the FunAdvice Blog

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:39:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:51:00 +0000

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!)

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:22:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:33:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:58:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:50:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:19:00 +0000

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 :)

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:02:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:40:00 +0000

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

Blurtit redesign feedback: welcome Blurters who are joining FunAdvice

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:27:00 +0000

First let me start by saying I've skyped with and emailed two of the owners (I think it's just them?) of Mindcom, the parent company of Blurtit. I think they're awesome guys and I've been more than a little jealous of their success the past four years or so, since they started later and grew faster than we ever did.

However, it's all fair in business and I wasn't poaching their members, they simply decided to sign up here as a way of "protesting" the latest blurtit redesign. Thing is when we did our big redesign in May of this year, we lost people (probably on a similar scale)...however, as we gained more people than we lost and activity went up overall, I'm betting the same thing will happen to the Blurit folks (eg, overall activity I'd bet is going to go up).

I think our question page is worse than their new one - *only* because it's arguably the most commercialized page of it's kind in our category. However, we're also the only site that shows zero ads for members in our category, something I'm very proud of, even if we can't do it forever.

So guys...welcome to FunAdvice, if you join, please read the rules and wipe your feet before you come in. They're clearly a different experience than us (I could get into loads of reasons for that, but that's not the point of this post)...and, do give the Blurtit guys a chance if that's the community you love. I'd argue that outside of my team, they have the best one :) So I wouldn't underestimate what they might have in store following this initial stage of redesign.

2010: the year of Serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0000

As we approach December, things have really heated up...so this is more an "update of the update coming soon" than it is any real "news" per se. However, I do keep tabs on a number of technology, publishing and media outlets (my wife would say "too many") and there are some stories and trends emerging I feel that all of us in the Q&A, online publishing and media categories should be contemplating as our business heads into a new year.

1. Funding in Q&A, most recently 6 million to Stackoverflow. While stackoverflow is huge in programming...I'd still argue that 4 million uniques outside of that does not justify a staff of 24 people.

2. $10 million to formspring...which valued the firm at $40 million, where Wiki Answers market cap is around 50 million dollars. Here's the thing: the two services are very, very different. One is knowledge reference (encyclopedia britannica, wikipedia...) the other is primarily social (omegle meets facebook). As a result, with their audience in decline per quantcast...they have to do something really spectacular on the revenue side for the team to gain anything more than experience and perhaps a decent salary out of this venture.

3. Serendipity, itself, has become something of a buzzword...we'll take the credit, thanks. To me, the main issue here is that we're *all* failing at delivery of this concept, which is at it's core, the kind of personalization that comes from a stack of dominos. A single click happens...then, if your product can deliver, there is a symphony of events, one falling into the next, instantly to deliver you...wonder. Excitement. Awe. Fun. Games. Commerce. Depending on your business category, this is what we're all moving towards. In a quarter second, how many simultanious processes does your business execute per member?

As usual...more to come once we have our stuff ready to see.

Two months no posting - tap, tap, is this thing on?

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:27:00 +0000

Sometimes, we forget to update our blog...for a very bad reason this time, simply that the site has been heating up again. With more traffic, more members and more stuff to do, well, I simply forgot about letting the blogosphere know what's happening with our site.

Other than routine fixes, the only major upgrade lately has been new servers and Varnish. No, we're not polishing our ...Varnish is the caching system used by large, well known internet companies that cache and serve content which changes frequently to improve their overall performance.

New servers means faster load times, less latency and a smooth experience as we scale (see, I'll bet you guys didn't even notice since we wrote last daily average traffic is up by more than 20%) :) That's the awesome thing about the massive upgrade we did in May - if we get busy, as we're likely to do, then we can easily upgrade the whole setup to scale better and ensure the same, consistent and fun experience you've come to expect.

Prior to the May launch, for logged in viewers, the site was about six times slower than those who were viewing while logged out. Now, the speed is identical - if you're logged out, the only difference is the amount of ads we show. Logged in members still get zero ads, which actually means for logged in members, the pages load fractionally *faster*...cooler, imho, than the slower experience for members we had prior to May.

