#like 14 million and 8 million those are insane numbers for that platform

[eternallovers65]

Okay, so I did a little research on the qsmp members that I did not know, and I'm in awe and complete SHOCK

Spreen has 8 million on twitch

Vegetta has THIRTY FUCKING THREE MILLION on yt

Elmariana with 6 million on yt + 8 million on twitch

Luzu with 11 million on yt + 3 million on twitch

Rubius with FORTY FUCKING MILLION (that's the entire population of spain guys!!!!) on his main channel + another one with 12 million on yt + 14 MILLION ON TWITCH (he's goated idc)

WHAT ARE THESE NUMBERS?!?!?!

And don't get me wrong, I'm not shocked because they are not americans or they don't do english content. I'm shocked because I never heard about them like?!?!? HOW???

LIKE 14/8 MILLION ON TWITCH??? OR 33 AND 40 MILLION ON YOUTUBE??? That's like royalty on both of these platforms. These are insane numbers!!!

[riichardwilson]

Why Entrepreneurs Should Choose Insights Over Instincts

The importance of data-driven decision-making.

May 8, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 2017, humanity generated more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data by the day. According to the minds at Harvard Business School, it’s never been easier for businesses of all sizes to collect, analyze and interpret data into real, actionable insights. Companies wanting to successfully scale their operations should make the effort to understand that data on a much deeper level.

Related: The Insane Amounts of Data We’re Using Every Minute (Infographic)

Fully understanding the needs of your consumer enables you to provide them with the specific products and services they may be looking for, resulting in optimal business decisions surrounding exactly how, when and what to sell them. This is a fundamental aspect of creating and operating a business. Data-driven decision-making is simply focusing on the needs of your target market and executing on those requests before they are made.

All data is not created equal

“I think people just don���t understand the value in qualitative research,” says Lynzie Riebling, vice president of insights and strategy at Revolt TV. Riebling, whose background is in psychology and marketing, explained to me the level of “quant bias” she’s seen in the entertainment industry. “We are programmed as humans to think if something is quantified it has to be accurate,” she says of how we tend to view the numbers gained from research. “You don’t know how that survey was programmed, you don’t know who they spoke to, you don’t know if that was a survey of five people or 5,000 people.”

Related: Why Your Startup Needs Data Science

Acting as the middleman between brands and consumers, Riebling has spent more than a decade understanding the perspectives of target audiences and reporting that information back to the leadership of notable brands including Nike, Google/YouTube and MTV. By reading between the lines in data findings, she has helped countless executives make decisions to create with their audiences in mind. “I always say insights are your closest thing to a crystal ball,” says Riebling of the significance of her field. “If we do our work properly, we can tell you based on human behavior what is likely to happen next.”

Keeping it simple

The data of today is more detailed and varied than ever before, but there’s no need for entrepreneurs to get overwhelmed by the numbers. Though data has gotten bigger and better with time, success is not contingent upon harnessing the power of big data.

“I think people get wrapped up in this idea that you have to do something statistically sound,” mentions Riebling of the DIY role her job often assumes. “I’ve legitimately gone into a skate park and bought a pizza and said ‘Hey, do you guys want to hang out and eat pizza?’ It might sound a bit creepy, but it worked.” Riebling believes that even small businesses can do their own insight-scraping and data-reporting with limited friends, supporters or colleagues. “As humans, we can just have conversations with people and that is research and validation in itself.”

Turning insights into action

Doing independent research is costly and time-intensive, but data doesn’t necessarily have to come from research done on behalf of your company alone. The creation of the platform Audiomack is a prime example of what can be accomplished by using known research and applying that knowledge to your target audience. In 2012, the founders of the music streaming service decided to launch their business from their own perspectives as hip-hop fans, noticing the genre’s growing reach at the time.

Audiomack was built on providing those hip-hop artists who couldn’t yet afford the fees often required by distribution companies and other streaming platforms with a free and unlimited way to upload their music. Understanding the nature of the hip-hop creative process and the challenge of getting past industry gatekeepers, the founders gave artists a chance to put their music directly in front of the right fans. By also catering to listeners who are specifically looking to stream underground hip-hop content that can’t be found in places like Apple Music or Spotify, today Audiomack attracts 14 million daily active users.

I recently spoke with David Ponte, co-founder and CMO of Audiomack, who explained how the company’s Creator Dashboard is helping artists turn the data from the service’s platform into actionable insights. “That type of specific data is going to help you understand where to push your resources,” Ponte says of the dashboard’s geo-location and engagement metrics. “If you’re an emerging artist, you want to be able to determine where you might want to contact booking agents. You can see, ‘Are people coming back to play a song or are they just playing it because it’s in a big playlist?’ Those answers are going to help you determine how to spend your money and your time moving forward.”

When used correctly, carefully mined data can help a company determine which path to take. Better data leads to better decision-making and more efficient selling strategies, both of which are key to profitability.

Related: 4 Ways Data Is Driving Conscious Capitalism

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose-insights-over-instincts/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/617588426033790976

[douglassmiith]

Why Entrepreneurs Should Choose Insights Over Instincts

The importance of data-driven decision-making.

May 8, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 2017, humanity generated more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data by the day. According to the minds at Harvard Business School, it’s never been easier for businesses of all sizes to collect, analyze and interpret data into real, actionable insights. Companies wanting to successfully scale their operations should make the effort to understand that data on a much deeper level.

Related: The Insane Amounts of Data We’re Using Every Minute (Infographic)

Fully understanding the needs of your consumer enables you to provide them with the specific products and services they may be looking for, resulting in optimal business decisions surrounding exactly how, when and what to sell them. This is a fundamental aspect of creating and operating a business. Data-driven decision-making is simply focusing on the needs of your target market and executing on those requests before they are made.

All data is not created equal

“I think people just don’t understand the value in qualitative research,” says Lynzie Riebling, vice president of insights and strategy at Revolt TV. Riebling, whose background is in psychology and marketing, explained to me the level of “quant bias” she’s seen in the entertainment industry. “We are programmed as humans to think if something is quantified it has to be accurate,” she says of how we tend to view the numbers gained from research. “You don’t know how that survey was programmed, you don’t know who they spoke to, you don’t know if that was a survey of five people or 5,000 people.”

Related: Why Your Startup Needs Data Science

Acting as the middleman between brands and consumers, Riebling has spent more than a decade understanding the perspectives of target audiences and reporting that information back to the leadership of notable brands including Nike, Google/YouTube and MTV. By reading between the lines in data findings, she has helped countless executives make decisions to create with their audiences in mind. “I always say insights are your closest thing to a crystal ball,” says Riebling of the significance of her field. “If we do our work properly, we can tell you based on human behavior what is likely to happen next.”

Keeping it simple

The data of today is more detailed and varied than ever before, but there’s no need for entrepreneurs to get overwhelmed by the numbers. Though data has gotten bigger and better with time, success is not contingent upon harnessing the power of big data.

“I think people get wrapped up in this idea that you have to do something statistically sound,” mentions Riebling of the DIY role her job often assumes. “I’ve legitimately gone into a skate park and bought a pizza and said ‘Hey, do you guys want to hang out and eat pizza?’ It might sound a bit creepy, but it worked.” Riebling believes that even small businesses can do their own insight-scraping and data-reporting with limited friends, supporters or colleagues. “As humans, we can just have conversations with people and that is research and validation in itself.”

Turning insights into action

Doing independent research is costly and time-intensive, but data doesn’t necessarily have to come from research done on behalf of your company alone. The creation of the platform Audiomack is a prime example of what can be accomplished by using known research and applying that knowledge to your target audience. In 2012, the founders of the music streaming service decided to launch their business from their own perspectives as hip-hop fans, noticing the genre’s growing reach at the time.

Audiomack was built on providing those hip-hop artists who couldn’t yet afford the fees often required by distribution companies and other streaming platforms with a free and unlimited way to upload their music. Understanding the nature of the hip-hop creative process and the challenge of getting past industry gatekeepers, the founders gave artists a chance to put their music directly in front of the right fans. By also catering to listeners who are specifically looking to stream underground hip-hop content that can’t be found in places like Apple Music or Spotify, today Audiomack attracts 14 million daily active users.

I recently spoke with David Ponte, co-founder and CMO of Audiomack, who explained how the company’s Creator Dashboard is helping artists turn the data from the service’s platform into actionable insights. “That type of specific data is going to help you understand where to push your resources,” Ponte says of the dashboard’s geo-location and engagement metrics. “If you’re an emerging artist, you want to be able to determine where you might want to contact booking agents. You can see, ‘Are people coming back to play a song or are they just playing it because it’s in a big playlist?’ Those answers are going to help you determine how to spend your money and your time moving forward.”

When used correctly, carefully mined data can help a company determine which path to take. Better data leads to better decision-making and more efficient selling strategies, both of which are key to profitability.

Related: 4 Ways Data Is Driving Conscious Capitalism

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

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Via http://www.scpie.org/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose-insights-over-instincts/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose-insights-over-instincts

[scpie]

Why Entrepreneurs Should Choose Insights Over Instincts

The importance of data-driven decision-making.

May 8, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 2017, humanity generated more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data by the day. According to the minds at Harvard Business School, it’s never been easier for businesses of all sizes to collect, analyze and interpret data into real, actionable insights. Companies wanting to successfully scale their operations should make the effort to understand that data on a much deeper level.

Related: The Insane Amounts of Data We’re Using Every Minute (Infographic)

Fully understanding the needs of your consumer enables you to provide them with the specific products and services they may be looking for, resulting in optimal business decisions surrounding exactly how, when and what to sell them. This is a fundamental aspect of creating and operating a business. Data-driven decision-making is simply focusing on the needs of your target market and executing on those requests before they are made.

