Having just completed my PhD in statistics, I came to Kontagent to work as a data scientist in hopes of exploring one of the richest, biggest data sets assembled in recent history. Deciding to come do this stems from very fundamental questions I started asking myself toward the end of writing my dissertation. Specifically I want to know:

• What is the purpose of theoretical research in statistics?
• Is statistical theory the art of making inference from data or is it the science of decision-making under uncertainty?
• And finally, if data processing, data science, and so-called knowledge extraction from data truly form the next big technology that companies will require to stay competitive, as many pundits claim, what besides computing improvements really needs to be researched and developed? Are the traditional statistical methods of Fisher, de Finetti, and Tukey really going to go obsolete?

These are deep questions which spawn discussions, but oftentimes not clear answers.

However, working here, in the proverbial trenches of the big-data war, alongside powerful computers, shrewd co-workers and some remarkably savvy clientele has given me access to resources beyond my wildest dreams. I can see from the ground the lay of the economic landscape surrounding big data in one of the most quickly developing markets: social and mobile apps. And, I can use this sort of information not just to answer my questions, but also to solve the problems that are quickly being brought to the forefront of this industry.

A co-worker asked me last week to sum up what I’ve learned at Kontagent so far in ten words or fewer. I responded, to his liking, “There is no system.”

My thinking in saying this is simply that so much of what businesses require, or would like to glean from their data, is idiosyncratic–everyone has slightly different needs. But I would like to rebut that statement as well as offer an answer to my aforementioned questions by claiming that there is indeed a theory (if not quite an actual system) to be discovered here. It’s what I’ll call the Theory of Applied Statistics.

This theory differs from theoretical statistics in that it is not an inquiry into how mathematics play out given a collection of probability axioms and sampling techniques. Rather, it is an inquiry into how to critically assess one’s data collection techniques, one’s choice of inference methods–from sample means to ANOVA to advanced machine learning–and how to formalize decision-making based on this data.

There are ways to do it (and ways not to do it). But that’s what data science is, and the unified platform, coupled with the diverse customer base that Kontagent has, provides a laboratory for big-data experiments that I’d never find in academia. So coming here was really a no-brainer.

P.S. If this sounds awesome to you too, we’re hiring!

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About the author: Owen Martin is a marketing data scientist at Kontagent. He recently received his PhD in statistics with a focus on Bayesian Inference, and has been working in big data since then. You can contact Owen at @owensmartin.

Big data holds great promise for a variety of industries, but there are some things you should consider in order to take full advantage of it.

One of Kontagent’s clients, the CEO of a top social and mobile game publisher, recently commented: “When you’re learning how to ski, you learn pretty quickly that whatever direction you’re looking is the direction your skis ultimately will take you down the mountain. The same holds true for data: You really need to make sure the metrics you are looking at from the start are the ones that are most important to your business’ success. That is inevitably where your business will focus.”

That seems like a simple concept, but it’s also incredibly insightful, particularly when it comes to big data.

The business world has been abuzz about the ability to process petabytes of data at incredible speeds and ultimately leverage it for increased efficiency, engagement and profitability. The gaming industry, in particular, has been very good at turning big data into meaningful insights.

Other industries should take some notes from their counterparts at Zynga, Popcap, Playdom and other successful gaming studios that have figured out how to scale their businesses more efficiently. It’s been reported that the health care industry could see an additional $300 billion in value by leveraging big data. And, the retail industry could create efficiencies that lead to a 60% increase in operating margins. These are much bigger industries than gaming, with far-reaching outcomes if they can actually put big data driven decision-making to action.

So, what are some of the lessons learned that can enable organizations to effectively use big data to improve their businesses? Here are seven that I’ve witnessed firsthand.

1. Decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) upfront
If you don’t have the expertise to properly define these indicators out-of-the gate, enlist some help from service providers who have experience in building data science infrastructure. Then, operate your business around those KPIs.

Read the entire article at Mashable: 7 Tips for Leveraging Big Data

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About the author: Dan Kimball is Kontagent’s CMO and resident storyteller. His drive to make sense of complex concepts and solutions comes from his unique background in philosophy, quantitative research and brand marketing. You can contact Dan at: @dmkimball05.

Can social gaming influence the presidential election?

Big data needs data scientists, or quants, or Excel jockeys
No wonder big data is hot in venture capital this year. Forbes has been running a series on big data, and many of the business leaders it has interviewed say “people underestimate the degree to which big data can fundamentally change their business.”