Wait, what about all the cool stuff you've been promising?

We are working on it - with a small team and limited resources, we always prioritize around the business needs, member needs and our own personal wish lists (yep, we all have them and they're not always the same).

Thanks for listening and if you haven't, you really should register on FunAdvice - it's easily the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Cash for points - beta launch is happening this week.

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:50:00 +0000

If you have earned a bunch of points on FunAdvice, check your "my points" page. (Upper right of your profile).

Now, you can also request a cash out - eg, we'll send you the $$$. It may take a while (still working out the bugs, such as 40% of members not entering information correctly, that they need to update so we can actually pay them).

The economics of this are OK, we think...as long as business keeps on as it is, we'll keep the program going in definitely. It's our way of saying "thanks" for everything.

Mayday - oops, we'll be back very soon :)

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:25:00 +0000

So, while the site is down...perhaps you want to peruse some of the past writings on our blog. Get to know us :) That's cool, we appreciate it.

When we're back, you should try the new video upload feature...it's *awesome*.

Record your videos from webcam ;)

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:54:00 +0000

If you'd like to share more than a photo, feel free to partake of the recently launched feature to add photos via your computer webcam.

They'll appear in the "browse videos" area of the site, here:
http://www.funadvice.com/videos

Some entertaining ones already.

....FunAdvice points for cash launching soon.

Our path to revolution: one step at a time

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:06:00 +0000

It's been over 7.5 years now since we launched...Facebook just hit 500 million members, after less than six years. Very impressive and we wish them the best.

One thing that we've been trying to do is find out "what we stand for" apart from our mission, eg, where the product dream meets the real world, where the business goals co-exist with the member goals, etc. So far, it's still a work in progress but a few interesting things that we'd like to share:
1) ultimately, our site, or another one, is about sharing, connecting and consuming information - that's a process that can be improved anywhere online, and we're not exception.
2) The new member "onboarding" process is, well, broken on FunAdvice - this is actually a big focus for us right now, in terms of product fixes.
3) Serendipity is a success - direct traffic has hit a new record for the calendar year, when considering the number of things we still need to fix...it's very encouraging.

Howtos were arguably the best launch we've had in a while...and it's still being misused by about 40% of the people who write on the site. So, that's also in the works and it gives us great feedback overall in terms of how we design the experience going forward.

Make more money than hubpages, squidoo, or mahalo on FunAdvice howtos

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Bold claim, and technically, only true in context: on FunAdvice, the newly re-launched howto feature will pay you 100% of the revenue earned from the howto articles you write.

Yep, you get to keep it ALL. Where hubpages, squidoo, mahalo pay far less...we pay you as much as if you were writing the article on your own website, or blog, etc. The reason for this is pretty simple, like hubpages and other sites we are going to be producing some content in house. So instead of trying to make YOU work for us, we're just going to work on creating the best, most awesome howto feature on the planet.

If you read hubpages, or use their site, you'll know that the reason they hit 27 million visitors is b/c of the dedicated members of the site, not their corporate marketing efforts. So, we're hoping that people who enjoy the chance to share their expertise will want to make everything they can.

The feature has been live for a few weeks, and we already have a fantastic video tutorial here on creating howtos as well as an article that we created to showcase how to write a howto.

Do let us know if you need help. Thanks in advance for your support.

The first few weeks of...serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 06:41:00 +0000

It's been a few weeks since it was pushed. What have we learned so far?

1) Members always delete accounts. It's called "churn"...fact is, it's gone down by more than 50% since we relaunched. Wow.

2) Answering speed. The overall speed to get an answer has gone from...well, let's just say not good, to under 15 minutes, depending on time of day and subject material.

(this doesn't include the new mature filter...as to be honest, while we care, we really don't think that people who CAN'T figure out how to bleep bleep...well, there's no shortage of that, and if they're old enough to be doing it, they should know practice makes perfect).

3) Points...are still a work in progress. After awarding them for status updates (lame) we pulled back and yep, it's working far better. We're going to work on improving it overall, as we're NOT looking to imitate what other Q&A sites are doing with points. On FunAdvice, they have value. Real value. In a few months, you'll even be able to get a proverbial check in the mail as a result of that value, if you wish.

