Angry Birds is just a game, right? Nope, its a business. I am at the Business Insider, Ignition 2011 conference listening to Peter Vesterbacka speak about his vision for the future of Angry Birds. They started out small, spent relatively no money on advertising, and yet have grown into a huge business.
His is modeling his business plan after Disney for the most part. They already have designs on movie deals and have launched lots of merchandise, as you can see on the streets of New York or any city these days.
We were also treated to a discussion including Seth Goldstein, Chairman & Co-Founder of
Turntable.fm. Another company that started with a basic idea, sharing music you like over Twitter and Facebook. Not much was spent on advertising and yet it took off because people actually like the idea of being able to share what they are listening to on their social networks. Simple idea plus basic need equals explosive product. By the way, Seth is honest and a refreshing addition to the panel today. It is actually comical to listen to him put the facts straight about what we really care about and what we actually need.
Now we have Google, a huge company who is always coming up with ways to stay in the game. Some work and some don’t but they have experimented over the years with the intent of staying relevant. Donald Dodge, Developer Advocate for Google told us that whatever numbers we have heard about Google Plus are actually much lower than the reality of how many users are jumping on board. He also said that he did an experiment by posting the same content on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus at the same times. He found that the posts on Google Plus received three times the engagement than the ones posted on the other sites. Now, I have to be honest, I am wondering if all of his circles were made up of other Google employees. This would clearly explain his findings. Personally, I find Twitter and Facebook to be more engaging than Google Plus right now where I am concerned. This could also be due to the fact that I am personally more comfortable on the other two than on G+. No matter which you prefer, I think we can all agree that Google has been a huge deal and has remained that way for a while now.
I always look forward to hearing about new social media tools as well as trying them out before I decide if they are for me. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever have to pass on a few in order to have time for them all. Conferences like these are valuable ways to make connections, learn about new products and products in development.
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