What was especially interesting is that while technology has made storing and aggregating data much faster and more affordable, some of these experts say “keeping the data in its raw form can provide insights into long tails, allowing firms to identify and target relatively small cohorts that fall outside the normal distribution… when you get down to the everyday work of data scientists and analysts, in a very quiet average work-a-day way, they are finding a lot of insights that are becoming increasingly critical to the way companies are doing their business.” Read full article.

We’ve seen this firsthand. At Kontagent, our data scientists have been instrumental in providing insights to our hundreds of social customers. (We process millions of messages daily.) We believe, while data is awesome, you need domain expertise to make sense of it all. That’s Moneyball lesson #3: Look at the data that really matters; it may not be obvious at first.

A profile of the social gamer - Click for full view (Courtesy of Flowtown)

Profiling the social gamer
Flowtown created this infographic on the social gamer. It says more women play social games than men do, and goes into details such as education, income and user behavior.

Ngmoco looks to blend core appeal with mobile usage patterns
Ngmoco general manager Ben Cousins has big plans for the mobile company’s Swedish branch. As the mobile market continues to evolve, he and his team hope to find new ways to blend elements of high-end console gaming with the more casual usage patterns of the platform.

According to Cousins, while some developers have already tried to capture console-like experiences on mobile, they’ve overlooked the reasons why users play mobile games in the first place.

The fight is on for mobile game players
Gamasutra’s Kris Graft writes: “We know where Apple users will get their games, but the Android marketplace is still famously fragmented. That’s not driving away companies from the platform, however, as they can’t ignore the massive install base of Android.”

And where opportunity lies, so does competition. Many of the players are trying to team up with major carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon. Which partnerships should you be aware of?

Bionic Panda sets its sights on Android
Speaking of social gaming networks, here’s another one: Bionic Panda.

Its executives think that mobile devs who are trying to build a casual-style game that anyone can play easily, that reaches as many people as possible, should focus on the Android Market. And, it hopes it can use Google Wallet to better monetize users.

The idea is good enough to raise money from Norwest Venture Partners, Google Ventures, 500 Startups, and several angels. Read full article.

What’s old is new again:
Atari is reinventing itself for the era of social and mobile games
Last spring, Atari released Atari’s Greatest Hits for iOS. The game featured classic arcade games such as Centipede, Lunar Lander and Missile Command. It has been downloaded more than 3.5 million times from the App Store. And, it was recently made available in the Android Marketplace, further expanding the market for Atari products.

Atari CEO Jim Wilson thinks the company has a leg up on the competition since discovery and acquisition are major challenges for many mobile app developers: “The great thing about Atari and its very brand is that it is recognizable. You understand what it is, and frankly, in the App Store or the Android Marketplace, discoverability is a big issue for people who are releasing their games. One of the benefits of Atari is that it creates instant recognition and discoverability in the App Store and the Android Marketplace.”

The company has slimmed down to 65 employees, most of whom are targeting the mobile gaming platform. Read full article.

Watch out for Windows
Several writers are predicting that Microsoft will disrupt the smartphone market–they say at CES last week, the majority of the tech press were already rooting for Windows Phone. Despite the fact that Windows Phone only has approximately 50,000 apps, “Microsoft has all the tools in place to enlarge [a serious developer] community.”

• Business Insider: Here’s Why Robert Scoble And The Rest Of The Pundits Are Wrong: Windows Phone Will Be A Success
• Seeking Alpha: Microsoft, Nokia Have A Real Chance Of Disrupting The Smartphone Market

Just a coincidence?
Fast Company says Instagram, which received the honor of the App Store’s “App of the Year” for 2011, could be available on Windows Phone before Android (even though Android users have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the photo-sharing app).

According to Fast Company, “a source recently left the impression that the Windows Phone team has possibly been working with the folks from Instagram.” Here’s why some think Instagram would go to an OS with such a low market share.

Can gamers change the presidential election this year?
And now, onto the U.S. presidential election. Digital advertising firm Engage is currently experimenting with online gamification for some of their political clients. They also offer a social media platform, called Multiply, that integrates gamification techniques into a candidate’s website. For example, if you visit the website of House Speaker John Boehner, you can earn badges for checking in from the speaker’s home state of Ohio, or by linking the page to your Facebook account.

“The user gets instant gratification, a sense of involvement and participation and gratitude,” says Patrick Ruffini, Engage president. “The campaign gets data.”

Campaign organizers say there is a new breed of voters–one that was raised on the fast-paced interactions of the social Web. They hope this data helps political candidates better organize and target potential voters, donors and volunteers. How effective this is remains to be seen, but Ruffini reminds us: “You can’t campaign on games alone.”