4) Speed matters. Despite tons of 3rd party data on how speed impacts product performance, speed hasn't been something we've ever excelled at. From our benchmarks, we have the fastest average question page speed of any site in our category.

Let me say that again, b/c we're pretty happy with it: if you aren't on the world's fastest internet connection, give it a whirl, please look at Yahoo Answers, Blurtit, Answerbag, Wiki Answers, Fluther, Girlsaskguys, Mahalo, quero, (cuervo? WTF their name it, anyway, overfunded and overhyped).

Let us know if we can do anything better. And, we'll be continuing to improve.

Don't panic: posting will be back soon

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:15:00 +0000

The long awaited migration is upon us. The site login, posting and activity features are now unavailable until the transition is completed.

What we're doing:
1) Importing data...tons and tons of data.
2) Finalizing the roll out across the brand new webservers
3) Getting everything put back online, as a final step, so you can register, if you haven't, or login and check it out (if you're already a member).

Keep in mind...you can still read, search and enjoy the 270K plus questions and over 1.3 million answers on FunAdvice.

Thanks to everybody who participated in the beta, we're extremely excited to welcome you to serendipity very soon.

Getting extremely close: want a beta invite?

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Thu, 06 May 2010 03:51:00 +0000

For those that want one...I'm willing to let you in on our little secret.

Nearly six months of hard work later, we're knocking on the door of getting it all right. Of course, it's not the rocket ship that'll take us beyond our solar system...however, this bad boy will certainly turn heads and rocket past the moon on the way to Mars :)

About a dozen beta testers so far, here's a sampling of comments and feedback:

"This rocks!" - Thanks.

"So when can I actually use this thing?" Very soon.

"Are you importing all the old FunAdvice stuff?" Yes, we are.

"It's like you've combined the best features of all the hottest sites out there." Why, thank you...however, our new site is still focused on our mission: the best, easiest most fun way to get advice on any topic. To us, this is the very first version in seven years that really delivers on that promise.

Just use the contact form here: http://www.funadvice.com/contact and mention the beta site, OR send a fun mail to thedude, or editor.

Code name: serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:03:00 +0000

Since December, we've been hard at work on "FunAdvice 3.0"...which I've taken to calling serendipity.

Why the code name? Well, tons of Google and other companies engineering projects have names (some public, some not...) and, well, serendipity seems far more appropriate than 3.0.

First, allow me to mention the previous incarnations:
1.0 - PHP based site, circa 2003-2006, characterized by the lack of consistant UI, missing and or inconsistant social features, etc. Core theme was "advice"...mismatched :).

2.0 - Ruby on Rails, launched in August, 2006. Built in tons of concepts from Widhadh for the first time that she designed in 20065...and, was the first version of the site that was 100% her design work (the rest had been a mismatch of Ericson & myself...neither of us should be designing things though).

This version took us to 6.8 million visitors in July, 2009...we were ranked the second fastest growing social network in the US by comScore, got mentions in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch and more...by all accounts, we've done what we set out to do.

3.0, aka, serendipity. Let's define serendipity...as a fortunate coincidence. When you arrive at a new site (or return to a site you've been to before...) you want things that matter. To you, personally. Even if you never register...it should matter to you, the things you get shown, the people you meet, the interactions you have.

Well, today, I'd say that there are hundreds of companies all jockeying for this space. The link graph war was won by Google a long time ago...not everybody might agree now, but, Facebook won the social graph war. Is there a new war to fight? If so, what is it?

The theory goes, if you believe in a deterministic dogma, that life is a series of predefined events. In many ways, you are a spectator to the great game of life, not an active participant, because you have a destiny that you drive towards, each day. Given the large majority of the world (98%) believes in some form of religion...and many of those have deterministic philosophies...it's a bit much to say that these belief systems don't matter. In fact, it's bad business to ignore this pattern of belief.

So, if you are one of the 98%...we're going to fullfill our destiny, and yours. We hope you enjoy the ride.

