Marcoullier.com

Former Slide PM Yen Lee just blogged about The Four Viral App Objectives (via Dave McClure). It’s a great metrics-based analysis of the factors that contribute to virality. Whether you’re building FB apps or marketing physical goods, this is worthwhile reading.

“Infection duration” just rubs me the wrong way, though. Yes, it’s critical to computing virality, but it implies a focus on the acquisition of users solely for the purpose of acquisition of users. As long as someone is using your app they are infectious. The focus should be on prolonging engagement, not “infection.” Semantic debate? Probably.

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I’ve been trying to deconstruct how Techmeme works. It appears that Gabe Rivera’s clustering algo basically works in the following manner:

1. Find an interesting story (only on a Techmeme Leaderboard site, I believe)
2. Ping the permalink against Technorati on a regular basis, looking for referrers
3. If the referrer meets a minimum authority rating, add it to the cluster

Given the limited number of sites that meet the authority criteria, it would appear that the leaderboard is highly resistant insular, as is Techmeme in general. No long tail here. Anyone got a better understanding?

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Stumbled onto this mixtape gem today and have been listening to it pretty much nonstop. Keeb$ sets the tone immediately with a killer electro remix of Prodigy’s Charly and then jumps into a fab take on MJ’s Thriller. Loads of crunchy stuff in the middle – some hyphy, some glitch and some tracks that would be at home on the French Gooom label. Most importantly, the dude knows how to bring a set to a close, with a bittersweet track called Robot High School.

Download and tracklisting are included on the permalink, streaming mp3 is embedded below.

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Putting this blog together is an exercise in frustration. I want to collect all my services in one place – Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, Blogroll, etc. – and I have to get down to the CSS level (and have a good eye for design) to make it look consistent.

Where’s my drag and drop? Where’s my interchangeable components? This is much harder than it should be. I’m suddenly reminded that the Web is still the domain of specialists and tinkerers. I’ll probably bust out the books and do some real customization work, but I’m lodging a formal complaint with the management.

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Hiring engineers is wicked tough right now. Anyone worth hiring as an early stage developer has their own dream project. There’s so much money flying around that everyone is convinced they can land some. I don’t think there’s a person at Yahoo who doesn’t own a second laptop for “personal” development.

A little less venture capital could really break some of that entrepreneurial spirit, so I say bring on the downturn! In the meantime, maybe I just need to develop the nerve to say “Your project idea will never work, so let me tell you about mine…”

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I talk too much. It’s some sort of storyteller gene that causes back-story to fascinate me.

When I blog, articles tend to spiral into dozens of paragraphs as I try to capture every little detail and, with no end in sight, I end up scrapping the post and hating myself. Thus, I’ve launched and closed four blogs.

I’m trying something new today — blogging with a 100-word limit. Short enough that I can’t ramble, long enough that I don’t have to be pithier than I’m capable.

Let’s see if this makes a difference.

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