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About the author: Catherine Mylinh is a member of Kontagent’s storytelling team, where she is head of content marketing. She credits her journalism and computer science roots—she was once a programmer!—for her love of learning and writing about all things high tech. You can contact Catherine at @cat_mylinh.

The ARM funnel shows a typical customer lifecycle, which is comprised of three stages: acquisition, retention and monetization.

Mobile app developers and marketers can gain a huge advantage by looking at the way social app developers scientifically build and optimize their games around customer data on social platforms. They use that data to learn about what is and isn’t working in their applications, and iterate quickly for increasingly stronger returns. From Acquisition to Retention to Monetization–the three stages in the ARM funnel–successful developers have created entire organizations around data-driven design at each level and across all facets of their businesses.

At Kontagent, we’ve witnessed firsthand the ARM funnel’s crucial role in the success of a large majority of studios that publish games on Facebook–and now on iOS and Android as well. Insights garnered from this model help to focus resources and marketing investment. And, having a perpetual flow of data and a supporting data science infrastructure (with the expertise to act on it), has enabled game studies to acquire users more profitably. Teams of data scientists and developers at Zynga, Popcap, Crowdstar and Gaia, for example, have measured, iterated, tested and optimized relentlessly to acquire more users at better customer acquisition cost and with higher yield ratios than most. It’s no coincidence these are the same guys succeeding on mobile platforms as well.

I’ve broken down each branch of the ARM funnel at a very basic level below.

Acquisition: Figure out what audience performs best in your game and how to acquire members of that audience in the most effective, lowest-cost manner possible; from ads, to cross-promotions with other games, to install exchange networks, to viral channels. KPIs = Cohort Customer Acquisition Cost (Cohort CAC); Cohort ARPU and Retention by Channel; Cohort ARPU and Retention by Campaign; Acquisition Conversion Funnel

Retention: Keep that audience engaged for as long as possible. Find fall-off points where users leave. Learn how to encourage sharing with friends. KPIs = Avg. Session Length; Day 1 Retention, Day 7 Retention, Day 30 Retention; Custom Event Funnels; User Lifetime Event Distribution; k-factor (virality)

Monetization: Get these users to pay and to keep paying over time, optimizing their lifetime values (LTV) to the greatest degree possible. KPIs = % Paying Users; Avg. Revenue per User (ARPU); Avg. Revenue per Paying User (ARPPU); Purchase Conversion Event Funnel

As the free-to-play model continues to grow and dominate in mobile, just as it does in social, it’s no surprise that the ARM funnel is the right framework for measuring customer economics and per-user profitability in mobile as well. Just like social app developers, mobile app developers must understand and optimize acquisition, retention and monetization if they are going to succeed.

Still, mobile developers have a long way to go. As more social companies (including Zynga) move aggressively to mobile, getting smart about data is increasingly important. Kontagent believes those mobile developers who recognize the importance of data-driven app development throughout the ARM funnel will be well-positioned to lead the space.

I’ve outlined the biggest challenges and opportunities facing mobile game developers, relative to measuring and optimizing around the tried-and-true ARM funnel:

Discovery & Acquisition

Biggest Challenges

• The biggest hurdle is getting discovered and competing against companies with deep pockets who can muscle their way up the App Store rankings.
• Mobile ad networks are massively fragmented and difficult to target high-yielding cohorts of users (either through behavioral or demographic segmentation).
• Understanding ROI (on iOS in particular, tracking from ad/source to install to monetization used to be impossible).

Biggest Opportunities

• Reach large audiences at a relatively inexpensive cost-basis by advertising on cross-promotional networks and partnering with other developers with high daily active users (DAU) counts.
• Segment users by acquisition channel, and optimize around those producing the highest per-user ROI. Analytics make it possible to see differences between each source: organic, viral, cross-promotion and advertising.
• Build a great, highly engaging game! The better the experience, the more players will tell their friends. Word-of-mouth is a huge organic driver of installs for mobile devs right now, so focus on gameplay, and reap the benefits. Use analytics to tell you where users are losing interest in your app.

Engagement & Retention

Biggest Challenges

• Although testing and iterating is how social devs have found success on Facebook, rapid iteration is not so easy or fluid on mobile platforms like iOS. It can take from three days to two weeks to receive approval for each new version from the App Store, making it difficult to fine-tune to optimize on the fly.
• Many users don’t update their apps regularly, resulting in outdated, or “dirty,” data from the combination of “old” and “new” app version users. This makes it challenging to iterate and improve your app based on user data without being misled, unless your data tools easily filter users by app version.

