Todd Sampson

Watching Muni trains go by for 20 minutes this morning looking for one where I wouldn’t become a sardine got me thinking.  I would happily pay an additional $3-$5 or more per trip during peak hours for a seat.

I bet we could solve the public transit money issues and make everyone happier if Muni and Bart had both first-class and standard-class trains. The two-tier system works great on trains across Europe.  I believe it would work equally well here in the States.

Even better, I’m guessing the extra revenue from first-class faires would be enough to let people ride on the standard-class trains for free — further helping to increase usage.

Sounds like a win-win to me.  What do you think?

“Like” (as Facebook uses it) feels wrong when you want to bookmark and/or share something like a BP article.  Anyone have thoughts on a better term to unify those actions online?

Just received another forwarded email message filled with bad *facts* from my parents.  They really mean well.  But unless someone is pointing a knife at you — or building an oil rig off your coast ;-) — any fear you feel is most likely a marking device used to make you give up money, power, or both.  You (we) do not need to live in fear.

My son and I are both addicted to the Angry Birds iPhone/iPad game.  We have cleared several levels with all perfect 3-star scores — across 3 devices.  My son, age 5, even called me in a meeting a on Monday to let me know he unlocked a new “egg.”

At a dinner in Bucharest a few weeks ago, someone at the table was playing the game with an equal level of addiction.  I started to wonder why this game was so successful…

First, the gameplay is great.  But that is true with lots of games that never get off the ground.

Second, they nailed pricing.  They have a “lite” version of the app that’s free, with more than enough puzzles to get you hooked.  To get more levels, you can upgrade to the standard version for only $.99 — no brainer.  At the volume the game is selling, I bet the developer is making a killing at that price.  But they did something far cooler…

Finally, when we first downloaded the game, there were a few “Coming Soon” levels.  I looked at the levels but didn’t really think about what they meant.  However, the day after we passed all the levels that came with the standard game, the Angry Bird update came out via iTunes.  Expecting your standard bug-fixes patch, I installed it.  But it wasn’t a minor patch at  all.  It was a new level with 15 additional puzzles to solve; which replaced one of the Coming Soon screens.  My son was so excited.  And with another Coming Soon screen and the note they included with the update, we knew more levels were going to be added.  Awesome.

I think this tactic is great for several reasons.  The developer pushed out a game to the public that wasn’t done!  It is so hard to ship something that isn’t 100%.  But they managed to do it.  They got the game into the wild where people could play with it, give them feedback, and start talking about it with their friends.  Even better, they turned the lack of finished levels into a benefit.  People are now looking forward to new levels being released.  And every time a new level/update comes out, people buzz about it.  So cool.

(As a side note, I’m pretty sure Apple does something similar.  I think they finish the first rev of their new product and Steve Jobs looks it over and says, “If we remove this they will have to upgrade to the next version.”  Srsly Steve, give us our missing iPad camera back!)

This is a great lesson for everyone that waits a little too long — I’m looking in the mirror here — to ship v1.