All data is not created equal

“I think people just don’t understand the value in qualitative research,” says Lynzie Riebling, vice president of insights and strategy at Revolt TV. Riebling, whose background is in psychology and marketing, explained to me the level of “quant bias” she’s seen in the entertainment industry. “We are programmed as humans to think if something is quantified it has to be accurate,” she says of how we tend to view the numbers gained from research. “You don’t know how that survey was programmed, you don’t know who they spoke to, you don’t know if that was a survey of five people or 5,000 people.”

Related: Why Your Startup Needs Data Science

Acting as the middleman between brands and consumers, Riebling has spent more than a decade understanding the perspectives of target audiences and reporting that information back to the leadership of notable brands including Nike, Google/YouTube and MTV. By reading between the lines in data findings, she has helped countless executives make decisions to create with their audiences in mind. “I always say insights are your closest thing to a crystal ball,” says Riebling of the significance of her field. “If we do our work properly, we can tell you based on human behavior what is likely to happen next.”

Keeping it simple

The data of today is more detailed and varied than ever before, but there’s no need for entrepreneurs to get overwhelmed by the numbers. Though data has gotten bigger and better with time, success is not contingent upon harnessing the power of big data.

“I think people get wrapped up in this idea that you have to do something statistically sound,” mentions Riebling of the DIY role her job often assumes. “I’ve legitimately gone into a skate park and bought a pizza and said ‘Hey, do you guys want to hang out and eat pizza?’ It might sound a bit creepy, but it worked.” Riebling believes that even small businesses can do their own insight-scraping and data-reporting with limited friends, supporters or colleagues. “As humans, we can just have conversations with people and that is research and validation in itself.”

Turning insights into action

Doing independent research is costly and time-intensive, but data doesn’t necessarily have to come from research done on behalf of your company alone. The creation of the platform Audiomack is a prime example of what can be accomplished by using known research and applying that knowledge to your target audience. In 2012, the founders of the music streaming service decided to launch their business from their own perspectives as hip-hop fans, noticing the genre’s growing reach at the time.

Audiomack was built on providing those hip-hop artists who couldn’t yet afford the fees often required by distribution companies and other streaming platforms with a free and unlimited way to upload their music. Understanding the nature of the hip-hop creative process and the challenge of getting past industry gatekeepers, the founders gave artists a chance to put their music directly in front of the right fans. By also catering to listeners who are specifically looking to stream underground hip-hop content that can’t be found in places like Apple Music or Spotify, today Audiomack attracts 14 million daily active users.

I recently spoke with David Ponte, co-founder and CMO of Audiomack, who explained how the company’s Creator Dashboard is helping artists turn the data from the service’s platform into actionable insights. “That type of specific data is going to help you understand where to push your resources,” Ponte says of the dashboard’s geo-location and engagement metrics. “If you’re an emerging artist, you want to be able to determine where you might want to contact booking agents. You can see, ‘Are people coming back to play a song or are they just playing it because it’s in a big playlist?’ Those answers are going to help you determine how to spend your money and your time moving forward.”

When used correctly, carefully mined data can help a company determine which path to take. Better data leads to better decision-making and more efficient selling strategies, both of which are key to profitability.

Related: 4 Ways Data Is Driving Conscious Capitalism

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose-insights-over-instincts/

[laurelkrugerr]

Why Entrepreneurs Should Choose Insights Over Instincts

The importance of data-driven decision-making.

May 8, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 2017, humanity generated more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data by the day. According to the minds at Harvard Business School, it’s never been easier for businesses of all sizes to collect, analyze and interpret data into real, actionable insights. Companies wanting to successfully scale their operations should make the effort to understand that data on a much deeper level.

Related: The Insane Amounts of Data We’re Using Every Minute (Infographic)

Fully understanding the needs of your consumer enables you to provide them with the specific products and services they may be looking for, resulting in optimal business decisions surrounding exactly how, when and what to sell them. This is a fundamental aspect of creating and operating a business. Data-driven decision-making is simply focusing on the needs of your target market and executing on those requests before they are made.

All data is not created equal

“I think people just don’t understand the value in qualitative research,” says Lynzie Riebling, vice president of insights and strategy at Revolt TV. Riebling, whose background is in psychology and marketing, explained to me the level of “quant bias” she’s seen in the entertainment industry. “We are programmed as humans to think if something is quantified it has to be accurate,” she says of how we tend to view the numbers gained from research. “You don’t know how that survey was programmed, you don’t know who they spoke to, you don’t know if that was a survey of five people or 5,000 people.”

Related: Why Your Startup Needs Data Science

Acting as the middleman between brands and consumers, Riebling has spent more than a decade understanding the perspectives of target audiences and reporting that information back to the leadership of notable brands including Nike, Google/YouTube and MTV. By reading between the lines in data findings, she has helped countless executives make decisions to create with their audiences in mind. “I always say insights are your closest thing to a crystal ball,” says Riebling of the significance of her field. “If we do our work properly, we can tell you based on human behavior what is likely to happen next.”

Keeping it simple

The data of today is more detailed and varied than ever before, but there’s no need for entrepreneurs to get overwhelmed by the numbers. Though data has gotten bigger and better with time, success is not contingent upon harnessing the power of big data.

“I think people get wrapped up in this idea that you have to do something statistically sound,” mentions Riebling of the DIY role her job often assumes. “I’ve legitimately gone into a skate park and bought a pizza and said ‘Hey, do you guys want to hang out and eat pizza?’ It might sound a bit creepy, but it worked.” Riebling believes that even small businesses can do their own insight-scraping and data-reporting with limited friends, supporters or colleagues. “As humans, we can just have conversations with people and that is research and validation in itself.”

Turning insights into action

Doing independent research is costly and time-intensive, but data doesn’t necessarily have to come from research done on behalf of your company alone. The creation of the platform Audiomack is a prime example of what can be accomplished by using known research and applying that knowledge to your target audience. In 2012, the founders of the music streaming service decided to launch their business from their own perspectives as hip-hop fans, noticing the genre’s growing reach at the time.

Audiomack was built on providing those hip-hop artists who couldn’t yet afford the fees often required by distribution companies and other streaming platforms with a free and unlimited way to upload their music. Understanding the nature of the hip-hop creative process and the challenge of getting past industry gatekeepers, the founders gave artists a chance to put their music directly in front of the right fans. By also catering to listeners who are specifically looking to stream underground hip-hop content that can’t be found in places like Apple Music or Spotify, today Audiomack attracts 14 million daily active users.

I recently spoke with David Ponte, co-founder and CMO of Audiomack, who explained how the company’s Creator Dashboard is helping artists turn the data from the service’s platform into actionable insights. “That type of specific data is going to help you understand where to push your resources,” Ponte says of the dashboard’s geo-location and engagement metrics. “If you’re an emerging artist, you want to be able to determine where you might want to contact booking agents. You can see, ‘Are people coming back to play a song or are they just playing it because it’s in a big playlist?’ Those answers are going to help you determine how to spend your money and your time moving forward.”

When used correctly, carefully mined data can help a company determine which path to take. Better data leads to better decision-making and more efficient selling strategies, both of which are key to profitability.

Related: 4 Ways Data Is Driving Conscious Capitalism

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose-insights-over-instincts/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/why-entrepreneurs-should-choose.html

[barbosaasouza]

Nintendo Labo: Genius or Insanity?

The French have a saying: Les extremes se touchent. It’s a way of saying that things so far out on either side of a spectrum might actually have some overlap. Some of the world’s brightest minds throughout history, for example, have had a touch of madness. Perhaps some of Nintendo’s designers have this trait too. Innovation requires unique thinking. Nintendo’s newest innovation, Labo, is a series of cardboard construction kits that interact with the Switch platform. And frankly, it feels so mad, that maybe it’s brilliant.

As Nintendo describes it, Labo “combines the magic of the Nintendo Switch system with the fun of DIY creations.” It draws on the appeal of building blocks like Lego as well as the Switch itself, which has already sold well over 14 million units worldwide. Nintendo will begin by selling a Variety Kit and a Robot Kit on April 20th, for $69.99 and $79.99, respectively.

Reactions to the Labo announcement a few months ago were, unsurprisingly, polarizing. Some took to social media to lavish praise on Nintendo for doing something truly creative, something that no other major company in the business would even dare to attempt. Others bemoaned the fact that Nintendo is charging people 80 bucks for pieces of pre-cut cardboard.

Nintendo’s product track record is certainly not flawless (Virtual Boy, Wii U anyone?) but if the house of Mario can legitimately sell cardboard pieces at those prices, it’s hard not to think of it as genius. The margins are going to be substantially better.

As Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter explained, "The only costs are design (R&D) and marketing. My guess is that R&D is very low, but marketing is around the same as for any other games. So the difference in profits is the difference in R&D spending. That is likely $50 - $80 million total. If they sell 10 million Labo [units], the profit per unit will be $5 - $8 higher than a conventional game."

The announcement and pending launch also serve to fill a marketing gap for the Switch, which is coming off the stupendous release of Super Mario Odyssey last holiday but doesn’t have any major first-party titles on the immediate horizon.

“Labo is a great and novel product that fits well with Nintendo's history and its penchant for coming up with cool accessories,” Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research told me. “Its key value currently is to boost the marketing effort for the Switch. Releasing the Labo footage unexpectedly bought Nintendo a lot of traction on social media, which is clearly a critical component to its overall marketing strategy. By continuing to feed its fanbase, Nintendo keeps its core offering top of mind.”

