Ben Bowden

Ben Bowden's Blog. All about tech, product management, and software engineering.

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Predictions

I myself like to predict various thing such as: Yik Yak won't be popular in another 2 years, and Snapchat will maintain a solid active user base for the next 5 years. However, predictions are just that, predictions. They can either be right or wrong.

Look back 3 years ago in 2012 when Instagram was bought by Facebook for 1B. Check out the comments from the nytimes Article that announces Facebook's acquisition:

And this article from telegraph:

It's almost impossible to find anyone in the comments that actually believed in the acquisition. Now, as of writing this, Instagram is valued at 35B. Yikes. 

Sometimes, even if everyone is predicting otherwise, it's best to not just be a yes man and follow the herd. Oh, 99% of people believe it was a mistake to buy Instagran.. Well I guess they are right and I won't buy Facebook's stock when they IPO in another month. From looking back at previous predictions, you can gain a lot of perspective about how wrong people are sometimes. And also how sometimes people can make a perfect prediction. Which is why I believe doubting predictions, even from people you look up to, is important. Being able to form your own opinion is something everyone should learn to do, even when the masses are against your current conclusion/s. 

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(PPV Marketing IDEA) League of Legends Stream

I was casually watching a League of Legends stream on Twitch (a streaming site for video games) the other day, when I realized, "Wow, every time someone subscribes to the stream, their name gets displayed amongst all the viewers for around 2 seconds (some streamers also allow for donations of ~+$5 sometimes to be shown)". This is usually led by the streamer saying your name + "thanks for the sub".

Example of what's shown on screen when subscribing.

These streams can have 40,000+ viewers watching and subscribing only cost $4.99. This is a huge opportunity if used right.

Getting in front of that type of viewers on a CPV (cost per view) basis would usually cost $.07 to $.08 on average, aka ~$3000. However, with a simple $4.99 subscription, you can get in front of that same engaged viewership for well.. $2995 less. In fact, your username (aka your ad) probably will receive more attention though this method, then an ad on YouTube (results may vary :D).

If your looking for a scrappy way to maybe bring in customers, give this a try. Have your Twitch username set to a .com name like "BenBowden(dot)co". Also, some streamers allow for big enough donations to show on the video, this can be an even easier way to keep your ad showing. Once you've setup a way to subscribe / donate, keep doing so every ~hour.. Then see if the ad is bringing in the traffic that you want and go from there! Enjoy!

Source:

Good CPV $.07-.08: http://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-average-Cost-per-View-CPV-on-YouTube-or-CPM

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Children have a vast appetite for learning. And it only starts to decimate when we educate them.

http://youtu.be/BEsZOnyQzxQ?t=16m59s

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Make your product bold

When building a product, you should always strive to have one bold feature. And I should add that when I say bold, I mean with all caps BOLD!!

A bold feature will make people say, "Did you hear about that product that allows you do to x".

Example: iTunes could add a friending system and allow people on the platform to split a movie with one of their friends. 

Since almost all products are a deviation of someone else's, one crazy feature, whether it's for an entirely new product, or an existing one, could propel the product from a boring amount of users - to an oh my goodness our servers can't handle this amount of users.

So go out! Try something crazy! 

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Quora Results

Last month I decided to take the plunge into answering questions on Quora. Here are the results!

10 answers, past 30 days:

As you can see above, nothing too crazy views wise; but I'm still happy with the results. You can easily identify what days I answered questions by looking at the huge spikes in traffic. Answers don't have a huge lifespan, unless of course you are lucky with the occasional viral post. 

All in all, no surprises with the results. 

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Quick Fix Day (Random Thought)

Random quick thought.

Every company once a month should have a "quick fix day". During this day you'd fix little ui/ux glitchs, add transitions, update button vectors, etc. I feel the final touches of a lot of products simply get ignored after being published to the world. Adding little polished details can impact how users see your company and future product releases. 

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The secret world of major league gaming

Mentioning major league gaming (MLG) in a conversation still to this day will result in receiving strange looks. I mean why would anyone want to watch someone else play a game? That makes no sense. Now back to watching this football GAME. The end.

All jokes aside, mlg is becoming a big deal. League of Legends is the equivalent of football in the video game space. In fact, Riot, the creators of League of Legends, reported that 32 million viewers watched the Season 3 LCS championship (the super bowl of League of Legends). To put that a little in perspective, the super bowl received around 115 million viewers, so basically they have 200% more viewers tuning in. However, in the Season 2 finals for League of Legends, the game was only watched by 8.2 million fans. So from 2012 to 2013 the viewership has grown around 290%. With that growth rate in viewership, it's hard not to be paying attention.

"Pairing Coke Zero with League of Legends and collaborating with Riot on a new amateur series will bring something special to the players and help elevate eSports to a new level in the world of international sports."

Some other surprising facts about mlg is that it's starting to bring in $ for the teams. Most of the top teams have coaches, sponsorships, and deals with Riot where they receive a salary to play the game. Coke, one of the top brands of the world even sponsors leagues now.

Below I've linked the season 3 final. You'll see that the production value is similarly to any football game you'll ever watch. And yes, that is a full arena of fans that filled up Staples Center. Like I said, this is no joke. It's a secret sport that you should at least be aware. There's no guarantee that League will be around for even the next 3 years, but 33 million viewers should at least make you pay attention to the space.

At 2:00:10 the game actually starts.

Starting point in live event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRXIAh41IA&feature=share&t=54m24s

When gameplay starts if you just want to watch that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGRXIAh41IA&feature=share&t=2h15s

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ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Dinosaurs. Robots have too much potential to turn the world into the matrix. Or wait, maybe it has already happened. Oh no. 0110111001101111.

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tumblr user experience

After a shaky start I'm starting to understand tumblr a little more. The site seems squished together for a couple reasons.

1) To make short form content feel longer than it really is.

2) Better mobile experience.

3) Or maybe just randomly happened to be designed that way. 

tumblr feels almost like a long form version of Twitter. A little more features; but similar feel. On Blogger I felt every word that I typed mattered. On tumblr it's ok if I mess up. So what if my sentence isn't formal. 

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First tumblr post

So far my user experience with tumblr has been iffy. Even in the sign up process it felt awkward. I entered my email, password, and then username.

I feel it should be email, username, and then password. However, with all that said. It seems like this is a better blogging platform than Blogger. Blogger reminds me of Myspace, too many features and everyones profile, aka blog, is ugly. Tumblr on the other hand feels more like Facebook, everyone has somewhat of web 2.0 looking blog. Tumblr does feel a little kiddie though; but it's a blog, that's not too big of a deal. Everyone understands that on a blog things will be laid back.

Anyways, first post. Yay! 

Ben