mobile – Joseph’s Blog

Most of Facebook’s valuation is driven by 0.15% of Mobile Gamers

As you read the breathless reviews of Facebook’s Q2 2014 results, remember that the entire App economy depends on a tiny group of whales who spend hundreds of dollars a month on in-App purchases. This is terrifying. Facebook’s stock price is the second derivative of in-app purchase revenue. Things are highly geared, and incredibly risky.Continue reading “Most of Facebook’s valuation is driven by 0.15% of Mobile Gamers”

saila: Pretty obvious results in hindsight, but this is a useful map of app engagement on mobile devices

Location 2012

Robert Scoble had a great post yesterday about how location-based services will integrate to automatically provide you with help and useful information as you move around. He got a lot of it right, but my main concerns are with his beliefs that: users are smart and motivated enough to figure this out, and don’t mindContinue reading “Location 2012”

When Location Matters

Wow, what a few months. A wedding, a trip to Africa, and a tumultuous return to work that included a last-minute invitation to sit on a panel at the semantic web conference. Unrelated to all of this I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about location-specific mobile applications. Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Yelp! and otherContinue reading “When Location Matters”

foursquare – Like twitter, but Useful :)

foursquare launched their API yesterday (Mashable, Techcrunch). With it, developers can: identify what city the user is in read/write user and friends’ check-in data look up information for a particular location make/send friend requests retrieve venue data perform a local search that includes information from your friends’ check-ins add venues, tips, and to-dos This enablesContinue reading “foursquare – Like twitter, but Useful :)”

Location, location, location

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at local, mobile applications and how they fit into gaming and local commerce. Michael Arrington biopsied the social gaming economy and found it to be quite ill. Marginal advertisers (and I use even that term loosely) are filling these companies’ coffers with cash from shady lead-gen deals.Continue reading “Location, location, location”