That said, the analyst was unsure “whether people will buy it en masse and whether it will have a life-cycle beyond a few weeks of novelty before it ends up on a shelf much less relevant.”

Predictions aside, Nintendo Labo is already a hit with one important crowd: creatives. The bulk of the developers I spoke to about the cardboard kits expressed genuine enthusiasm.

“There's something about building the toys you play with that I'm sure will reach a broad audience,” said Jean-François Major, co-founder at Tribute Games, which has released the Contra-like 2D action title Mercenary Kings Reloaded on Switch and other platforms.

“With games like Minecraft, we've proven people are open to non traditional and linear experiences. However, the Labo games will need to be as creative as the cardboard construction.”

Klaus Lyngeled, CEO of Zoink, which just released the platformer Fe, is equally enthused.

“I think it’s an amazingly creative idea,” he said. “I personally really love games that also are toys. A few years back we developed a plush toy for the Wii called WeeWaa. It was a real passion project for me. My kids were quite young then and both played a lot of games and with their plush toys, so I created this cute little character that could eat the Wiimote, and when you moved WeeWaa he would react accordingly on screen. 

“As we designed the game we explored lots of ways to use the accelerometer and IR camera and I can really see how Labo is being very creative with all these features.”

Mike Wilson, co-founder of both Devolver Digital and Good Shepherd, has gotten to know a wide array of developers over the years, and he knows creativity when he sees it.

“I’m pretty sure my response was the same as everyone else’s, which at first was like ‘WTF is this a joke?’ and then soon moved to ‘Wow this is crazy and kind of cool.’ As someone that works with a lot of developers, I don’t think the potential of Labo has even sunk[en] in,” he commented. “... I could see the younger end of Switch players really embracing it. I love it when Nintendo does weird stuff!”

Nintendo, of course, has always had youth in mind when developing its games. That family-friendly image extends to Labo, as well. It’s something that’s targeted at kids, yes, but importantly it’s an activity that can be enjoyed jointly with parents. Anecdotally speaking, my wife does not play games, but as a woman who’s very artistic and crafty, she’s already cut and assembled things for our two toddlers using Amazon boxes. Who’s to say that’s not an untapped audience for Nintendo?

“Since I have kids, I'm already planning on buying some of the Labo things,” John Comes, CTO of indie publisher tinyBuild Games told me. “As someone who was also a mechanical engineer at one time, the entire concept is right up my alley.”

Jeremy Dunham, VP of Publishing at Rocket League developer Psyonix is planning to purchase Labo as well. “I plan on buying Labo for my kids when it's released to see what they think. I'm really excited to see what kind of ideas this kit will spark and how different (or similar) those ideas are to other building sets,” he remarked.

There’s something especially gratifying about learning to build things. You take a certain pride in what you’ve constructed. When I was a boy in 1986, I used to play endlessly with a mechanized, battery-powered construction kit called Robotix. Had I been told that I could hook up my Robotix creations to my Nintendo Entertainment System to control Mario’s jump or Simon Belmont’s whip, I think I would have been ecstatic. Nintendo may be onto something special with Labo.

I feel like this is the first gaming platform that can bridge the gap between 'games' and 'educational games'.

“My son already has an engineering mind, so the STEM learning opportunities will be huge,” Comes said. “I feel like this is the first gaming platform that can bridge the gap between 'games' and 'educational games'. There's such a divide there when you weigh teachings vs. fun gameplay.“

Dunham, too, is optimistic about the educational aspect, but he cautioned that Nintendo must remain open to broad possibilities with Labo.

“If you're only ever relegated to a few recurring designs, or add-on packs are hard to find, or any other number of challenges, it could be limiting,” he said. “I think of toys like Lego and love their concept of giving you blueprints, but still giving you the freedom to make whatever you want. If Nintendo Labo maintains that kind of flexibility, the potential is very, very high. The real trick is making sure that the cardboard itself is the only rigid thing about it.”

I also imagine that a community of Labo hackers will form and we might see some much more innovative designs floating around the internet.

Major added, “Labo is a great opportunity to see what makes something tick… it [could]l be a great parent/kid weekend project. A Labo kit could replace building a birdhouse.”

Lyngeled took it even one step further, suggesting that Labo has genuine classroom potential: “I could see that the Swedish educational system might pick this up and start using it in class -- especially if you can start programming your own toys, which it seems like Nintendo are hinting at in the trailer. I also imagine that a community of Labo hackers will form and we might see some much more innovative designs floating around the internet."

But what about the selection of cardboard as Labo’s building material? Surely, Nintendo has made a mistake by not using plastic? Time will tell how durable these kits can be, but Nintendo explained the reasoning behind its decision in a recent investor Q&A.

Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo Director and Managing Executive Officer, remarked, "I'm sure we surprised everyone with the use of cardboard, but it's not so far-fetched if you consider how familiar the material is, at least to Japanese people who, from a young age, use it for play and as a material for creating things such as fancy crafts.”

Tokyo-based veteran games journalist Justin Leeper can attest to how ingrained the papercraft hobby is with Japan’s youth. His mind immediately turned to Origami upon watching the Labo announcement trailer.

“While a mere novelty in the West - ‘Aunt Carol can make paper cranes’ - origami is a long-standing and beloved art here in Japan. Building is much more than a niche portion of Japanese toys as well,” he told me. “Go to any toy store in Tokyo, and you’ll see beautiful dioramas you can buy and build from scenes out of Studio Ghibli movies, for example, or metal sheets that somehow turn into abstract TIE Fighters. Then there’s Gundam models, train sets, Lego... all based on building.”

He continued, “The Japanese are also big on packaging. A gift isn’t a gift unless its box is put in another cardboard box that’s placed in a decorative bag and wrapped with a few hundred yards of ribbon."

"Cardboard is called ‘danboru’, a word whose origins I’ve never known despite being written in the character set for foreign-to-Japan words. There’s a relatively popular manga character, Danbo, who’s a cardboard robot from the series Yotsuba&. If anything, it shows the acceptance of cardboard in Japan’s pop-culture consciousness.”

For his part, Comes isn’t concerned about Labo’s cardboard pieces. Should a piece wear out, there’s an obvious fix, he said:

“I personally feel like cardboard was the perfect material to use. It's very approachable. I'm not worried about it getting damaged. I mean, it's cardboard. If it breaks, take the last Amazon box you got and cut out the same piece.”

Along with the worries about cardboard longevity, there’s still the very legitimate issue of price sensitivity. Nintendo will have to convince parents that the value that Labo brings justifies the expenditure. Dunham, however, has seen much worse in the hobby industry.

There appears to be a bit of a stigma associated with the cardboard so far, which is understandable, but kids and their parents will tell Nintendo really quickly if the quality and replayability is worth the price once it's out.

“As a parent of two kids myself, I can tell you that most crafting/building/exploration kits are typically a bit more expensive than you'd expect,” he offered. “There appears to be a bit of a stigma associated with the cardboard so far, which is understandable, but kids and their parents will tell Nintendo really quickly if the quality and replayability is worth the price once it's out. “Given that a lot of smart-device-controlled robots are typically in the range of $100 or more, though, I can see the argument that the ability to build the toy first would make the price worth it for some.”

Regardless of how well Labo performs on the market, Nintendo deserves credit for trying something this bold. And let’s say that it does take off, would the one-time playing cards company begin to partner up with outside developers to make unique kits for their games? Nintendo has shown an increasing willingness to work with third parties and especially indies on Switch, but extending Labo feels unlikely, even if it does get developers’ creative juices flowing.

“That would be fantastic [if they did],” exclaimed Comes. “I have a mechanical engineering degree and I've made games for 17 years. So building my own Labo thing would be a great combination of my two life loves. I'd spend hours tinkering with building them.”

Dunham liked this idea as well: “A Rocket League kit would be really neat to see on store shelves, but I imagine that Nintendo wants to see how its initial experiment works out first before opening the floodgates. If it is a success, though, and kids start asking for themed sets based on their favorite properties, Nintendo has shown in the past (in games like Smash Bros. and even our own to a lesser extent) that they have no problem finding ways to make that happen.”

Major went so far as to call Labo “an indie’s dream” and Tribute would love to see Nintendo reach out to indies for more ideas. “A lot of innovation comes from smaller studios. It would probably be a great idea to tap into other studios’ creative minds as long as Nintendo maintains a certain level of quality control,” he said.

Clearly, the developer community is fired up, but from a business standpoint, getting indies involved in Labo would still involve clearing some major hurdles.

“[It] would be amazing [to work on Labo], but unfortunately I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think Nintendo will fund an indie developer to make a game for Labo as it’s too niche,” Lyngeled said. “And funding on our own is too big a risk. We survive because we can sell digitally. Distributing a Labo kit on our own [would be] very complicated. We never managed to get the [WeeWaa] plush out on the market because of distributing.

“One solution could be that people build a construction [kit] out of household materials and their own cardboard. That could be a fun way to make an indie Labo game. Let’s see how well [these] Nintendo kits sell before diving into this.”

April 20 should be an interesting day for Nintendo. It could be utterly inconsequential or it could mark the beginning of a new long-term franchise. “Given how beloved Nintendo is and how much weight their name carries, I think [Labo] will do very well at launch,” Dunham said.

This article is a preview of Greenlit Content's upcoming industry site, launching soon.

