The Sneaky Trick Behind the Explosive Growth of the Kardashian Game

Recently, I started looking into the explosively popular new game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The game has ranked at or near the top of Apple’s U.S. App Store charts for the most downloaded free game. Industry watchers say the app could gross $200 million annually and net Kardashian a sizable chunk of the game’s profits.

My line of work is researching what makes some products so compelling and in the case of the Kim Kardashian game, I wanted to know what was behind the app’s phenomenal growth.

I soon discovered that one potential driver of all of its installs is a rather sneaky tactic that exploits user error and can unwittingly post messages to players’ Twitter accounts.

It’s called the “viral oops.” (more…)

Viral Loops Or Viral ‘Oops’?

Viral Loops Or Viral ‘Oops’?

Not more than 10 days after it launched, the MessageMe chat app company happily announced it had grown to 1 million users. The revelation captured the attention of envious app makers throughout Silicon Valley, all of whom are searching for the secrets of customer acquisition like it’s the fountain of youth. “Growth hacking” has become the latest buzzword, as investors like Paul Graham profess it’s functionally that matters.

Clearly, everyone wants growth. To someone creating a new technology, nothing feels better than (more…)

User Growth and Engagement: A Hacker Metric

Don't Your Eyes Off The Growth Hacker Metric

If you’re like me, you’ve had enough of the Facebook IPO story. For tech entrepreneurs struggling to build stuff, the cacophony of recent press is just more noise. That’s why when my friend Andrew Chen posted an insightful analysis of Facebook user data, I was happy to get back to learning from what the company did right instead of debating what its bankers did wrong.

Chen calculated Facebook’s historical ratio of daily active users (DAU) to monthly active users (MAU) and the stats are startling. (more…)