Random Musings

* Susan Choe, Outspark
* Lee Crawford, Twofish
* Christopher Donahue, Live Gamer
* Karl Mehta, Playspan
* Moderator: Susan Wu, Ohai

Great audience question - to what extent is it good or bad to seed the economy by giving away free credits or points to get trading and volume moving?

susan choe - do not give anything away for free. period. that will train your community to expect free credits for free.
susan wu - it is better to teach members to do things for credits - like update email, give real name, etc, and then give them credits for that action. this creates a good expectation of reward for engaging in a particular transaction.
dan - reward time value - when ppl spend a lot of time on the site, reward loyalty.  some sites have two forms of currency which can buy two kinds of different kinds goods.  this helps alleviate the gap between the haves and the have-nots. allows members who are strapped for cash but loyal to participate.

at the virtual goods summit today - looks like its going to be an interesting conference - good crowd of attendees. also, i am impressed with the number of women at this conference - way higher than the norm at tech conferences.  wonder why? are women in tech all in virtual worlds?

first panel up today: Branded and User-Generated Virtual Goods

* Brian Balfour, Viximo
* Lee Clancy, IMVU
* Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain
* Sean Ryan, Meez
* Moderator: Margaret Wallace, Rebel Monkey

funniest thing to come out of this panel was a comment by sean ryan of meez.  apparently, the women in meez wanted their avatars to look more like they do in real life.  however, the default body type was thin. they received alot of feedback for more fuller figures and changed the options to included more plus sizes.  they still get comments that the plus size isn’t plus enough.  but for men, these issues do not really arise - the most common body type for men is “Buff”.   hilarious

interesting financial fact: imvu is an english only, US based product, but about 40% of their revenue is international.  perhaps the era of focusing only on US visitors is over?

overall sense of the panel is that branded goods are not in high demand as people think. users do not really want the premium branded items yet. and if you are creating a promotional item, it should be free.

Yesterday, we welcomed Sue So as Of Counsel to our law firm, Fortis General Counsel. Sue was previously Senior Legal Director at Yahoo!, Inc. and specializes in IP transactions.  I am very excited to have Sue join our team - she really knows her stuff and is a great asset to the team.  You can read more about her here.

Welcome Sue!

Also, on a related side note, I am going to try to start writing some posts about things start-ups should be aware of when working with law firms (how to pick the right attorney, how to control costs, what an attorney can do for you and what they cannot). So keep an eye out for that.