Nintendo Labo: Genius or Insanity? published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

[topicprinter]

It’s hard to imagine successful companies struggling to acquire customers. We see the successes with their hordes of fans and we think, “Wow, they’re so lucky. They have it good.”Yet every single behemoth in existence once had to court its first customer.In this post, I feature some of their stories. You’ll find in them a generous mix of grunt work, guts, and genius.1 & 2: Tinder and Alibaba – physically traveled to their first usersTinder went from 5,000 to 15,000 users by getting sorority girls to signup on the spotCrucial to Tinder’s success was then-CMO Whitney Wolfe’s ideas for building an early user-base. She planned a tour that would take her to prominent college campuses around the country.She would go to chapters of her sorority, do her presentation, and have all the girls at the meetings install the app.Then she’d go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they’d open the app and see all these cute girls they knew.Tinder had fewer than 5,000 users before Wolfe made her trip. When she returned, there were some 15,000.”Alibaba “brute-forced” its success by visiting factories one by oneBack in the early ’00s, Jack Ma sent out a large sales force to fan out across the country, visiting factories one by one to show them how they could use Alibaba and Taobao to sell stuff online.Back then, a large number of factories in China weren’t used to working with other people online, and sometimes didn’t even have computers or Internet.It was hard work, but companies quickly flocked to Alibaba and its holdings. This allowed them to get an edge over eBay.3 & 4: Quora and Reddit – seeded their sites with their own contentFounders solved the chicken-and-egg problem by contributing the bulk of early content themselvesQuora and Reddit are two of the largest online forums in existence today, but they were once ghost towns with the chicken-and-egg problem of “empty site = no users / no users = empty site”.Quora co-founders D’Angelo, Cheever and Cox wrote most of the earliest questions and answers themselves. The first employees and beta testers then continued this trend, until the platform generated enough activity for them to stop.Reddit did the same, but it also created fake profiles. According co-founder Steve Huffman, it took several months before the front page would fill up organically without their submissions.5 & 6: Threadless and Dropbox – the biggest believers in word-of-mouthDropbox launched shared folders and a massive referral campaignThe Dropbox empire was built on referrals.With its massive word of mouth campaign, Dropbox grew its user base by 40 times – from 100,000 to 4,000,000.In April 2010 alone, Dropbox users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites.But on top of that, Dropbox itself was designed to encourage sharing. They introduced shared folders, a nifty feature that encouraged users to invite others to share access to folders.Threadless let its community run their own initiativesOne of Threadless’ crucial early moves was to start a massive word-of-mouth campaign.From the get-go, Threadless supported community initiated “rogue contests”(spontaneous, themed tee shirt contests).In turn, its community is insanely creative, and also fiercely loyal brand advocates.7: Black Milk: Fashion + Fandoms = Great Success!The clothing store achieved its impressive growth by milking fandom for its worth. It didn’t stop at making pop culture-inspired apparel – it established serious legitimacy by getting official license for all their geeky wear.It’s also made its Facebook page a fandom watering hole. Over there, dedicated “Sharkies” can connect with like-minded fans.There’s even a Black Milk-approved group where girls can swap, buy, and sell their purchases with each other.8: OKCupid – legendary content on OKTrends averaged 4,222 tweets per postThe content on OKTrends was so mindblowingly insightful that people actually despaired when it was discontinued. Who wouldn’t want to read and share this post titled “10 Charts About Sex“? (Do it, it’s worth all your attention.)From August 2010 to April 2011, OkTrends posts averaged a staggering 32,500 Facebook likes and 4,222 tweets.Co-founder Rudder says, “Honestly I think the blog–one way or another–has driven a lot of our growth. Certainly, it has driven brand awareness. It’s been the only thing we’ve ever done, other than making a great dating site, that has gotten us out there into the world.”9: Etsy – harvested interest by reaching out to target communities before launchingEtsy founders used to run a web design shop and were working on getcrafty.com for one of their projects, during which they discovered the need for a marketplace for handmade crafts.So, while they built Etsy, they reached out to the craft community on getcrafty.com and Craftster.org, which had an even larger user base.By the time they launched, they already had a lot of interest generated among the two platforms, and that helped get the required inventory and start off transactions on Etsy.10: Buffer – got to 100k users primarily through frequent guest bloggingCo-founder Leo Wildrich wrote 150 guest posts in the first 9 months of running Buffer, and he swears by it. That’s 16-17 posts per month, or more than 1 every two days!“Relationships are actually the most valuable things that you gain from guest posting. At the end of the day, if you do a lot of guest posting you simply make a lot of friends. I’ve got great friends over at Treehouse, Social Media Examiner, SocialMouths, and other great sites. You provide someone with free content, that’s a great favor if you think about it, so it’s a great opportunity to make friends with these awesome people.”11: ASOS – the ecommerce store mailed its own print magazine to 400,000 customersBack in 2006, CEO Nick Robertson insisted that the glossy print catalog was still key to making the brand an essential part of customers’ lives. Today, besides maintaining a content-rich site, ASOS also has a magazine with a circulation of 456,000 – the 18th largest in the UK, immediately behind Glamour and Closer, and just a handful of places behind New.Unconditional, free shipping was irresistable.One of the things that kept customers flocking to ASOS was its incredible shipping and returns policy – even in its early days, ASOS was shipping for free and without minimum purchase. That policy has only just recently changed, but ASOS already has a loyal fanbase worldwide.12 & 13: Twitter and Foursquare – exploded their userbases at SXSW with guerrilla marketingSXSW 2007 – Twitter lived streamed the conference on huge plasma screensCo-founder Evan Williams decided to visualize the service on 60 inch plasma screens in the hallways, because “We knew hallways were where the action was”. Twitter created an event-specific feature that allowed attendees to follow a handful of “ambassadors”.According to Newsweek’s Steven Levy, “Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it.” During the event, Twitter usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.Foursquare – grew average check-ins from 250k to 350k with just chalk and rubber ballsFoursquare didn’t have a booth like most other brands at the 2010 SXSW convention. Neither did it have Twitter’s marketing budget (Twitter spent $11k on its SXSW campaign). Instead, it set up an actual game of “four square” in front of the convention hall, which involved just chalk and two rubber balls.The game drew thousands of walk-up participants [1], Said CEO Dennis Crowley, “We played all day long, and there was always a waiting line. We were handing out tee shirts, buttons, and stickers. Anytime someone didn’t know what Foursquare was, we helped them find it on their phone. We helped get them up and running and using it.”14: Taskrabbit – focused on delighting moms in BostonTaskrabbit first cornered the market with one mothers’ group in BostonTaskrabbit is similar to Uber in its hyperlocal focus. Leah Busque talked about Taskrabbit’s early traction in response to a question “How did you acquire your first 10,000 users?”“It can be tempting to just go really broad, really wide scale, really fast. But for us, we just focused on a customer segment. We focused on this mothers’ group in Boston. And once we had cornered that market with that moms’ group, those moms were talking to other moms on Beacon Hill and Backbay and Cambridge and it just spread from there.”15: Airbnb – shuttled from coast to coast to talk to their first usersFounders went the extra mile for their earliest usersFounders Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia acted on Paul Graham’s advice in their Y Combinator days and “did things that didn’t scale”. Specifically, they went to NYC to acquire their earliest users, then followed up with them extensively.“When New York took off, we flew back every weekend. We went door to door with cameras taking pictures of all these apartments to put them online. I lived in their living rooms. And home by home, block by block, communities started growing. And people would visit New York and bring the idea back with them to their city.” – Brian Chesky, for The Atlantic“Because of the Democratic National Conventions, some people were using the site in New York and listing places. We would reach out to the very few people we had and get to know them, figure out what products they needed and what we could offer them. We tried to build loyalty knowing that if we did that, they would tell their friends. We’d host parties and meetups and all sorts of different things.Through that process, they’d get very excited and tell their friends about Airbnb. It was mostly about generating as much buzz and excitement to get them to tell their friends about us.�� – Chesky, Startups Open-sourcedAirbnb believed in generating word-of-mouth, which would attract the press, which would generate more word-of-mouth“We never dressed up in gorilla suits but we passed out fliers in coffee shops, train stations—we did all sorts of things. I don’t know what tactics worked more than others, but I think press was always the number one tactic for us. The press would spark another group of users, then we’d go visit those people and talk to them and get them excited. It was a pattern that repeated itself.” – Chesky, Startups Open-sourced16: Yelp – grew a loyal user base by rewarding quality reviewsGave “Kudos” for good behaviorYelp wanted to create a tight community of consistent reviewers and high quality reviews. It rightly guessed that people were more likely to write in-depth, well crafted reviews when their names appeared alongside them. So it offered special recognition to users who were first to review a business, and let other users give kudos for reviews that are useful, funny, or cool.And the numbers in 2006 show that most Yelp reviewers got hooked on the site:Users who contributed 6 or more reviews:CitySearch – 4.8% Yahoo Local – 11.1% Yelp – 65.8% Users who left only one review:CitySearch – 71.2% Yahoo Local – 56.4% Yelp – 9.2%Treated their best “Elite” users generouslyThe most engaged Yelp users are elevated to “Elite” status, visible by a shiny Elite badge on their account profile. By 2006, a full 44% of reviews on the site were contributed by Yelp Elite.Dave Kim, a six-year Yelp Elite user with over 900 reviews, explains:“Yelp does a good job of finding ways to reward people, not through monetary means, but little perks … At regular Yelp Events, Elites often got first-chance to RSVP and even got in an hour before everyone else. There are specific events just for Yelp Elite that offer free food and drinks and swag.”17: Groove – reached out to the customers that “got away”CEO Alex Turnbull has written a very detailed analysis of Groove’s early customer acquisition tactics, along the theme of doing things that don’t scale. The tactic that stood out the most was scrapping – reaching out to customers who chose other competitors, and sincerely asking the reasons for their choice. From the exercise, Turnbull discovered and fixed several bugs, and convince customers to give Groove another chance.