Chat feature now live, upgrade already in the works

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:19:00 +0000

So in case you read our last post and wondered what we were on about...chat is now live.

What's cool about this chat? Sure, there are tons but here are the neat-o features:
1) Chat with people on your friend list (if they are online and so are you).
2) Chat anonymously with another member...yes, we don't have a lot of people using this (yet)...but, you can probably guess where and how this changes things for our site.

:) It's coming, soon.

Me, I truly can't think of a more game changing experience in Q&A than real time, instant connection to another person who shares your interests.

That's where we're headed and the whole product is being bent towards that goal. We have more planned...it's going to be a wonderful year.

No posts in two months: FunAdvice Update

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:16:00 +0000

It's been a while since we've updated our blog, yes, we're still here, no, we're not ignoring it :)

Thing is...well, sometimes, life gets in the way (or in this case, a TON of navel gazing). Traffic was down, as we mentioned in our last post...but, now it's trending back up.

However...something is *wrong* with Q&A on the web. We're not sure how to fix it but one thing we do know is that the way sites like ours go about the entire process needs fixing.

And, we have an idea. Perhaps it'll change the game...perhaps not. But one thing for sure is that we need to do *something* to make our product better than the rest. You can get, essentially, the same experience elsewhere online...YA, Answerbag, etc, etc. So what makes FunAdvice special?

For one, the social elements...however, those need massive improvement to match the golden standard (facebook)...and, we're impatient. So in the name of giving you something special, we're launching a brand new feature in a few weeks.

Yes, we already did videos, we did howtos and we did live upload of photos via webcam. But, this is something *new*, *different* and truly *unique*. Stay tuned.

A tail of two trends: retention climbing with overall traffic down

noreply@blogger.com (funadvice) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:24:00 +0000

I'm ignorant (honest) in how to build, run and grow a community. Sure, I've got experience - loads of people do. However every community is different. Ever lived in the east coast of the US, then moved out west? Or vice versa? You get what I'm saying: culture, values, modes of interaction, norms...it's all different. We may (those of us who are, anyway) be all Americans...but, I'm a Californian first an American, second.

Most folks I've met feel the same way.

What's this got to do with FunAdvice? Well, if you read our blog...the last post talked about how overall traffic is down. Perhaps that's a good thing. Retention, as we define it, is still higher than ever and growing...wow. What's that mean?

For me, personally, it means that I'm still clueless: I would have thought constant growth in *new* traffic would increase retention, where a decrease in new visitors would decrease overall retention, as the fractional value of new visitors that convert to regular members goes down (given that it is a consistent percentage of new visitors overtime). Is that egg on my face? One sec, lemme grab a napkin.

Better. So where does this leave us? Well, there was a Google study (am I saying that too often to too many people?) they did in researching the impact of latency on their audience...fascinating stuff. What they found was that people who experienced (5%) of their audience a "slower Google" over 3 weeks conducted less searches, over the next three weeks, than the average Google user. Yikes!

Google is a brand worth $100 million dollars, according to some media pundits. That's big, in case you're wondering. There are also studies that suggest simply putting the Google logo on other search results (Bing / Yahoo / etc) will improve the perception of relevance, even if those are *not* Google search results. Wow.

Two issues, then: one is that if your brand is powerful...it matters. The other one is that nothing is more powerful a predictor on visitor behavior than site speed. Yuck. In other words: if FunAdvice works fast, we're more likely to pick up more heavy users of our system...if we work slow, we're *less* likely. Thus it could be the uptick in retention is a function of our increased speed (as we got faster with less overall new traffic to the site).

I'm not an engineer, so, I can't do anything about the speed. We are working on it, though (have you ever thought a website was "too fast"? Me neither).

Second, the "brand" issue...what does FunAdvice stand for? Well, if you read our about page...we spell it out pretty clearly. I spent this morning reading the blogs of some competitors (I've mentioned them here before) and looking at the complaints they were getting. Well, we're not perfect here, either: but we'll try to do better. And, feel free to call me on it, if we don't improve: I'm willing to listen, I won't bite your head off, AND, I'll thank you for it.