Ken Rudin

At Zynga, analytics is about impact

April 11, 2011

Ken Rudin is VP of analytics and platform technologies at Zynga, and he’s always on the lookout for new talent, but he’s picky. What does he look for in an applicant? Hint: don’t go in expecting your statistics to impress him.

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Lyzasoft says “power to the people” with free version

May 3, 2010

It was International Workers’ Day on Saturday and the official release day of Lyzasoft’s latest product: its foray into “free.” It’s a good way to say “power to the people.” Some people associate that slogan with protests and even violence. But I think the best paths to power usually involve well-analyzed data, whether in public [...]

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Mapping the many faces of “retention”

January 15, 2010

Everybody knows what “retention” means until they have to design a metric. Ken Rudin, once of LucidEra and now general manager of analytics at the games site Zynga, thought that he and his team could “put something together” quickly — but it actually took “four solid weeks of discussion and debate.” About 50 million people [...]

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Lessons from LucidEra on BI for the mid-market

August 3, 2009

Here are two tips from LucidEra veterans Ken Rudin and Darren Cunningham about BI in the mid-market: Forget “freemium” — the new term for free service leading to paid service — and be wary of users’ ability to analyze data. Rudin co-founded the company and in June saw it fold for lack of renewed funding [...]

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Another night on Earth

June 24, 2009

In the film “Night on Earth,” Italian comic Roberto Benigni plays a taxi driver tooling around Rome one August morning at four. His flag’s up, he’s bored, and the streets are empty. “Dove sono i romani?” he asks himself, “Where are all the Romans?” Where were all the BI people last week? Did they all [...]

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