Biggest Opportunities

• Design the app to use data-driven back-end systems to control user experience in-app when a connection is available on the device. This way, developers can dynamically tweak play balance, economy balance, etc., and then perform split-testing to further optimize customer economics.
• Use an analytics solution that allows filtering data by app version, location and device type (for Android). This is very important in addressing the dirty data issue, and in determining which platforms and devices in which to commit time, effort and resources.
• The free-to-use model proliferating on the App Store provides customers a risk-free opportunity to experience an application, which in turn provides app developers with free insights into their virtual economies and player incentives to gain the most effective conversion rates.

Monetization

Biggest Challenges

• Android users are still experiencing more friction in payments, resulting in lower average revenue per user (ARPU) and lower monetization rates in general.
• To gauge the quality of users, developers need insight into the in-app behavior of their paying users, which marketing channel they came in from, and ultimately how profitable their customers are by each marketing channel on an ROI basis.
• Developers need tools to monetize players that may not make in-app purchases.

Biggest Opportunities

• Optimize game mechanics that encourage purchasing, while balancing engagement. Use analytics to see how the two play out using custom event tracking and funnels.
• Individually track each and every revenue channel, from in-app purchase to advertising yields, understanding the best price points, for-sale item mix and conversion funnels–ultimately using data to understand and optimize the economy underlying the game.
• Employ messaging tactics to remain connected with users on new features/offers, e.g., push notifications and email. Oftentimes, re-engaged users will monetize at a higher rate if the user experience is tweaked and re-targeted to them.

To conclude, remember this: While social and mobile platforms have their differences, user behavior in-app is very much the same. To that end, using the ARM funnel to measure and optimize your mobile application is just as applicable as it is for social app developers. At Kontagent, we are strongly encouraging mobile app developers to not start from square one. Indeed, take advantage of the important lessons we’ve all learned on Facebook and other social platforms to improve the acquisition, retention and monetization of your game, and ultimately your bottom-line.

Click on the image to register.

If you’d like to learn more on how using the lessons learned in social can work for you in mobile, sign up for next week’s webinar, From Social to Mobile: A Playbook for Building Successful Games. We have an expert panel lined up, and will discuss the challenges of developing games and applications in mobile that didn’t exist in social, as well as provide tips and tricks for monetizing that you can use to improve the profitability of your mobile apps.

Republished from:
Social Times: How Lessons Learned in Social Will Give You a Head-Start in Mobile
Gamasutra: Applying Lessons Learned on Facebook to Mobile App Development

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About the author: Josh Williams is president and chief science officer at Kontagent, where he oversees strategic revenue projects, data science and R&D. A serial entrepreneur, Josh has led two successful start-ups to large exits (one in big data, one in gaming). Josh is an investor and loves collaborating with other entrepreneurs.

Many of the metrics we measure in social apply to mobile users, too.

If you’re developing or have launched a mobile app, are you tracking it properly to ensure that it’s profitable? Do you know what metrics are important, and how to track them?

The remarkable thing about mobile apps is we’re not starting from square one, like we did several years ago in social. Because we now have years of experience developing successful social games, we can hit the ground running in mobile–because many of the same metrics from social games apply to mobile apps.

This is especially true when it comes to the what we call the ARM funnel of Acquisition, Retention and Monetization. It’s the analytics framework by which our social customers have used to develop and iterate their games–and has helped to make them successful. When it comes to mobile devs, here are some metrics in social they can use to improve their apps in mobile:

Acquisition
Social gaming led the way in acquisition tracking. Previously, marketing metrics were focused on raw conversion and lift. Now with a user-centric models, it has become possible to track almost any metric for any arbitrary cohort of users.

Retention
Measures of retention and engagement, such as monthly active users (MAU) and average session lengths, are both key to measuring the success of your app with your target customer.

Monetization
If you have in-app purchases in your mobile app, average revenue per user (ARPU) and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) are metrics that are key to measuring monetization.

You can gain clear actionable insights from these metrics. And, this may be combined with cohorting by install date. This is a view of your users that requires no cooperation from your advertising partners, yet provides deep insights on return on investment of ad campaigns with your target users.

These metrics all originated in social gaming, where they continue to be refined today; and they can be strongly applied to mobile because of the the user-centric nature of mobile apps (which is a permanently logged-in state). If you want to learn more, our president and CSO Josh Williams penned an article for Social Times that explores this in depth: How Lessons Learned in Social Will Give You a Head Start in Mobile.

In summary, data-driven decisions have been key to social game developers over the past three years. Zynga tracks 70 billion messages a day just to keep up with their players. Can lessons learned on the social Web improve the bottom line of mobile app developers? We know they can.

P.S. If you want to learn more, we’re hosting a webinar, From Social to Mobile: A Playbook for Building Successful Games, on Wednesday, Jan. 25 | 10 a.m. PST.

