twitAARRR
People are talking about a report that Twitter has a low proportion of “active” users. I saw a similar debate rage a few years ago around the definition of users of Second Life.
Amusingly (and presumptuously), today’s report claims to define “True Twitter users” as active. They say that a True Twitter User has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and has tweeted at least 10 times.
Why should we accept this definition? Analyses like this often come from a position of functional ignorance. I believe that only the company can have a “Truly” meaningful definition of “active” users, and there are often good reasons that the company shouldn’t waste time debating this definition with external observers.
This is especially true when a company has an evolving revenue model. In those cases, “active” is only meaningful in the context of a business model cycle that some people call “Startup Metrics For Pirates” because of the acronym AARRR: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. ”Active” is the second “A” here, and what matters in the definition is that customer acquisition efforts lead to active users, who participate in activity that they want to repeat and tell their friends about, which ultimately results in the company getting paid.
So if Twitter had zero customer acquisition costs, and tweeting was both addictive and viral (obviously, none of these things are strictly true), then the only definition of “active” that would matter is “user who tweets once.” Or, if Twitter charged only users with 100K followers, and only users who had 100 followers in the first month ever get to 100K followers in their lifetime (again, not true), then the active user definition might be “user with 100 followers in first month.” My dumb revenue models here are not the point; the point is that “active” only has meaning in context, and only the company understands that context, especially in a pre-revenue company.
Twitter, rather famously, has not publicly settled on its revenue model. Undoubtedly they have dozens of ideas, and so they have many dozens of potential definitions of “active” – and they’re not obliged to share any of those ideas with you or me. They don’t need to waste time with ignorant and disinterested people (myself included): it’s no use picking over these definitions with people who are not deeply invested in the business (as employee or investor), and who therefore lack the information and commitment required to contribute productively to the discussion.
chinese menu of startup blogs
Last summer I mentioned some of the best startup blogs for entrepreneurs. Since then, there’s been a notable proliferation of great startup blogging, so I wanted to note my current approach to keeping up with all the useful content.
I call this the Chinese Menu approach (“Pick one from Column A, one from Column B . . .”): Group blogs together by thematic category, and then read only one blog in each category. Every once in a while, I’ll change up the one that I pick in each category, so I don’t get sick of the same meal time after time.
| Column A: General Startup News | Column B: Venture Capital |
| Column C: Startup Advisors | Column D: Coaches |
| Column E: Founders (currently starting new business) | |
I add and drop blogs from categories all the time, and some blogs could be in multiple categories. But the key is to just read one in each category. This approach works well for me. Switching up the meal selection once in a while helps keep me open to different perspectives. I never miss anything truly essential, as great posts tend to be cross-linked extensively, or come to me by other means. Incidentally, the same approach works ok for Twitter (though it’s not ideal).
mistakes were made
Compare and contrast -
In the startup world, failure is a badge of honor. An honest postmortem of mistakes made along the way is greatly appreciated by the community. For example:
- Eventvue
- Lookery
- Untitled Partners
- neotis wissensmanagement GmbH
- GameClay
- BricaBox
- MyCarpoolStation
- [unfunded idea]
The comments on each of those posts are overwhelmingly sympathetic, admiring and supportive. Celebrating failure in context is a distinguishing aspect of our business culture versus many other countries.
In contrast, when the President of the US admits mistakes, the national and international coverage seems to imply that the admission itself its newsworthy and perhaps unwise. Comments are largely vitriolic and incoherent.
Now, I think that failure can be overrated as an indicator of future success. But I firmly believe that the openness to failure in business is one of the things that makes this country truly great. It’s ironic and sad that this cultural gem does not extend into our political arena.
the few honest people
p. 64:
Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
There are so many reasons why Nick’s ’suspicion’ here is probably false, even though it is an assertion about himself. He’s an unreliable narrator: self-admittedly distracted, occasionally drunk, absorbed in his own career and love life and ego. His statement is boastful no matter how mild the language, and immodest claims of high character are usually false.
