SXSW Report

Started off the day with a mediocre session about Social Gaming but I left with a few more nuggets that further emphasize the importance of Mobile.  The session provided some good insights into what are some key pieces that make up a successful social game. If you hope to be successful, you need to create resources and drains.  The opportunity to grow revenue lies in providing an opportunity for users to spend. Mobile is of course an important part of social games because…

• It’s BIG
  • 475 Million -  Worldwide circulation of newspapers
  • 825 Million – Registered Cars
  • 1.8 Billion – Unique Credit Card Holders
  • 2.25 Billion – Tooth Brushes in Use
  • 4 Billion – FM Radios
  • 4.965 Billion – Mobile subscribers
• It’s PERSONAL
  • 91% of people have their mobile within arm reach 24/7
  • 60% of married people won’t share with their device with their spouse
  • It takes on average of26 hours for a user to report lost wallet, 68 minutes to report a lost mobile phone.

The O’Reilly/Calacanis fireside chat today was a great session to kick-off my SXSW experience. O’Reilly covered topics from brands to discussing his knack for using pattern recognition to predict the future.

Key Takeaways:

• Great brands have a core; they mean something. Brands belong to anyone who uses it.  Create a barrier to entry. Create an identity.
• Hardware used to be the source of value. Microsoft realized the value in software and then open source commoditized it. Value has now moved to user contribution.
• If there was a “Web 3.0”, it would not be user data but sensor data; whatever harnesses collective intelligence.
• Chase the idea. Innovation requires fun. “They don’t think it will make them rich, they think it’s fun”

O’Reilly also discussed Government and shared an analogy regarding government as a vending machine. We put money in (taxes) and expect it to spit out something (services). We shake the machine when we don’t get what we want. O’Reilly proposes that government needs to act like a platform. He called Reagan the founder of Foursquare. The government undertook the difficult development of GPS and opened it up for commerce.