During this 45-minute live presentation, our expert panel will dig deep into the challenges and opportunities mobile developers and marketers face, including:

• Successfully transitioning from social to mobile platforms
• Challenges in discovery, acquisition and marketing attribution
• Comparisons between social vs mobile user behaviors
• Unique engineering challenges that didn’t exist in social
• Tips and tricks for monetizing in mobile

Register today.

Click on the image to register.

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About the author: Conor Nash is a data scientist and account manager for Kontagent. He specialized in statistics and cryptography at Trinity College before going on to perform statistical consultation and deep social network analyses on subjects such as the U.S. Congress. He has also worked extensively in the tourism sector, guiding 5,000+ people through Dublin, Ireland. You can contact Conor at @conornash.

The social/mobile gaming space is relatively new, yet the evolution of the space has been rapid. Despite ever-changing tech and design trends, using analytics as a tool to drive success in this space remains critical.

Newcomers to social/mobile gaming must become overnight experts or risk becoming overnight failures. The first wave of successful social gaming companies, such as Zynga, Playdom and other innovators invested heavily in their analytics and business intelligence (BI) tools from day one. Over time they have built large analytics/BI teams, scalable infrastructure and robust A/B testing tools; all of which give them the ability to quickly optimize core game metrics. These companies, now behemoths in the industry, made massive investments in analytics from the start because no commercial solution specific to “social” existed at the time. These sophisticated tools, built from the ground up, gave them incredible insight, and a massive advantage over second- and third-wave gaming companies.

With new platforms being developed every day, and previously untapped “gamers” entering the space through free-to-play channels, the opportunity to build successful games is bigger than ever. So, how do up-and-coming companies get a comparable level of analytics into their games? Do they build it themselves or buy something commercially available?

I have worked in social gaming in a first-wave company (where we built our own analytics) and in the second-wave where we decided to buy an off-the-shelf solution. The goal of this post is to outline some of the factors to consider while making a Buy vs. Build decision at this point in the industry’s life cycle.

Social gaming metrics are now standardized:
Just as we have standardized metrics for website analytics via Omniture or Google Analytics, social gaming now has a set of metrics that are becoming best practice in the industry. (To learn more, download our whitepaper, The Top 7 Metrics of Highly Successful Social Companies.)

We know that 1-, 3- and 7-day retention matters. We know virality should be tracked on a per-viral channel basis. We’ve realized that every single step of a player’s first-time experience needs to be tracked and scrutinized. We understand the importance of a robust events system to track arbitrary actions in the game. Commercially available tools have evolved to provide these basic metrics and technologies. Imagine the power of having parity in analytics (with scale) with your competitors with rudimentary instrumentation. Two to three days of development effort gets you 80 percent of the way—that is huge.

Focus on the quality of the games:
The competition is stiff, not only from the established players like Zynga, but from smart, scrappy start-ups that are willing to launch fast and iterate. Facebook has simplified access to users and reduced barriers to entry. A sure sign of social gaming’s maturity; the best and brightest from the traditional gaming industry are entering the space.

It’s no longer enough to build a sub-standard game and drive traffic to it. Player expectations are rapidly maturing too, and to survive companies need to deliver on their demands. Building robust analytics capabilities that include segmentation, funnels, cohort analysis, while scaling and meeting up-time commitments is a daunting project that requires a lot of planning and resources. Because robust tools are commercially available, companies should put careful thought into whether it’s worth undertaking a massive (and ongoing) infrastructure project like analytics.

Data should be accessible across the organization:
Off-the-shelf tools provide robust custom dashboards that fit the entire organization’s needs, from the C-level to the Marketer to the Developer. With minimal training, each stakeholder can quickly create the view they need from a universal data set. A custom solution, much like any other product requires trade-offs, such as:

• Which views will your engineering teams focus on first?
• What part of the org gets priority?

When you work with a SaaS solution like Kontagent, the most important views are ready to go off-the-shelf and the custom views can be created quickly without engineering resources.

Consider resource and opportunity costs:
The cost to build your own system depends on the features that you think are necessary. Generally, companies start with building an event tracking system with a  third-party graphing tool as the front end. This by itself is not a massive undertaking and can be accomplished within two to three months (including instrumentation in game), with probably two highly-skilled engineers. However, building a full-featured system as offered by Kontagent—which includes funnel analysis, cohort analysis, ad-hoc math on custom events—is a large engineering project that needs strategy and thorough planning. That could easily take several quarters with a dedicated team of engineers, product managers and testers.