But of all the reasons to doubt Nick’s self-assessment, I’ll highlight this one: He’s only a few days shy of his 30th birthday. That’s too small a percentage of an expected lifespan to judge one’s own possession of a cardinal virtue. Think about the changes that people make in the years after 30: wild partiers become sedate homemakers, stable careerists become out-of-control addicts, atheists find a higher power while the devout renounce their gods.
We can’t know yet whether Nick deserves to stand with the few honest people in the world. We don’t have any reason to believe that he’s ever been tested, and we have every reason to believe that the final judgment of his character will take many more years to make.
Finally (and pedantically), honesty isn’t even one of the cardinal virtues . . . which I suppose should have been the first thing to tip us off to Nick’s (self-)deception.
know thyself
I am fascinated by a concept I recently came across in Eating The Dinosaur. Author Chuck Klosterman and documentary filmmaker Errol Morris discuss whether people have “privileged access” to their own minds.
Privileged access is a weighty philosophical matter that is popularly stated as a question of whether a person has special access to his or her own thoughts that other people do not have. An intuitive answer is, “Of course I know my own thoughts better than anyone else does!” But this isn’t simply a question of what you are thinking at any given moment; it’s about whether what you think about yourself is more accurate than what any other people think about you.
Here’s a thought experiment: Do you know what you would do if you found a paper bag containing $10,000? What amounts would lead to a different decision, and why?
I think I would keep it. I would rationalize this action (which is probably illegal) by noting that there is almost never a legitimate reason to carry around that much in cash in a paper bag – this is almost certainly drug dealer money, and why should I give drug dealers a chance to recover it?
I would definitely keep, say, five dollars – maybe I would give it to a panhandler, maybe I would buy a sandwich, but I wouldn’t leave it on the ground. Unless someone nearby might have dropped it, I wouldn’t consider trying to find the owner, or turning the money in to the police – no one will ever come to claim $5. In contrast, if I found $100,000, I would definitely turn it in. When that much money gets lost, someone will look for it hard enough to make me uncomfortable – I don’t want to end up in jail, or worse, facing the guys who stole this money before I did (these guys would give up on $10K, but they would seek $100K with violent diligence). Even more complicated, I think that I would turn in $5000. There are plenty of legitimate reasons that a law-abiding person could be carrying that amount around, and I would want that person to have every opportunity to recover that money.
So in short, I think I would make a risk and fairness assessment, and act with a mixture of pragmatism and greed. (Don’t get me wrong – none of this is what I want to do. I want to believe that I would ignore any amount too small to turn in, and turn in any amount too large to ignore. But I’m not so self-deluded to think that I always live up to my ideal self-image.)
This thought experiment has one more part: If you polled a dozen people who know you best on the same questions, what would they say you would do? Who is likelier to be right, them or you?
I think the majority of this group would say I would turn in the $10K. In fact, I would guess that a plurality of people would say I would keep or ignore any amount under $100 and turn in any amount over $1000 – their assessment would be closer to my own ideal self, which I feel quite certain is not accurate. Their reasons for my choices would vary broadly, much more broadly than the pragmatic greed I expressed, and would include reasons that I would not expect.
Is this group likelier to be right about me than I am myself? I can’t answer that with an intuitive “I know my thoughts – I know myself – better than anyone else.” There have been too many times when I have been surprised to discover that someone was a better predictor of my actions than I was.
Now, I don’t think that I have particularly poor self-knowledge. In fact, as this post perhaps deplorably illustrates, I can examine my own navel to exacting excess. But where does that leave me if the fact that I know myself particularly well only means that I am especially aware that I don’t know myself any better than other people do? Makes my head hurt.
it takes two
p. 63:
‘It takes two to make an accident.’
Here is the page where we really get to know Jordan Baker, the other woman at the center of the novel. Daisy is the one who has become legend, the unforgettable golden girl for whom all was dreamt and all was lost. But I always liked Jordan better, not least because she is revealed here to be an incurable liar.
When Nick scolds her for being a careless driver, she first lies that she is careful, then lightly insists that she doesn’t have to be careful since other people are. Nick points out that she’ll be in trouble if she meets someone as careless as herself, and she deftly turns the conversation to their relationship, declaring her affection for solid, careful Nick.
