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Mapping the many faces of “retention”

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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 play Zynga games every day. It’s the leading online social gaming platform, according to Ken, and it’s grown from zero in 2007 to revenues of “a few” hundred million dollars annual revenue. Every day, the company captures 20 to 30 billion records of data, and Ken and his team use that data to improve revenue, viral marketing — and customer retention.… Read the rest “Mapping the many faces of “retention””

San Francisco cab driver’s dashboard

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I asked a San Francisco taxi driver I happened to sit next to about indicators he sees. I didn’t mean “low oil,” I meant big things. Whether the economy is still falling or not, for one.

Figure out how to collect tip data from cabbies and waiters and you’ve have a good early indicator of economic trends, I’ve always thought. But the cab driver, Richard Roe — also producer of a website on verbal defense tactics and a retired programmer — says no. Tips have been the same. Moods, too.

However, he has noticed one thing. People used to forget their cell phones all the time.… Read the rest “San Francisco cab driver’s dashboard”

“Going through the roof” at Corda

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Evidence came in yesterday afternoon that, so far, BI is doing well in the new economy. Greg Turman, director of sales for the Western Region at Corda, phoned to say, “I’m going through the roof,” by which he means sales are good. “I’m seeing tremendous startup activity. People are saying, ‘I can no longer guess. I’ve got to know what’s happening so in case things get tight I’ll survive.'”

What’s behind the surge? He figures that people have finally understood the value of analytics and visual analysis.