Additional reports, custom views, scalability (based on increased user bases) can increase the total cost of ownership of a custom analytics solution. At the minimum, you will incur engineering, DBA, operations and hardware/software costs associated with additional reports, maintenance and enhancements to your analytics system. The actual cost varies depending on your analytics needs, user base and the skill sets within your organization; the reality is that there is a significant cost (resources and opportunity). Third-party analytics tools eliminate these undefined costs for you and provide strong service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee that you’re reporting and analytics system is working 100 percent of the time.

Domain expertise gives you a competitive edge:
An additional benefit of working with third-party analytics companies is access to data scientists who can help you make sense of all the data that your game is generating. Whether you’re a new studio creating your first game or a larger publisher building your first social or mobile game, this service can be invaluable in sifting through the noise and focusing only on the data that is relevant to the games current place in its life cycle.

Sometimes a hybrid system makes the most sense:
There are always cases where companies need a hybrid system: one specifically created for the business intelligence team and one for the rest of the organization. The decision to use one or both solutions depends on the complexity of the interactions in the game and specific correlations that are being sought. It also depends on the analytics requirements across your organization, and the level of expertise you have dealing with mining raw data.

In summary, third-party analytics packages have matured over the last couple of years so that the benefits—the ease of implementation, their ability to scale and their feature sets—far outweigh the cost. The focus in social gaming has shifted from a drive to build the best analytics tools, to a drive to build the best games. At the end of the day, it will be up to the individual company to determine whether they are capable of doing an excellent job at both, or if they are better served focusing their efforts exclusively on producing the next-generation of hit social/mobile games. As it stands now, if new companies want to get a head-start, they would be well advised to trust a company like Kontagent to provide their analytics to not only get off the ground, but also to continue to be successful.

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About our guest author: Rohan Sardesai has held various product management roles specializing in advertising, mobile, social apps and games. He is currently consulting with multiple companies in the music, mobile and social apps space. Most recently he was senior director of product management at iWin, Inc., a leading developer, publisher and distributor of social and mobile games. Prior to that he was director of product management at Lolapps, Inc. If you have any questions for Rohan, feel free to email him.

Mobilewalla found that mobile apps released on Sundays statistically performed the best.

Launch your mobile app on Sunday
According to new research from mobile analytics service Mobilewalla, Sunday is the best day to release a mobile app; however, Wednesday appears to be the most popular day among developers. Find out the worst day to release your app. (Hint: It’s different for Android and iOS.)

A tiny gaming company has Zynga in its crosshairs
Rumble Games wants you to “swing your sword or fire your gun, not decorate your castle and spam your friends with invitations.” It was a big enough idea to prompt investors from Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures to drop $15 million into the company in its first round of funding after it was founded less than a year ago.

This is what the company has to say about the current state of social gaming. Kixeye wasn’t amused by Rumble Games’ comments, calling it “smack talk.” Read Kixeye CEO Will Harbin’s response. (Disclosure: Kixeye is a Kontagent customer.)

On a related note, a recent move by the Justice Department could give Zynga a new billion-dollar opportunity.

There’s another mobile social gaming network to choose from
San Jose, Calif.-based PlayPhone hopes to challenge rivals such as Gree/OpenFeint and DeNA/Ngmoco in the battle to create a huge social network of gamers on smartphones and tablets. PlayPhone officially launched last month and already has three million users worldwide.

That grocery cart will track your every move
In author Martin Lindstrom’s series on the future of retail, he highlights real-life shopping carts that are computerized and programmed to understand the shopper’s buying patterns. This can reveal the speed of the shopper, how long it takes to make a selection, the preferred route, and the order in which items are placed in the cart.

While it’s slightly different from social/mobile analytics, the basic idea is the same: businesses’ need to track user behavior, gain insights, and create better experiences that encourage customers to spend. (Brian Smith says online businesses should also take note: The New ECommerce Metrics: What Etailers Can Learn from Gaming Companies.)

Gamification is mainstream
[Last year] it seemed that games were everywhere, and not just Foursquare badges and check-ins. Mainstream brands such as AOL and Dell adopted these techniques. Big Door put together this infographic that summarizes gamification funding and predictions.

Smartphone apps that need to be created in 2012
Not in the gaming space? TechRepublic has published a wish list of apps users need this year. “Some of these apps are pure fantasy, and some of them are ports of already existing applications.”

Data overload? Enter the new superhero: the data scientist
The coming deluge of data will create demand for a new kind of computer scientist–a gig that’s one part mathematician, one part product-development guru, and one part detective. (After all, big data is useless without science.)

