Facebook live
A Facebook live streaming service (a la U-Stream and YouTube) was newly launched this week. You can stream on your page or in-group. There is a map to discover streams going on in realtime. I already found one seminar by Nu-Skin a multi-level marketer of wellness and beauty products in Hong Kong as an example of where Facebook Live was being used from a commercial perspective.
The Stanton Warriors embraced the new Facebook live streaming service to promote further fan interaction whilst they were in the studio. It will be interesting to see the best and worst that brands do with this medium. From a piracy point-of-view I would imagine that it is likely to be used for streaming live sports coverage – expect the Premier League to be very unhappy.
RUN and RUN
Not exactly the same sound but J-Pop act lyrical school’s debut track RUN and RUN has a really clever smartphone optimised video with amazing breaks of the fourth wall.
UPDATE: Our James pointed me in the direction of an even better link for the RUN and RUN video on Vimeo that I hope works here
RUN and RUN / lyrical school 【MV for Smartphone】 from RUNandRUN_lyrisch on Vimeo.
If you can’t see anything point your browser here.
Godzilla
Japan’s king of all monsters, Godzilla returns from chilling out on Monster Island for his 31st outing in the Japanese cinema. This new trailer is interesting as the visuals evoke Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. Check out the Cloverfield-esque shots in the 30 second trailer below. There is a longer trailer where Godzilla appears fully in shot leaving no mystery to how bad ass he is this time. This means that the film is likely to go beyond his usual mayhem and might touch on contemporary issues.
Vintage CGI
Last, but not least; a vintage show reel by 1980s CGI shop MAGI Synthavision in its full neon wireframe magnificence and southern country rock soundtrack. More similar visual stuff here.
Key takeouts from the presentation
- A network effect occurs when a product or service becomes more valuable to users as more people use it
Network effect benefits
- Create barriers to exit for existing users
- Create barriers to entry for new companies
- Protect from competitors eating away at margins
- Creates a winner takes all style market
Communications networks laws that provide indicators likely platform utility
- Sarnoff’s law – the value of a network is proportional to the number of viewers
- Metcalfe’s law – the value of a network is proportional to the square of number of connected users
- Reed’s law – value of a group forming network is proportional to the number and ease with which groups form within it (subgroups grow faster than sheer number of P2P participants
If it isn’t clear where they fall within these networks, it’s a warning flag for brands on whether to invest in the platform.
User modes
- Single ‘player’ mode – the product has immediate utility for a single user. Examples would be Flickr in the early days for photo storage, Foursquare in the early days to bookmark places you’d been to as a locative memory. Social bookmarking sites like Pinboard, or Delicious would have been in here had it not been retired
- ‘Multiplayer’ mode – the product has no utility for a single user. This is particularly true for communications products. Examples would be Viber, Skype, Slack, Zoom etc.
- Products can be both single player and multiplayer. So the community that built around Flickr for example.
- Single player is more powerful when accompanied by an initial tactic to drive early network growth. Instagram photo filters was a way to post pictures on Twitter before there was enough critical mass. They help with adoption in the early days of a product when network effects aren’t sufficiently strong yet.
- What’s the initial growth lever or tactic that will get it to scale?
Case studies
- Facebook found that connecting a new user to 10 friends within 14 days of sign-up was key to improving retention
- Focus on daily usage (habit building) to help grow network. Focus on engagement rather than just overall number growth
- Growth usage, even as user numbers grow is a sure sign of network effects at work
- Facebook took a clustered approach: Harvard, then Stanford and eventually other universities in the US and abroad. Rather than focusing on growth. The immediate ‘single player’ utility they offered was an online school directory
- WhatsApp had a different network type to Facebook. Each WhatsApp user had about 20 connections compared to approximately 980 friends on Facebook. Fewer connections also meant clustering around family, close friends of interest based WhatsApp groups with more engagement
- AirBnB had two sides of their network. More hosts attract more guests and even become guests themselves. More guests means more business and money for hosts
- Medium found that ‘single player mode’ can help get to ‘multiplayer mode’ through building sufficient critical mass.