What Threads can teach us about leveraging our existing network when launching a new service.
July 22, 2023
Threads, a new Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Instagram, launched this month and almost immediately attracted 40m active daily users. The service’s growth has since stalled and now has just over 10m daily users, but that is still commendable. The Wall Street Journal shared that this impressive launch was largely possible because Meta used its built-in network of one billion Instagram users. This user base helped it overcome the “cold start” problem of acquiring ...
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In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
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Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
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February 22, 2019
February 22, 2019
? WHO WANTS $1,000 CASH?!
I have teamed up with several Spartanburg businesses to give away $1,000 to one lucky winner. ?Please follow the rules listed below to enter to win: 1οΈβ£ Like this photo on facebook 2οΈβ£ Follow everyone that @spartanburggiveaway is following 3οΈβ£ Tag 3 friends and comment βDoneβ when you are finished!
?BONUS ENTRIES: you get 5 entries if you post this on your story and tag me and @spartanburggiveaway (make sure we are tagged so that we can see it and make sure you get your ...
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December 14, 2015
December 14, 2015
New feature: You can now easily take payments online.
Have you ever wanted to take payment online for a product or service that is not listed on your website? For example, let's say you want to take payment for international shipping or for a custom ring design. Now you can ask the customer to simply visit your home page and click on "Send payment." On the next page, the customer can enter any amount.
Potential uses include: + Charging for events, such as cooking classes. + Charging for rush or ...
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October 21, 2009
October 21, 2009
Should you offer free shipping on your website?
Please see below. This article from today's Wall St. Journal explores the expectation for free shipping when buying online. My advice to clients: - Let's better promote our free shipping offer for orders made online. - Let's e-mail a coupon to past customers either for an amount off the purchase, or something about free shipping. - Can we lower our free shipping baseline, or offer a free upgrade to quicker shipping? aka: 2 day shipping?