[wechengdu1]

30 Interesting Facts About Wikipedia!

A couple of days back, I was thinking about some cool and amazing facts about Wikipedia. So, I thought to write a post on it here for you guys.

In this post, I’m going to list 30 interesting (maybe funny and unknown) facts about Wikipedia for you!

Fact#1: Name

Wikipedia includes the words “Wiki” which means “a shared website” and “pedia” which refers to a short form of the word “encyclopedia.”

Fact#2: Founders

Wikipedia was founded on 15th January 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.

Fact#3: Languages

Currently, there are 285 languages from all over the world that are registered on Wikipedia. The top 5 languages include English, German, French, Dutch and Italian.

Fact#4: Free, Open Source Website

Wikipedia is a completely free, open source website. This means that anyone can jump in and edit articles as they find suitable. There is no such thing as a ranking system for the kind of articles to be edited or anything else like that.

Fact#3: Theme Song

Did you know that Wikipedia also has an official theme song named “Hotel Wikipedia” which is the parody of the song “Hotel California” by The Eagles band?

Fact#4: Birthday Committee

Wikipedia also has a birthday committee that is established to wish happy birthday to Wikipedia users who register their birthday on their talk page or on the “Wikimedians by birthday” list. The intro page of the birthday committee provides numerous banners that you can use to wish a Wikipedian a happy birthday. The birthday committee has some set rules like “More than one person from the committee may send messages to the same person.”

Fact#5: List Of Deleted Articles With Weird Titles

If you’re looking for some fun, then you should surely see Wikipedia’s list of “deleted articles with freaky titles.” As the name tells it all, this list is actually a list of articles that people have written but were deleted afterwards because of their weird titles and names. Some examples of these weird titled articles are “Diarrhea of a genius” and “Guide to: Blowing Your Nose & Getting Dressed.”

Fact#6: Policy Of “No Angry Mastodons”

Wikipedia has long been in this tradition of offering annoying policies under somewhat stupid names like Jimbo’s prayer, No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman, and No curses. These all insane policies request users not to target the Wikipedia community with any malicious charm or curse. One of users’ favorites is the “No Angry Mastodons” policy, which involves posting articles when furious, and provides suggestions on how to deal with people who are stampeding.

Fact#7: Edits

Wikipedia has had above 1 billion edits from 17.6 million articles submitted by around 27 million users from around the world. The number of edits is increasing from time to time.

Fact#8: Most Edited Page

The top most edited page in Wikipedia belongs to former American president George W. Bush.

Fact#9: Competition

Also, there’s a competition for guessing about the last article in Wikipedia. If you’re feeling psychic, you can try to get your hands on to the contest for what the last article written in Wikipedia will be about. Up to now, suggestions include “Last digit of pi” and “How to divide by zero.”

Fact#10: Readership

The world famous website claims to have around 325 million readers which means 21 users to each article posted on the site.

Fact#11: Meaning Of The Word “Wiki”

The word “wiki” is derived from a Hawain word which means “quick.” But now, this word has its own definition of a “web application that allows anyone visiting a website to edit content on it.”

Fact#12: Hosted Servers

The website’s servers are hosted in Florida, so all the content on the site is subject to the laws of United States of America.

Fact#13: World Record

The English version of Wikipedia exceeded 2 million articles in September 2007, which made it the world’s largest encyclopedia ever compiled. This record was broken from the Yongle encyclopedia that held it for over 600 years.

Fact#14: Wikipedia Is A Hit Website On Google

You might have not known the fact that almost half of the website’s traffic comes from Google, but a lot of people go directly to the website to search their query.

Fact#15: Person Of The Year Award

The users of Wikipedia who edited the website were given the name of “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine in the year 2006.

Fact#16: Book Creator

Many people out there aren’t aware of Wikipedia book Creator, which is a tool that helps users organize and manage the website’s knowledge in the form of a book. In other words, this tool helps you create a book that contains Wikipedia articles of your choice. Users also have the option to order the printed copy of their book through PediaPress.

Fact#17: The Simple Wikipedia

Now, children and disabled people can also use Wikipedia by going to simple.wikipedia.org. The Simple Wikipedia employs comprehensible language for its readers. Also, the articles over there are not so detailed as compared to those on the usual Wikipedia site.

Fact#18: Reading The Entire English Wikipedia

It would take a total of 16 years and 9 months to read the whole English Wikipedia. If you start reading today at the speed of approximately 300 words per minute without taking a break, it would take you around 17 years to complete the whole English Wikipedia.

Fact#19: Contributors

You might not know that 87 percent of the website contributors are male. This fact came forth when the website itself surveyed different domains in 2010.

Fact#20: Most Popular Article

One of the most popular articles on Wikipedia is “Sex” which is written in every language except for Spanish and French.

Fact#21: Wikiversity

“Wikiversity” is one of the newest projects of Wikipedia. It is basically a website that is dedicated to mutual learning in which teachers would be able to create and revise materials to assist others to learn things. You won’t be getting any degree from the website but you can take or teach a particular course there. Wikiversity is run by the Wikimedia foundation.

Fact#22: Page Views

Every year, the website generates almost 684 million page views.

Fact#23: No Ads

Wikipedia contains no commercial advertisements like other websites.

Fact#24: Censorship

There is particularly no rule for censorship on Wikipedia, but there are certain guidelines for the articles submitted.

Fact#25: Bot From Wikipedia

The website has a ‘bot’ that recommends things for users to work on, depending upon their editing record. In other words, the bot views your editing history and suggests articles that you probably might work on next.

Fact#26: Sixth Most Popular Website In The World

Alexa.com has ranked Wikipedia to be the sixth most famous website in the whole world.

Fact#27: Active Editors

Richard Farmbrough is one of the most active editors on Wikipedia who has edited above 750,000 articles on the website.

Fact#28: Start

Wikipedia began as a side project of Nupedia which is a free online English encyclopedia project, with the aim to publish articles written by experts and licensed as free content.

Fact#29: Accuracy About Science

The British Journal of Nature found the website to be as accurate about science as Britannica. This study was done in 2005.

Fact#30:  Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia foundation was established in 2003 and the website came up with its logo of the jigsaw world.

Author Bio

Joseph Carey is a blogging enthusiast. He uses this platform to educate the readers about different subjects. He is an eminent researcher and renders his services for academic writing essays. Some of her favorite topics include online marketing, blogging, social media marketing and education.

[wechengduorg1]

30 Interesting Facts About Wikipedia!

A couple of days back, I was thinking about some cool and amazing facts about Wikipedia. So, I thought to write a post on it here for you guys.

In this post, I’m going to list 30 interesting (maybe funny and unknown) facts about Wikipedia for you!

Fact#1: Name

Wikipedia includes the words “Wiki” which means “a shared website” and “pedia” which refers to a short form of the word “encyclopedia.”

Fact#2: Founders

Wikipedia was founded on 15th January 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.

Fact#3: Languages

Currently, there are 285 languages from all over the world that are registered on Wikipedia. The top 5 languages include English, German, French, Dutch and Italian.

Fact#4: Free, Open Source Website

Wikipedia is a completely free, open source website. This means that anyone can jump in and edit articles as they find suitable. There is no such thing as a ranking system for the kind of articles to be edited or anything else like that.

Fact#3: Theme Song

Did you know that Wikipedia also has an official theme song named “Hotel Wikipedia” which is the parody of the song “Hotel California” by The Eagles band?

Fact#4: Birthday Committee

Wikipedia also has a birthday committee that is established to wish happy birthday to Wikipedia users who register their birthday on their talk page or on the “Wikimedians by birthday” list. The intro page of the birthday committee provides numerous banners that you can use to wish a Wikipedian a happy birthday. The birthday committee has some set rules like “More than one person from the committee may send messages to the same person.”

Fact#5: List Of Deleted Articles With Weird Titles

If you’re looking for some fun, then you should surely see Wikipedia’s list of “deleted articles with freaky titles.” As the name tells it all, this list is actually a list of articles that people have written but were deleted afterwards because of their weird titles and names. Some examples of these weird titled articles are “Diarrhea of a genius” and “Guide to: Blowing Your Nose & Getting Dressed.”

Fact#6: Policy Of “No Angry Mastodons”

Wikipedia has long been in this tradition of offering annoying policies under somewhat stupid names like Jimbo’s prayer, No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spiderman, and No curses. These all insane policies request users not to target the Wikipedia community with any malicious charm or curse. One of users’ favorites is the “No Angry Mastodons” policy, which involves posting articles when furious, and provides suggestions on how to deal with people who are stampeding.

Fact#7: Edits

Wikipedia has had above 1 billion edits from 17.6 million articles submitted by around 27 million users from around the world. The number of edits is increasing from time to time.

Fact#8: Most Edited Page

The top most edited page in Wikipedia belongs to former American president George W. Bush.

Fact#9: Competition

Also, there’s a competition for guessing about the last article in Wikipedia. If you’re feeling psychic, you can try to get your hands on to the contest for what the last article written in Wikipedia will be about. Up to now, suggestions include “Last digit of pi” and “How to divide by zero.”

Fact#10: Readership

The world famous website claims to have around 325 million readers which means 21 users to each article posted on the site.

Fact#11: Meaning Of The Word “Wiki”

The word “wiki” is derived from a Hawain word which means “quick.” But now, this word has its own definition of a “web application that allows anyone visiting a website to edit content on it.”

Fact#12: Hosted Servers

The website’s servers are hosted in Florida, so all the content on the site is subject to the laws of United States of America.

Fact#13: World Record

The English version of Wikipedia exceeded 2 million articles in September 2007, which made it the world’s largest encyclopedia ever compiled. This record was broken from the Yongle encyclopedia that held it for over 600 years.

