Posted in: social networking, twitter

Revisiting Twitter as a Social Graph for Games

About 3 years ago I wrote a short post about why Twitter was probably not a good platform for game developers to target. This was in the early days of Spymaster and other games that tried to use the Twitter graph in many of the same ways that social game developers were using the Facebook […]

Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, social networking

Classic Parlor and Board Games Continue to Inspire Social Mobile Game Devs

Yesterday someone asked me the ubiquitous “what’s working in mobile social games?” question and I thought it was worth pointing out that a lot of the most popular games today outside of the physics genre (by reach and revenue) are social mobile versions of known popular board and parlor games adapted for asynchronous play on […]

Posted in: google, social networking

Three Questions on the Android App Market User Experience

Earlier this week I gave a short talk for Yetizen on how VCs think about the games market. One of the more interesting things that happened at the meetup was that one of the folks from Google gave a few quick tips on how to be more effective on the Google Android Market. That chat, […]

Posted in: facebook, social networking, twitter

Yelp and foursquare are on a Collision Course

Awhile back I posted a question on Quora about services looking to disrupt Yelp via focusing on short-form reviews. I got a lot of feedback via email, Twitter, and Facebook and one person in particular, David Levy, pointed out that foursquare is the most likely competitor. All that was lacking was a better logged out […]

Posted in: social networking

More Thoughts on the Value of Interest Graphs and “Small” Networks

This is the second in a series I posts about how I’ve been using social networking tools lately and what I’ve learned by extension. While my Facebook usage waxes and wanes, my overall time spent on social services has increased. Simply put, my time spent on Facebook is being replaced with time spent on purpose-specific […]

Posted in: facebook, mobile, social networking

Facebook Mobile and Discrete Apps for Core Services

I’ve been thinking a bit about how I use social networks and how it continues to evolve. Increasingly, I find myself wanting to consume Facebook’s myriad set of products and services as discrete applications, especially on mobile devices. The core Facebook UI is burdened with having to do a lot. It has to be able […]

Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, social networking

Does Android Need Its Own Version of Game Center?

In all of the announcements about Apple’s iOS5, the one that caught my attention was the continued progress that Apple has been making with GameCenter. They now claim over 67 million registered players for the Game Center service and it continues to expand to include a wider range of game types. I’ve been thinking about […]

Posted in: facebook, social networking, web20

My Experience Getting Over the Trusted Stranger Issue with TaskRabbit

I’ve been really curious about TaskRabbit ever since I heard about the service. While it has always sounded interesting in practice, I’ve struggled to find a good personal use case for the service. Like a lot of people, I’m busy and have a lot to do. But the idea of trusting tasks I need to […]

Posted in: Gadgets & Handsets, mobile, social networking, web20

Mobile App Discovery Is a Developer Problem, Not a Consumer Problem

In my dual roles as a Venture Partner at SoftTech VC and Co-Founder of Bionic Panda Games, I’ve met with a bunch of companies and teams who are focusing on trying to solve the problem of mobile application discovery. Simply put, the problem (as articulated by people trying to solve it) is that there are […]

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