to all the long unsuccessful years that built up to his rock star comedian status, filling stadiums of 45,000 people. His failures and his passion line the book. There are valuable ideas here for anybody starting out to create their own something.
"First of all, it's vital that you remember what got you a laugh and what didn't. ... It's very Darwinian, because a mistake can lead to a success. So if something goes wrong, it's actually an avenue to something going right later." — Steve Martin
Martin was passionate about his craft ("I just wanted to make people laugh.") and learned analyze everything for clues about how to improve each time he stepped out on stage. From the book it's clear that one of the keys to his success was his aggressive drive to try and fail, try and fail, again and again for something he loved. This focus did not lead to overnight success though:
"The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances." — Steve Martin
His consistency and passion carried him through to where bit by bit, over time, he gained a sense of mastery over his art and could command stadiums of people to roll in the aisles.
On being prepared:
Charlie Rose: "You're one of those people who prepared really, really hard, knowing that if you do this well, it's great for you. Some people just sort of take it lighter than others do. I'm told, and maybe you've told me this, you really concentrate on the week that you're gonna host."
Steve Martin: "I do, I find it very stressful. I want it to go well. ... I work hard on it, or at least feel comfortable. And I do that for Letterman show... It's being a professional."
On the influences of friends:
Steve: "I had grown up with some close high school friends and we laughed all the time. The kind of laughter where you're holding your sides and you're wishing you could stop laughing because you're almost sick. And I thought, gee, where's that kind of laugh? Where are the comedians who get that kind of laugh? And what creates that kind of laugh? I know we weren't telling each other jokes. And I thought, I think what creates that kind of laugh is inexplicable--in other words, you had to be there. . . . What if I had the kind of act where you had to say, 'You had to be there.' . . . That it would be so kind of personal in that moment, that it's almost inexplicable to someone else."
On lousy shows:
Charlie: "And what's the difference in ones that are really good and those that are lousy? The audience?"
Steve: "It could be that. It's just that the ignition wasn't there. You know, I read an article by Jerry Lewis one time and he said, 'I was standing back stage in Las Vegas about to go on and I listened to the audience and I knew I was dead.' And I think all comedians have felt that. There's just a kind of enervaton and you can feel it. Oh, it's gonna be quiet. But the hard thing to learn is because they're not laughing it doesn't mean you're not going over."
Photograph by Sandee O. Check out Born Standing Up, highly recommended. For the iPod you can't miss with Let's Get Small, one of his double platinum comedy records. View his interview with Charlie Rose or a short clip of Steve performing at the LA Universal Amphitheater in 1979:
The 80/20 Rule
Feb 08, 2008 3 Comments
If you're lucky enough to make money with a business on the web, you'll have a lot less people to thank than you think. A good rule of thumb is that a small number of your customers will generate the large majority of your revenue. Consequently, the large majority of your customers won't ever really care about you that much.
There's a good chance you're already familiar with this as the "80/20 Rule", an idea credited to an early 20th century French-Italian polymath named Vilfredo Pareto. An expert in sociology, economics and philosophy, Pareto made a famous observation in 1906 that 80% of the property in Italy was owned by only 20% of the people. Over the past century this idea has stuck and become influential in a number of different fields of study. In the software world Quality Assurance engineers use it to chart service issues by severity, noting which ones are taking up the most of their resources. Mixing economics with sports, UC Bakersfield professor David Berri analyzes box score data to describe basketball, pointing out that 80% of a team's wins can be attributed to 20% of its roster (i.e. three guys on a roster of 15). In both cases a wealth of data often points to the same general 80/20 rule.
This kind of thinking works especially well on the web where visitors every move gets captured in exhaustive server logs and transaction receipts for analysis. Amid all that data, patterns begin to emerge if you know how to look for them. With practice you begin to develop a nose for where all the productive activity is. This is a sociologist's and an economist's dream. As web designers and developers we should recognize this bonanza of data for what it is and adopt some of their thinking and their tools for making sense of it.
Old school usability guru Jakob Nielsen took up this idea when thinking about online communities in an article "Participation Inequality", reframing 80/20 as the 90:9:1 rule. He maps to these three segments and names them Lurkers (90%), Casual Participants (9%), and Fanatics (1%). Yahoo!'s Bradley Horowitz's wrote about the same idea in his influential article, "Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers," and drew the different levels out as a pyramid. Horowitz points out that in the case of Wikipedia, 2.5% of its registered user base is
responsible for over 50% of the site's content. That's an amazing figure when you consider both how valuable that content is to their service and that we're only talking about a percentage of registered users, not the millions of Nielsen's "lurkers" browsing the site every day.
It's this top of the pyramid that could end up driving most of your business. If your site is about community content, these are the folks who will produce your most valuable input. Have this in mind when imagining that enormous traffic spike in your site's near future. Not all that traffic will stick and drive business. Funneling the right people into that sliver at the top and then nurturing their experience may be the key to your site's success.