Fact#14: Wikipedia Is A Hit Website On Google

You might have not known the fact that almost half of the website’s traffic comes from Google, but a lot of people go directly to the website to search their query.

Fact#15: Person Of The Year Award

The users of Wikipedia who edited the website were given the name of “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine in the year 2006.

Fact#16: Book Creator

Many people out there aren’t aware of Wikipedia book Creator, which is a tool that helps users organize and manage the website’s knowledge in the form of a book. In other words, this tool helps you create a book that contains Wikipedia articles of your choice. Users also have the option to order the printed copy of their book through PediaPress.

Fact#17: The Simple Wikipedia

Now, children and disabled people can also use Wikipedia by going to simple.wikipedia.org. The Simple Wikipedia employs comprehensible language for its readers. Also, the articles over there are not so detailed as compared to those on the usual Wikipedia site.

Fact#18: Reading The Entire English Wikipedia

It would take a total of 16 years and 9 months to read the whole English Wikipedia. If you start reading today at the speed of approximately 300 words per minute without taking a break, it would take you around 17 years to complete the whole English Wikipedia.

Fact#19: Contributors

You might not know that 87 percent of the website contributors are male. This fact came forth when the website itself surveyed different domains in 2010.

Fact#20: Most Popular Article

One of the most popular articles on Wikipedia is “Sex” which is written in every language except for Spanish and French.

Fact#21: Wikiversity

“Wikiversity” is one of the newest projects of Wikipedia. It is basically a website that is dedicated to mutual learning in which teachers would be able to create and revise materials to assist others to learn things. You won’t be getting any degree from the website but you can take or teach a particular course there. Wikiversity is run by the Wikimedia foundation.

Fact#22: Page Views

Every year, the website generates almost 684 million page views.

Fact#23: No Ads

Wikipedia contains no commercial advertisements like other websites.

Fact#24: Censorship

There is particularly no rule for censorship on Wikipedia, but there are certain guidelines for the articles submitted.

Fact#25: Bot From Wikipedia

The website has a ‘bot’ that recommends things for users to work on, depending upon their editing record. In other words, the bot views your editing history and suggests articles that you probably might work on next.

Fact#26: Sixth Most Popular Website In The World

Alexa.com has ranked Wikipedia to be the sixth most famous website in the whole world.

Fact#27: Active Editors

Richard Farmbrough is one of the most active editors on Wikipedia who has edited above 750,000 articles on the website.

Fact#28: Start

Wikipedia began as a side project of Nupedia which is a free online English encyclopedia project, with the aim to publish articles written by experts and licensed as free content.

Fact#29: Accuracy About Science

The British Journal of Nature found the website to be as accurate about science as Britannica. This study was done in 2005.

Fact#30:  Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia foundation was established in 2003 and the website came up with its logo of the jigsaw world.

Author Bio

Joseph Carey is a blogging enthusiast. He uses this platform to educate the readers about different subjects. He is an eminent researcher and renders his services for academic writing essays. Some of her favorite topics include online marketing, blogging, social media marketing and education.

[luxus4me]

Entrepreneur: Latest Articles http://j.mp/2lRRoyK

If you’re like most people in business today, there always seem to be a million things on your to-do list and you don’t know where to start.

You need to conduct research, streamline collaboration, increase communication, sell your wares, reach your fan base, log your time and keep track of your accounts, to mention just a few. How the heck will you do it all? Well, there’s an app for that.

In fact, there are quite a few. Here are the top 17 apps every entrepreneur should be downloading to make the most of each day.

1. Accompany

Touted as a virtual “chief of staff,” Accompany does all the research necessary to prep you for big meetings by emailing you a concise briefing beforehand. It provides you with all the pertinent information you will need to succeed in any situation. Accompany works by connecting to your Google or Microsoft email account, your mobile calendar and your Facebook and Twitter accounts. It examines your personal data and goes through biographies and other information online to create summaries of each of your contacts.

2. Pocket

This “save for later” app allows you to file away useful articles, interesting videos and any other content that you want to hang on to for future use. When you find something you want to view later, simply put it in your Pocket, and you’ll be able to access it from your phone, tablet or computer, even without internet access.

3. Slack

This team communication tool gathers group exchanges into one place, making information instantly available and searchable wherever you go. This cloud-based collaboration application began as an internal tool used by a now-defunct online game. Slack is currently the fastest-growing B2B application, used by over 4 million active users every day.

4. Motivation Daily & Positivity

If you are looking for a daily dose of motivation to keep you on track to achieve important goals and big dreams, this app is for you. It comes in a streamlined, simple format, which includes perfect quotes to keep you focused when you’re tempted to slack off. Whether you’re pursuing health and fitness goals, prepping for a major project at work or school, or just need some inspiration, this app will help get you there.

5. Buffer

As a powerful social media publishing tool, Buffer streamlines the process of reaching your fan base by making it easy to schedule content on social media. It helps increase your reach by ensuring you get the most out of each post. With one click, you can share content across multiple social networks and ensure that it’s posted at the optimal time so more followers will see your updates.

6. Salesforce1

Salesforce1 empowers you to connect directly with your customers and run your business from your phone. It channels all your customer information into a single, integrated platform, enabling you to build a client-centered business that includes marketing, sales, customer service and business analysis. This gives you a more complete understanding of your customers, allowing you to drive your business’s success and make smarter decisions from anywhere in real time.

7. Square

Square credit-card processing works for any size business, and is easy to do from anywhere. Square allows you to accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, all for one low rate. Once you sign up, they will send you a free magstripe reader (their newest reader even takes chip cards). Or you can use your iPad in a Square Stand for countertop sales. The Square Register app also includes other useful tools to help you manage every area of your business.

8. Toggl

Toggl is an insanely simple way of tracking and logging your time that eliminates the need for timesheets. This app allows you to track time from a browser, computer or smartphone so you never again lose a minute of billable time. You can organize your time by project or tag, and mark as billable. If you forget to turn it on, just enter the time later.

9. Trello

Trello is collaboration tool organizes your projects into boards, lists and cards so you can better prioritize work and life. At a single glance you can see what’s being worked on, who’s working on what and where in the process a project is. It makes project management--which can include work assignments, family chores or travel plans--easy and enjoyable.

10. MobileDay

This one-touch dialing app gets you into all your conference calls on time and unflustered. With MobileDay, there’s no more searching for misplaced conference call PINs or passcodes. The app auto-syncs with your iOS or Android calendar and plugs you into your calls with one click, so you can connect to that business call from anywhere.

11. Workflow

Workflow allows you to connect the best features of your applications, so you can combine multiple steps across a number of apps into a single tap. With Workflow you can create shortcuts, manage your media and share content. It has been lauded as the “Swiss Army knife” for completing complicated tasks, and basically feels like you’re designing your own app (but much easier).

12. Box

Box offers a simple, secure way to share files and collaborate with coworkers, customers and partners. It allows you to centralize your files, keep your team on track and simplify workflow, not to mention ditch email attachments. You can create, edit and review documents with others in real time from anywhere and on any device, and can view full documents without needing to download the file first.

13. Wunderlist

Wunderlist helps you tick off your personal and professional to-do list by getting your life in sync and making it easy to share your lists. A cloud-based task-management application, it makes sharing grocery lists, working collaboratively on projects or planning household activities and vacations easier. It syncs with your phone, tablet and computer so you can access your lists from anywhere.

14. CloudMagic

If your inbox fills up quicker than a sinking ship takes on water, you need CloudMagic. This email management application is known for its searching capabilities, cross-platform capabilities and user interface. It can scour all of the email you’ve ever received to locate exactly what you’re looking for. It supports multiple accounts, and even includes a feature called Cards, which connects services like Evernote, Pocket, Trello, Salesforce and Microsoft OneNote. This makes it easier for users to get the information they are looking for without leaving their email.

15. Wave

Wave helps you create and send professional invoices, estimates and receipts in seconds. It keeps your business organized and running smoothly by tracking income and expenses effortlessly, with receipt-scanning tools and bank connections. It includes a suite of online small-business software products, including direct bank-data imports, invoicing and expense tracking, customizable charts of accounts and journal transactions.

16. HelloSign

HelloSign is the easiest and simplest way to handle contracts or other agreements on the fly, because it lets you view and sign without visiting the office. This app also eliminates the burden of needing to print, sign and scan a document to be sent back. It allows you to just use your fingertip to sign any PDF file and forward it to the necessary party.

17. 1Password

Do away with all those sticky notes with your passwords scrawled on them. 1Password allows you to collect all those codes in one safe place online. This app keeps all your passwords and important information protected behind your Master Password. It has extensions or plug-ins for all the major browsers, and can securely store other things, like credit cards, bank accounts and licenses. You can save all the entries from a webpage form, so you can remember answers to security questions or other information.

Deep Patel

 Deep Patel is a young writer and entrepreneur. He is the author of A Paperboy's Fable: The 11 Principles of Success. In the book, he interviewed 15 industry luminaries including professors, entrepreneurs, CEO’s and Gene...

