Sociopoly: A social view of the most valuable customer data sets

Widhadh came up with brilliant idea to showcase the most valuable social properties online. While there have been a few monopoly themed infographics, this one is the first to depict the current social media landscape in a realistic fashion.

Click the image to view a larger version.

A few highlights of our thinking:

* Marketshare for Facebook based on their self reported "500 million active users".
* Marketshare for Instagram based on their reported registered users, using the same ratio as Facebook from registered users to actives.
* All other market share stats based on the reports form quantcast.com.

When you think about social media, does this ring true for you? If so, why / why not?

The power of instant: exit rates cut in half

Our sign up process, we thought, was great. Back in January, we achieved numbers that were better than any we had before of sign ups and post sign up confirmations. It was great.

Then we took a fresh look at some of the issues people write to us about. We thought, what if people could use the site, instantly? We tried it before (years ago) but fell in love with different notions, so we decided to bring it back to the "old schoo" way of doing things.

Exit rates from our site up page were 30% until last week. The big difference? Previously, new members got a thanks page, and an RTFM style message telling them to fetch an email before they could login and use the service.

Boo. Now, we have a 15% exit rate from the sign up page. I think we can do better still, but it's a solid boost in the numbers.

New links feature, share what you love from around the web

If you haven't seen it yet, that's the stealthy feature we were talking about in our last blog post.

Give it a whirl if you haven't already:
http://www.funadvice.com/links

:)

As usual let us know what you think by getting in touch.

Super stealthy features launching soon (shh!)

Today we've been working hard on the latest features and functionality to bring the site one step closer to being the ultimate site for all things, fun or advice related.

Some people have asked us in the past, "why can't I do this?" on the site. Well, one of those "why can't i" will be put to rest soon.

(Psst: if you come back to the site on *Friday* it'll be new, exciting and so much more awesome).

High Fiving White Guys: why this bugs me

Sitting here whilst researching some best practices on conversion rates, improving our site and user experience...I came across a very unusual website selling marketing services.

As a former marketing consultant, I hate stereotypes. While if you read the stats on venture backed start ups...it's all white guys, all the time, even in the consulting business, I was the token white guy - in a team of two.

In FunAdvice, I'm the token white guy in a team of four, if you include owners + staff...it's half men and half women. Of the owners, we have only 33% "American born" citizens as well.

I'm all for putting together cheesy clipart to show enthusiasm...but please don't insult the rest of the world and show me a bunch of high fiving white douchebags. If that was what I was after, I'd start watching Jersey Shore.

:)
Related:

Instead of using the cheesiest clipart you can find for your business...why not consider some more professional and above board strategies? Here's a bunch of tips on increasing web traffic that you might appreciate from a blog called InstantShift.

Shout out to In With Skin

This is a new thing for our staff, getting published by a site that has a corresponding magazine. If you're interested in reading the article by Colleen about aging, check it out here on the In With Skin website.

If you run a multi channel media company and would like to help us promote you to our more than five million visitors per month, please get in touch with our friendly staff and we can work out a special program.

Member shout out: Buffalo Soldier (no, not the song, the real deal)

If you've ever wanted to know the real story of the Buffalo Soldiers, you have to read this book...it's by a fantastic guy who happens to be a member of FunAdvice (thanks) and while I've heard the song for years, I've never known that it was in fact based on a troup of soldiers in WW1 that fought for the allied forces. group of soldiers that fought in the wars with the Native Americans in 1866...my bad, and thanks for the correction.

It's called Rescue at Pine Ridge, and it's been critically acclaimed by readers on both Barnes & Noble as well as Amazon.

Virtual company no more: team meetings being held in Miami

After 7.5 years...we've finally decided to make it "official" and move to Miami, Florida (my wife and I) to work in person with Ericson on FunAdvice. Thing is...well, we're nowhere near the product we've all been dreaming about for so long...believe it or not, the interests feature was first conceived of back in 2005 and still doesn't work as well as we fleshed out (conceptually) back then.

Chat...it's been gone, for the second time, since we re-released the site.

And the biggest complaint, still, from our relaunch is the inability to see the answers that *you* posted to the site, as you used to, as it works on...well, basically every other single Q&A site out there.

We hear you. Now that it's a company and not virtual, the plan is to build, launch and improve things weekly so you should be thrilled with our performance (even more than before!) over the next six months at least :)

I know I'm excited. And if you have any thoughts or suggestions, drop me a note.

Happy new year, and the site will be back soon :)

Unintended downtime this evening, we will be back very soon.

Fun fact: the best three months in our 7.5 year history were the last three of 2010, thank you all for your support, advice and participation.

Best email to our support team ever

Subject: I'm a recovering whore.

I have a few questions about porn. Can I still get into the industry if I have AIDS?

Dear Jane Doe:

We're sorry but you'll have to stick to your day job for that CPA firm.



Sincerely,

FunAdvice