Andrew Chen

Here’s a quickie roundup of the top posts from my blog over the last year, sorted by pageview. They are heavily skewed towards articles passed on to first time readers since most of my readership is via RSS.

A large number of them related to freemium, which tells you how much interest there was in making money in 2009 Perhaps with the economy returning, there will be a shift of interest towards growth again.

Enjoy.

1. How to create a profitable Freemium startup (spreadsheet model included!)
2. Built to Fail: How companies like Google, IDEO, and 37signals build failure-tolerant systems for anything!
3. Free to Freemium: 5 lessons learned from YouSendIt.com
4. Product design debt versus Technical debt
5. Friends versus Followers: Twitter’s elegant design for grouping contacts
6. 5 warning signs: Does A/B testing lead to crappy products?
7. Freemium business model case study: AdultFriendFinder ARPU, churn, and conversion rates
8. Which startup’s collapse will end the Web 2.0 era?
9. 2009 conference schedule for the digital media industry
10. Does every startup need a Steve Jobs?
11. Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design
12. What if interviews poorly predict job performance? What if dating poorly predicts marital happiness?
13. How to calculate cost-per-acquisition for startups relying on freemium, subscription, or virtual items biz models
14. 5 crucial stages in designing your viral loop
15. Age (and ARPPU) ain’t nothing but a number: Data on how age impacts social gaming monetization

To all my subscribers, thank you for reading!

Happy holidays everyone! I just wanted to make a brief return from a blogging vacation to show you a new Google search test where I’ve been randomly been assigned to the A/B test.

To summarize the main differences:

• Big blue buttons for everything
• Drill-down sidebar after a search
• Emphasis on filtering by time – so you can get the “latest”
• Search across their properties, including News, Blogs, Books, Forums, Shopping, etc.
• Features I haven’t seen (except in labs?) such as Timeline, Related Searches, Wonder wheel, etc.

Really a ton of changes!

Here are the photos: First, the homepage…

And here’s a search results page after an egosurf:

Here’s the expanded sidebar:

There are lots of changes, you can check out all the screencaps below:

UPDATE: Interesting – I’m noticing that the sidebar is switching between all text vs icons + large text, on a page-by-page basis. Plus they are changing the content around by quite a bit. Seems like they are still testing the exact nature of the sidebar.

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I had a recent quote in the NYT article on the Fitbit, and wanted to give a couple quick thoughts about using the device so far. (This isn’t a gadget blog so posts like this will be far and few between).

In general, I love the form factor and the fact I can clip it on and pretty much ignore it for the rest of the day. People that I show it to always remark on how small and cute it is, and I’ve gotten several tweets on how they’re jealous that I have on already. One funny thing is that I find myself checking it absent-mindedly the same why I check FML on my iPhone. In general, it has made me much more aware of my incredibly sedentary lifestyle, and the daily goal of 10,000 steps is a tough one to hit. I’m usually hovering around 5-6,000 steps at most, and have to actively work to get to 10,000.

The web integration is nice although I don’t find myself checking it that often. They just recently added some social features to it, and I’m sure when my girlfriend, friends, and family get these devices it will be fun to see how I am doing relative to them.

Anyway, it’s a basic device and does exactly what it’s supposed to do really well. I’m excited to see when it gets more gadgety and does more with the data.

For a more detailed review, check out the Engadget review or the CNet review.