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http://j.mp/2lROTfS via Entrepreneur: Latest Articles URL : http://j.mp/1PSmwRr

[topicprinter]

It’s hard to imagine successful companies struggling to acquire customers. We see the successes with their hordes of fans and we think, “Wow, they’re so lucky. They have it good.”Yet every single behemoth in existence once had to court its first customer.In this post, I feature some of their stories. You’ll find in them a generous mix of grunt work, guts, and genius.1 & 2: Tinder and Alibaba – physically traveled to their first usersTinder went from 5,000 to 15,000 users by getting sorority girls to signup on the spotCrucial to Tinder’s success was then-CMO Whitney Wolfe’s ideas for building an early user-base. She planned a tour that would take her to prominent college campuses around the country.She would go to chapters of her sorority, do her presentation, and have all the girls at the meetings install the app.Then she’d go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they’d open the app and see all these cute girls they knew.Tinder had fewer than 5,000 users before Wolfe made her trip. When she returned, there were some 15,000.”Alibaba “brute-forced” its success by visiting factories one by oneBack in the early ’00s, Jack Ma sent out a large sales force to fan out across the country, visiting factories one by one to show them how they could use Alibaba and Taobao to sell stuff online.Back then, a large number of factories in China weren’t used to working with other people online, and sometimes didn’t even have computers or Internet.It was hard work, but companies quickly flocked to Alibaba and its holdings. This allowed them to get an edge over eBay.3 & 4: Quora and Reddit – seeded their sites with their own contentFounders solved the chicken-and-egg problem by contributing the bulk of early content themselvesQuora and Reddit are two of the largest online forums in existence today, but they were once ghost towns with the chicken-and-egg problem of “empty site = no users / no users = empty site”.Quora co-founders D’Angelo, Cheever and Cox wrote most of the earliest questions and answers themselves. The first employees and beta testers then continued this trend, until the platform generated enough activity for them to stop.Reddit did the same, but it also created fake profiles. According co-founder Steve Huffman, it took several months before the front page would fill up organically without their submissions.5 & 6: Threadless and Dropbox – the biggest believers in word-of-mouthDropbox launched shared folders and a massive referral campaignThe Dropbox empire was built on referrals.With its massive word of mouth campaign, Dropbox grew its user base by 40 times – from 100,000 to 4,000,000.In April 2010 alone, Dropbox users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites.But on top of that, Dropbox itself was designed to encourage sharing. They introduced shared folders, a nifty feature that encouraged users to invite others to share access to folders.Threadless let its community run their own initiativesOne of Threadless’ crucial early moves was to start a massive word-of-mouth campaign.From the get-go, Threadless supported community initiated “rogue contests”(spontaneous, themed tee shirt contests).In turn, its community is insanely creative, and also fiercely loyal brand advocates.7: Black Milk: Fashion + Fandoms = Great Success!The clothing store achieved its impressive growth by milking fandom for its worth. It didn’t stop at making pop culture-inspired apparel – it established serious legitimacy by getting official license for all their geeky wear.It’s also made its Facebook page a fandom watering hole. Over there, dedicated “Sharkies” can connect with like-minded fans.There’s even a Black Milk-approved group where girls can swap, buy, and sell their purchases with each other.8: OKCupid – legendary content on OKTrends averaged 4,222 tweets per postThe content on OKTrends was so mindblowingly insightful that people actually despaired when it was discontinued. Who wouldn’t want to read and share this post titled “10 Charts About Sex“? (Do it, it’s worth all your attention.)From August 2010 to April 2011, OkTrends posts averaged a staggering 32,500 Facebook likes and 4,222 tweets.Co-founder Rudder says, “Honestly I think the blog–one way or another–has driven a lot of our growth. Certainly, it has driven brand awareness. It’s been the only thing we’ve ever done, other than making a great dating site, that has gotten us out there into the world.”9: Etsy – harvested interest by reaching out to target communities before launchingEtsy founders used to run a web design shop and were working on getcrafty.com for one of their projects, during which they discovered the need for a marketplace for handmade crafts.So, while they built Etsy, they reached out to the craft community on getcrafty.com and Craftster.org, which had an even larger user base.By the time they launched, they already had a lot of interest generated among the two platforms, and that helped get the required inventory and start off transactions on Etsy.10: Buffer – got to 100k users primarily through frequent guest bloggingCo-founder Leo Wildrich wrote 150 guest posts in the first 9 months of running Buffer, and he swears by it. That’s 16-17 posts per month, or more than 1 every two days!“Relationships are actually the most valuable things that you gain from guest posting. At the end of the day, if you do a lot of guest posting you simply make a lot of friends. I’ve got great friends over at Treehouse, Social Media Examiner, SocialMouths, and other great sites. You provide someone with free content, that’s a great favor if you think about it, so it’s a great opportunity to make friends with these awesome people.”11: ASOS – the ecommerce store mailed its own print magazine to 400,000 customersBack in 2006, CEO Nick Robertson insisted that the glossy print catalog was still key to making the brand an essential part of customers’ lives. Today, besides maintaining a content-rich site, ASOS also has a magazine with a circulation of 456,000 – the 18th largest in the UK, immediately behind Glamour and Closer, and just a handful of places behind New.Unconditional, free shipping was irresistable.One of the things that kept customers flocking to ASOS was its incredible shipping and returns policy – even in its early days, ASOS was shipping for free and without minimum purchase. That policy has only just recently changed, but ASOS already has a loyal fanbase worldwide.12 & 13: Twitter and Foursquare – exploded their userbases at SXSW with guerrilla marketingSXSW 2007 – Twitter lived streamed the conference on huge plasma screensCo-founder Evan Williams decided to visualize the service on 60 inch plasma screens in the hallways, because “We knew hallways were where the action was”. Twitter created an event-specific feature that allowed attendees to follow a handful of “ambassadors”.According to Newsweek’s Steven Levy, “Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it.” During the event, Twitter usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.Foursquare – grew average check-ins from 250k to 350k with just chalk and rubber ballsFoursquare didn’t have a booth like most other brands at the 2010 SXSW convention. Neither did it have Twitter’s marketing budget (Twitter spent $11k on its SXSW campaign). Instead, it set up an actual game of “four square” in front of the convention hall, which involved just chalk and two rubber balls.The game drew thousands of walk-up participants [1], Said CEO Dennis Crowley, “We played all day long, and there was always a waiting line. We were handing out tee shirts, buttons, and stickers. Anytime someone didn’t know what Foursquare was, we helped them find it on their phone. We helped get them up and running and using it.”14: Taskrabbit – focused on delighting moms in BostonTaskrabbit first cornered the market with one mothers’ group in BostonTaskrabbit is similar to Uber in its hyperlocal focus. Leah Busque talked about Taskrabbit’s early traction in response to a question “How did you acquire your first 10,000 users?”“It can be tempting to just go really broad, really wide scale, really fast. But for us, we just focused on a customer segment. We focused on this mothers’ group in Boston. And once we had cornered that market with that moms’ group, those moms were talking to other moms on Beacon Hill and Backbay and Cambridge and it just spread from there.”15: Airbnb – shuttled from coast to coast to talk to their first usersFounders went the extra mile for their earliest usersFounders Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia acted on Paul Graham’s advice in their Y Combinator days and “did things that didn’t scale”. Specifically, they went to NYC to acquire their earliest users, then followed up with them extensively.“When New York took off, we flew back every weekend. We went door to door with cameras taking pictures of all these apartments to put them online. I lived in their living rooms. And home by home, block by block, communities started growing. And people would visit New York and bring the idea back with them to their city.” – Brian Chesky, for The Atlantic“Because of the Democratic National Conventions, some people were using the site in New York and listing places. We would reach out to the very few people we had and get to know them, figure out what products they needed and what we could offer them. We tried to build loyalty knowing that if we did that, they would tell their friends. We’d host parties and meetups and all sorts of different things.Through that process, they’d get very excited and tell their friends about Airbnb. It was mostly about generating as much buzz and excitement to get them to tell their friends about us.” – Chesky, Startups Open-sourcedAirbnb believed in generating word-of-mouth, which would attract the press, which would generate more word-of-mouth“We never dressed up in gorilla suits but we passed out fliers in coffee shops, train stations—we did all sorts of things. I don’t know what tactics worked more than others, but I think press was always the number one tactic for us. The press would spark another group of users, then we’d go visit those people and talk to them and get them excited. It was a pattern that repeated itself.” – Chesky, Startups Open-sourced16: Yelp – grew a loyal user base by rewarding quality reviewsGave “Kudos” for good behaviorYelp wanted to create a tight community of consistent reviewers and high quality reviews. It rightly guessed that people were more likely to write in-depth, well crafted reviews when their names appeared alongside them. So it offered special recognition to users who were first to review a business, and let other users give kudos for reviews that are useful, funny, or cool.And the numbers in 2006 show that most Yelp reviewers got hooked on the site:Users who contributed 6 or more reviews:CitySearch – 4.8% Yahoo Local – 11.1% Yelp – 65.8% Users who left only one review:CitySearch – 71.2% Yahoo Local – 56.4% Yelp – 9.2%Treated their best “Elite” users generouslyThe most engaged Yelp users are elevated to “Elite” status, visible by a shiny Elite badge on their account profile. By 2006, a full 44% of reviews on the site were contributed by Yelp Elite.Dave Kim, a six-year Yelp Elite user with over 900 reviews, explains:“Yelp does a good job of finding ways to reward people, not through monetary means, but little perks … At regular Yelp Events, Elites often got first-chance to RSVP and even got in an hour before everyone else. There are specific events just for Yelp Elite that offer free food and drinks and swag.”17: Groove – reached out to the customers that “got away”CEO Alex Turnbull has written a very detailed analysis of Groove’s early customer acquisition tactics, along the theme of doing things that don’t scale. The tactic that stood out the most was scrapping – reaching out to customers who chose other competitors, and sincerely asking the reasons for their choice. From the exercise, Turnbull discovered and fixed several bugs, and convince customers to give Groove another chance.