Today there are some 400 million devices connected to the Internet, mostly phones and computers. By 2020 some 50 billion devices, from cars to appliances, will be talking to one another. And companies will need teams of data scientists to sort through everything from internal inventory metrics to customer tweets. Will you be ready?

The future is here… and you can take some college courses for it
Northwestern University is doing its bit to feed the need for analytics skills in this era of big data. The university’s McCormick School of Engineering recently launched a new Master of Science degree in analytics and is accepting applications for the inaugural class to kick off this September. Included in the curriculum will be coursework on big data analytics.

According to the Institute of the Future, these skills will be must-haves in the workforce. Here’s its list of broad skills that will help workers adapt to the changing career landscape.

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About the author: Catherine Mylinh is a member of Kontagent’s storytelling team, where she is head of content marketing. She credits her journalism and computer science roots—she was once a programmer!—for her love of learning and writing about all things high tech. You can contact Catherine at @cat_mylinh.

Gaia Online CEO Mike Sego discusses the lessons he learned in social app development that Gaia is applying to mobile.

Happy New Year!

Here at Kontagent, we’ve helped hundreds of social customers win by helping them gain better insights into their users’ behaviors. And, we have even more exciting product features planned this year. (Sign up for our newsletter for the latest Kontagent news and updates.)

We’re always improving our already-powerful, best-in-class analytics platform. We’ve been leveraging our knowledge and experience to help many of our social customers make a successful transition into the mobile space, too.

Whether you’re in the early stages of developing a mobile application, or you’ve already launched it and have a substantial user base, looking to social app developers for a history lesson on how to do it right can give you a huge head-start, and greater chance at success.

Kontagent Konnect Interview:
Gaia Online CEO Mike Sego

Gaia Online has been able to do this with Monster Galaxy–a hit on both Facebook and iOS. In the first installment of our Kontagent Konnect Executive Interview Series, we spoke with CEO Mike Sego on how the company is applying many of the lessons it learned in social to mobile, including:

• The metrics that are most important to succeeding on mobile
• How to monetize on the F2P model
• How to successfully split-test on iOS (yes, it is possible!)
• Other tactics used to keep players engaged and coming back for more

What are the overarching fundamentals for developers who want to make the social to mobile transition? Do these fundamentals also apply to mobile developers in general?
Applying the knowledge you gained on Facebook to developing for mobile is the most effective way we’ve found to succeed in the mobile space.

When it comes to content, the mechanics are almost identical for what motivates user engagement, retention, and monetization between mobile and social. Appointment mechanics, energy mechanics, leaving players wanting more, designing specific goals that are just out of reach until multiple play sessions, etc.—the user experience is consistent.

When it comes to social and mobile game apps, we have found that free-to-play models are the most successful at attracting users. Beyond that, you should focus on a very tight conversion funnel; once a new user has installed your application, analyze every action she takes through the levels or stages of your app. When you start looking at cohorts of users, if there is a spike in drop-offs, you should start asking yourself, ‘What is it about this particular stage that could be turning off users? Did I make the level too difficult? Was it not difficult enough? What are some other incentives I can bake into this particular point of the app to get them to keep going?’

But, as you continue to develop your application, keep in mind that you should develop and release quickly, and test often. The trick is to test, fine-tune and iterate with user data. These insights will help you to improve conversion. Spending a disproportionate amount of time instrumenting and scrutinizing the new user experience will pay dividends down the line. This is true for both social and mobile games.

What are the metrics you pay most attention to?
Just as it was in social, the two biggest levers in mobile are still minimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC), and maximizing lifetime value (LTV). The question boils down to this: How can we acquire as many users as possible, for as little money as possible? And, how can we generate as much revenue as possible from those users? Everything else is an input into those two major metrics because those two metrics are what will ultimately determine if you have a scalable hit or a game that just won’t pay for itself.

• User retention over a longer period of time
  Specifically, look at how many users stick around, and how long they stick around, i.e., Day 1, Day 7 retention. (Day 1 retention alone is too broad for you to fully understand what needs to be improved. That’s the reason for testing the new user experience.)
• Cost to acquire customers
  We look at the organic ratio—the number of users who come to us without us having paid for them. This is different from the way we track virality in social since our data for user source isn’t as detailed… continued

Register here to read the full interview.

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About the author: Catherine Mylinh is a member of Kontagent’s storytelling team, where she is head of content marketing. She credits her journalism and computer science roots—she was once a programmer!—for her love of learning and writing about all things high tech. You can contact Catherine at @cat_mylinh.

Source: The New York Times

Recently, I was talking to a colleague about how there is now technology that enables non-verbal brainwave communication between two people. Essentially, you put a device on your head that translates chemical synapses in your brain into patterns that are recognized as words, phrases or entire ideas. A person on the receiving end of this communication can then absorb these patterns in their own brain device, which will then interact with his chemical synapses. And, a conversation occurs.