Nick knows this lovely girl is a liar, but ‘Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply – I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.’ Is a thing truly forgotten if it’s remembered well enough to write down later? Jordan’s not the only one with a loose concept of the truth. It takes two.
the way we were
“The Streisand Effect” refers to an attempt to censor a piece of information that backfires because it brings more attention to the information than would have occurred without the attempted censorship.
At the risk of Streisanding the hell out a minor comment, I’ll talk about something I’d rather censor. Noting the rather dated news of my departure from my prior company, an anonymous commenter to an anonymous blog post recently said:
Thank goodness they finally got rid of this guy. He was the worst hire the company ever made.
Here’s what I have to say about that: I like to think it could very well be true.
I like the idea that there are some people who took a good hard look at the history and said, ‘Yep, this guy was terrible, he almost destroyed the place, good bye and good riddance!’ Because that would mean that I was in a position to make some important decisions, and that I made decisions at the risk of being unpopular – that I did much more with the opportunity than just quietly collect a paycheck.
Now, please don’t misunderstand this: I’m not saying that the critics are wrong, that they don’t understand, that I was both righteous and right. Even my own review of my Linden tenure welcomes ambiguous judgment. Obviously, I think and I hope that I did good things, but I could certainly be wrong, I could certainly be delusional.
But the one thing I don’t want to be is simply in the middle. I don’t want anyone’s assessment to be, ‘Well, he was neither among the worst nor among the best, he was just there and he didn’t do a damn thing.’ To me, that’s a lot worse than being the worst.
So, if you had any opportunity to think about my work, and you thought I was the worst, then I thank you. Let me give you my special gift in return:
- your statements are posted exclusively by you on a blog open to anyone with Internet access; and
- you post with your real name; and
- the blog accepts comments from anyone; and
- the post in question prominently links back to this blog post.
Simple enough, yes? Forget Streisand, I call this the Safety Dance.
And you can act real rude and totally removed
And I can act like an imbecile
most affectations
p. 62:
most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning
Here’s another casually sharp insight into human nature. From time to time, everyone pretends to be something they’re not. And sometimes this pretense is just a costume, worn as if for a holiday party, to be discarded and forgotten after the festivities of the moment expire. But sometimes the pretense is aspiration in disguise; the costume turns out to be not a drapery over skin, but a layer emerging from underneath.
privacy matters
What is going on with Facebook’s constant gyrations about privacy policy? Does anyone really care?
A little while ago I suggested that online privacy concerns are best addressed by free market solutions, not governmental regulation. I’ve discussed the topic with quite a few entrepreneurs, investors and professional marketers, and the overwhelming view in that group is that regular consumers just don’t care about online privacy. ”They” say:
- privacy is too complicated a topic for consumers to understand
- no one reads privacy policies
- consumers can be distracted from privacy concerns with the offer of just about any shiny object
Much of that might be true – but I also took the time to talk to a bunch of “regular” consumers. And these things are definitely true:
- consumers know that their privacy is being compromised by many online services
- consumers do not like being taken for granted
- consumers will avoid services that abuse their information, and will seek services that use their information properly
These two sets of “truths” are not mutually inconsistent. To me, they add up to: Online services can gain a competitive advantage by giving consumers the most sensible default choices along with the right advanced options for privacy – make it simple, but make it right. I think Facebook believes this, and that’s why they keep tinkering with their policies. They understand that a lot of their initial attraction was a result of making different privacy assumptions than more open services like FriendFeed and Twitter. They know that even if no one ever reads their privacy policy, if they make the wrong choices about privacy, they will lose users. As they saturate their available audience, they have to figure out how to strike the right balance among their different demographic bases, all the while competing with the advantages that more open services have.
These are extremely nuanced choices, but getting them right makes the barrier to competitive threat all the more defensible. And these are product choices; this is something that many I’ve talked to misunderstand: people think that this privacy stuff is just legal mumbo jumbo or regulatory mishmash. That’s plain wrong – laws and regulations are just the cart behind the horse. In a social product where community is paramount, policy choices are product choices.