[topicprinter]

It’s hard to imagine successful companies struggling to acquire customers. We see the successes with their hordes of fans and we think, “Wow, they’re so lucky. They have it good.”Yet every single behemoth in existence once had to court its first customer.In this post, I feature some of their stories. You’ll find in them a generous mix of grunt work, guts, and genius.1 & 2: Tinder and Alibaba – physically traveled to their first usersTinder went from 5,000 to 15,000 users by getting sorority girls to signup on the spotCrucial to Tinder’s success was then-CMO Whitney Wolfe’s ideas for building an early user-base. She planned a tour that would take her to prominent college campuses around the country.She would go to chapters of her sorority, do her presentation, and have all the girls at the meetings install the app.Then she’d go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they’d open the app and see all these cute girls they knew.Tinder had fewer than 5,000 users before Wolfe made her trip. When she returned, there were some 15,000.”Alibaba “brute-forced” its success by visiting factories one by oneBack in the early ’00s, Jack Ma sent out a large sales force to fan out across the country, visiting factories one by one to show them how they could use Alibaba and Taobao to sell stuff online.Back then, a large number of factories in China weren’t used to working with other people online, and sometimes didn’t even have computers or Internet.It was hard work, but companies quickly flocked to Alibaba and its holdings. This allowed them to get an edge over eBay.3 & 4: Quora and Reddit – seeded their sites with their own contentFounders solved the chicken-and-egg problem by contributing the bulk of early content themselvesQuora and Reddit are two of the largest online forums in existence today, but they were once ghost towns with the chicken-and-egg problem of “empty site = no users / no users = empty site”.Quora co-founders D’Angelo, Cheever and Cox wrote most of the earliest questions and answers themselves. The first employees and beta testers then continued this trend, until the platform generated enough activity for them to stop.Reddit did the same, but it also created fake profiles. According co-founder Steve Huffman, it took several months before the front page would fill up organically without their submissions.5 & 6: Threadless and Dropbox – the biggest believers in word-of-mouthDropbox launched shared folders and a massive referral campaignThe Dropbox empire was built on referrals.With its massive word of mouth campaign, Dropbox grew its user base by 40 times – from 100,000 to 4,000,000.In April 2010 alone, Dropbox users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites.But on top of that, Dropbox itself was designed to encourage sharing. They introduced shared folders, a nifty feature that encouraged users to invite others to share access to folders.Threadless let its community run their own initiativesOne of Threadless’ crucial early moves was to start a massive word-of-mouth campaign.From the get-go, Threadless supported community initiated “rogue contests”(spontaneous, themed tee shirt contests).In turn, its community is insanely creative, and also fiercely loyal brand advocates.7: Black Milk: Fashion + Fandoms = Great Success!The clothing store achieved its impressive growth by milking fandom for its worth. It didn’t stop at making pop culture-inspired apparel – it established serious legitimacy by getting official license for all their geeky wear.It’s also made its Facebook page a fandom watering hole. Over there, dedicated “Sharkies” can connect with like-minded fans.There’s even a Black Milk-approved group where girls can swap, buy, and sell their purchases with each other.8: OKCupid – legendary content on OKTrends averaged 4,222 tweets per postThe content on OKTrends was so mindblowingly insightful that people actually despaired when it was discontinued. Who wouldn’t want to read and share this post titled “10 Charts About Sex“? (Do it, it’s worth all your attention.)From August 2010 to April 2011, OkTrends posts averaged a staggering 32,500 Facebook likes and 4,222 tweets.Co-founder Rudder says, “Honestly I think the blog–one way or another–has driven a lot of our growth. Certainly, it has driven brand awareness. It’s been the only thing we’ve ever done, other than making a great dating site, that has gotten us out there into the world.”9: Etsy – harvested interest by reaching out to target communities before launchingEtsy founders used to run a web design shop and were working on getcrafty.com for one of their projects, during which they discovered the need for a marketplace for handmade crafts.So, while they built Etsy, they reached out to the craft community on getcrafty.com and Craftster.org, which had an even larger user base.By the time they launched, they already had a lot of interest generated among the two platforms, and that helped get the required inventory and start off transactions on Etsy.10: Buffer – got to 100k users primarily through frequent guest bloggingCo-founder Leo Wildrich wrote 150 guest posts in the first 9 months of running Buffer, and he swears by it. That’s 16-17 posts per month, or more than 1 every two days!“Relationships are actually the most valuable things that you gain from guest posting. At the end of the day, if you do a lot of guest posting you simply make a lot of friends. I’ve got great friends over at Treehouse, Social Media Examiner, SocialMouths, and other great sites. You provide someone with free content, that’s a great favor if you think about it, so it’s a great opportunity to make friends with these awesome people.”11: ASOS – the ecommerce store mailed its own print magazine to 400,000 customersBack in 2006, CEO Nick Robertson insisted that the glossy print catalog was still key to making the brand an essential part of customers’ lives. Today, besides maintaining a content-rich site, ASOS also has a magazine with a circulation of 456,000 – the 18th largest in the UK, immediately behind Glamour and Closer, and just a handful of places behind New.Unconditional, free shipping was irresistable.One of the things that kept customers flocking to ASOS was its incredible shipping and returns policy – even in its early days, ASOS was shipping for free and without minimum purchase. That policy has only just recently changed, but ASOS already has a loyal fanbase worldwide.12 & 13: Twitter and Foursquare – exploded their userbases at SXSW with guerrilla marketingSXSW 2007 – Twitter lived streamed the conference on huge plasma screensCo-founder Evan Williams decided to visualize the service on 60 inch plasma screens in the hallways, because “We knew hallways were where the action was”. Twitter created an event-specific feature that allowed attendees to follow a handful of “ambassadors”.According to Newsweek’s Steven Levy, “Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it.” During the event, Twitter usage went from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.Foursquare – grew average check-ins from 250k to 350k with just chalk and rubber ballsFoursquare didn’t have a booth like most other brands at the 2010 SXSW convention. Neither did it have Twitter’s marketing budget (Twitter spent $11k on its SXSW campaign). Instead, it set up an actual game of “four square” in front of the convention hall, which involved just chalk and two rubber balls.The game drew thousands of walk-up participants [1], Said CEO Dennis Crowley, “We played all day long, and there was always a waiting line. We were handing out tee shirts, buttons, and stickers. Anytime someone didn’t know what Foursquare was, we helped them find it on their phone. We helped get them up and running and using it.”14: Taskrabbit – focused on delighting moms in BostonTaskrabbit first cornered the market with one mothers’ group in BostonTaskrabbit is similar to Uber in its hyperlocal focus. Leah Busque talked about Taskrabbit’s early traction in response to a question “How did you acquire your first 10,000 users?”“It can be tempting to just go really broad, really wide scale, really fast. But for us, we just focused on a customer segment. We focused on this mothers’ group in Boston. And once we had cornered that market with that moms’ group, those moms were talking to other moms on Beacon Hill and Backbay and Cambridge and it just spread from there.”15: Airbnb – shuttled from coast to coast to talk to their first usersFounders went the extra mile for their earliest usersFounders Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia acted on Paul Graham’s advice in their Y Combinator days and “did things that didn’t scale”. Specifically, they went to NYC to acquire their earliest users, then followed up with them extensively.“When New York took off, we flew back every weekend. We went door to door with cameras taking pictures of all these apartments to put them online. I lived in their living rooms. And home by home, block by block, communities started growing. And people would visit New York and bring the idea back with them to their city.” – Brian Chesky, for The Atlantic“Because of the Democratic National Conventions, some people were using the site in New York and listing places. We would reach out to the very few people we had and get to know them, figure out what products they needed and what we could offer them. We tried to build loyalty knowing that if we did that, they would tell their friends. We’d host parties and meetups and all sorts of different things.Through that process, they’d get very excited and tell their friends about Airbnb. It was mostly about generating as much buzz and excitement to get them to tell their friends about us.” – Chesky, Startups Open-sourcedAirbnb believed in generating word-of-mouth, which would attract the press, which would generate more word-of-mouth“We never dressed up in gorilla suits but we passed out fliers in coffee shops, train stations—we did all sorts of things. I don’t know what tactics worked more than others, but I think press was always the number one tactic for us. The press would spark another group of users, then we’d go visit those people and talk to them and get them excited. It was a pattern that repeated itself.” – Chesky, Startups Open-sourced16: Yelp – grew a loyal user base by rewarding quality reviewsGave “Kudos” for good behaviorYelp wanted to create a tight community of consistent reviewers and high quality reviews. It rightly guessed that people were more likely to write in-depth, well crafted reviews when their names appeared alongside them. So it offered special recognition to users who were first to review a business, and let other users give kudos for reviews that are useful, funny, or cool.And the numbers in 2006 show that most Yelp reviewers got hooked on the site:Users who contributed 6 or more reviews:CitySearch – 4.8% Yahoo Local – 11.1% Yelp – 65.8% Users who left only one review:CitySearch – 71.2% Yahoo Local – 56.4% Yelp – 9.2%Treated their best “Elite” users generouslyThe most engaged Yelp users are elevated to “Elite” status, visible by a shiny Elite badge on their account profile. By 2006, a full 44% of reviews on the site were contributed by Yelp Elite.Dave Kim, a six-year Yelp Elite user with over 900 reviews, explains:“Yelp does a good job of finding ways to reward people, not through monetary means, but little perks … At regular Yelp Events, Elites often got first-chance to RSVP and even got in an hour before everyone else. There are specific events just for Yelp Elite that offer free food and drinks and swag.”17: Groove – reached out to the customers that “got away”CEO Alex Turnbull has written a very detailed analysis of Groove’s early customer acquisition tactics, along the theme of doing things that don’t scale. The tactic that stood out the most was scrapping – reaching out to customers who chose other competitors, and sincerely asking the reasons for their choice. From the exercise, Turnbull discovered and fixed several bugs, and convince customers to give Groove another chance.