It is absolutely mind-numbing to think about how much data needs to be processed in order to create patterns out of chemical synapses that an individual experiences at any given time. In fact, the adult human brain is estimated to contain from 100 to 500 trillion synapses! How could there possibly be a technology powerful enough (or scientists insightful enough) to process and interpret that volume of data, and then find a way to translate that into meaningful communication?

Well, on a much (much) (much) smaller scale, Zynga (public as of this morning) and other social game companies have achieved a similar feat. (Side note: VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi penned a great piece on the history of Zynga.)

In our view, the Internet has been through three defining phases of its short life in the modern era:

• Phase I: The 90’s was all about the Web page and all the metrics companies needed to track to see how valuable their websites were. Impressions. CPMs.
• Phase II: The first decade of the 21st century moved onto more sophisticated analysis around the action, led by Google’s PPC revolution. Clicks. CPCs.
• Phase III: In just the past couple of years, innovators in the Web (and mobile) space have begun to focus on the user. CAC. ROI. LTV.

The amount of data that tracking a user-based Web requires vs. a page-based Web or even a click-based Web is exponential. Take, for instance, Yahoo, one of the most heavily trafficked sites of all time. In August 2011, Yahoo was generating approximately 5.5 billion page views per month in the U.S. (see latest numbers here) That’s a TON of data that needs to be processed by the folks at Yahoo… and, even more work to make sense of all that data to yield actionable insights.

Now, consider Zynga.

Because Zynga optimizes their applications on user actions, not page actions, their data requirements are exponentially greater. As of early 2011, Zynga was tracking over 70 billion actions per day. And, they have had to figure out how to collect, store, analyze and optimize on all this data in almost real-time in order to remain competitive.

Zynga tracks 70B messages a day; Omniture tracks 30B daily. Welcome to the new Web.

So, what does this mean for other “new-school” Web and mobile companies whose success or failure is based on their ability to analyze and optimize off of hundreds of millions or billions of data points… every day… in real time? Are the “traditional” (or “tradigital” as a friend recently said to me) Web analytics providers like Omniture, Webtrends and Google Analytics equipped to handle this scale? Are they fundamentally structured to not only technically process this level of data (of course Google can process billions of transactions a day), but to make sense of it, and deliver the data in a way that businesses can comprehend and base decisions?

I’m not so sure.

The big-data wave is here, and with the emergence and hyper-growth of social and mobile games and commerce apps, storefronts and other high-engagement user experiences, it’s far from reaching its peak. I’d argue that the winners and losers in this next decade will be decided by who recognizes the importance of deep diving into their user data, and optimize experiences around every micro-transaction and micro-action that occurs on their website or app. We may be a long way from installing micro-brain-transmitters to capture trillions of brain synapses and translate them into buyer decision analyses and business intelligence…

…but maybe not as far as one might think. In this future paradigm where there aren’t billions of transactions occurring daily, but trillions(!), who will be ready to tackle the big enormous data issue? Who will be prepared to process, interpret and act on this information?

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About the author: Dan Kimball is Kontagent’s CMO and resident storyteller. His drive to make sense of complex concepts and solutions comes from his unique background in philosophy, quantitative research and brand marketing. You can contact Dan at: @dmkimball05.

Source: GDS Infographics

Big week in mobile app downloads
According to Mobilewalla, as of this week there are more than a million apps in the market. And, Apple’s developers are adding about 1,000 new apps a day while Android developers are uploading about 1,400 a day.

Even though ComputerWeekly.com says games is the “most popular” form of mobile apps when it comes to high engagement, games isn’t #1 in overall categories for top downloads. Find out which kinds of apps are the most downloaded. (Side note: games may not be #1, but they do sometimes inspire fashion.)

It was a big week for Google, too. The company announced that the Android Market had passed its 10 billionth app download. Apple may have hit that milestone first (and faster), but Business Insider says that Google is hot on Apple’s heels. Should Apple be concerned?

Microsoft isn’t even close, but it hopes sweetening a deal with mobile app developers will help it play catch-up. Here’s a cool infographic on the apps race.

It’s no surprise many gaming companies try to reproduce Zynga’s success. The company has been a huge hit with its suite of addictive games; it says it’s because it takes a different approach to gaming. Zynga SVP of Product Development Mark Skaggs shares his thoughts on what makes a good game developer.

Angry tweets from Baldwin ensued; AA fired back on their Facebook page. Zynga, creator of WWF, added fuel to the flames with this clever picture.