Dalton Caldwell+

Bitcoin adoption in 2015

The chart related to bitcoin that I find most interesting is not price, but instead Estimated USD Transaction Volume from Blockchain.info: The reason I find this chart useful is that it seems a decent proxy for the amount of value being transacted through the network irrespective of bitcoin price fluctuations. By way of comparison, here is a chart of the USD market price of bitcoin over the same period: And here is a chart of the number of daily transactions over the same time period: Taking these three charts together, the relatively static USD transaction value per day metric in 2014 appears

Pinterest vs Snapchat: Purchase intent and valuation

Online advertising is all about purchase intent, right? To quantify just how valuable the purchase intent of search is, it’s worth thinking about revenue per search. In 2006 Google’s revenue per 1000 searches was $45, in 2009 it was $35. (I’d like to put in a more recent datapoint, but my cursory Googling is coming up short.) Keep in mind that Google search ads are non-interruptive units. By way of contrast, let’s talk about advertising on YouTube. These units either make you wait to watch the video, or takeover part of the video player while it is playing. Despite the fact these ads are desig

The Economics of The Magazine

Why Isn’t The Magazine Free With Ads? Volume. To achieve [current subscription revenue] consistently, The Magazine would have to sell ads at $2.66 CPM on 13 million page views a month, which means we would probably need 20 million page views to make those numbers. Is our modest fortnightly periodical going to attract 20 million page views against 150 or so articles every month? Unlikely. Can we attract enough subscribers on an ongoing basis to bring in revenue that lets us pay writers well and sustain our operations? Yes. Also worth mentioning this excellent post from Seth Sternberg, former CE

The tech industry: one or many?

After reading How Zynga went from social gaming powerhouse to has-been, most would be convinced that the “social gaming bubble” has popped. It’s interesting that “the tech industry” can be large enough such that a significant sub-industry can go through a full boom and bust cycle without materially affecting other sub-industries. In the past few years we have witnessed the rise and fall of several sub-industries including social gaming, subscription commerce, and group buying. But that hasn’t slowed down what people think of as “tech” as a whole. Perhaps the ups and downs from each sub-industr

Response to Brennan Novak, part II

On August 10, 2012, I published a blogpost entitled “A response to Brennan Novak”. In that post, I stated that App.net would support a number of interoperable web technologies. As the one-year anniversary of my blogpost approaches, I’d like to highlight how App.net supports those technologies. Following through is important.

Where will Google Reader traffic go?

Unless something dramatic happens, Google Reader is shutting down July 1. A few days ago, I posed the question: Has anyone written up their expectations/projections re:how the Google Reader shutdown will affect traffic to blogs? For comparison, when Google makes an algorithm change to Google Search results, it can make or break a business. For a publisher on the web, having an significant source of daily referrals go dark one day is likely to have at least as dramatic an effect as a Google Search algorithm change. Frankly, I have no idea what will happen, but I will present three possible scen

Y Combinator

From the official Y Combinator blog: We also have five new part-time partners: Michael Seibel, Steve Huffman, Dalton Caldwell, and Andrew Mason. As the name suggests, part-time partners advise startups like regular partners, but part-time. Michael was cofounder of Socialcam (YC W12) and now works at Autodesk, which acquired it last year. Steve is cofounder of Hipmunk (YC S10) and before that was cofounder of Reddit (YC S05). Dalton is cofounder of App.net and before that was cofounder of Imeem. Andrew was cofounder of Groupon and till recently its CEO. We’ve known all these guys for years and

Apps vs. Platforms

Some interesting analysis on “apps” vs. “platforms” from Ben Thompson: An app can afford to be prescriptive about the user experience and means of interaction; in fact, the best apps have a point of view on how the user ought to use their service. Platforms, on the other hand, are just that: a stage for actors (i.e. apps) of the user’s choosing to create a wholly unique experience that is particular for every individual user. It follows, of course, that no successful platform can be built on advertising. Advertising demands eyeballs; platform success demands the ability to fade into the backgr

Sine waves

One thing I have noticed studying web traffic logs is that daily human behavior at scale resembles a sine wave: Over the years, my mind’s eye has constructed an image of the daily ebb and flow of web traffic resembling the ebb and flow of ocean tides. I’ve learned that code tends to break at the “high tide”, and the best time to do site maintenance is at “low tide”. So why does human behavior at scale look like a sine wave? It’s because of our daily cycles of waking and sleeping. In other words, we have a 24 hour cycle because of circadian rhythms, which occur because of the cycles of darkness

Touring by yourself

In 2002 I went to see a live show at the coffee house on my college campus. The show featured the band The Microphones. “The Microphones” was a somewhat confusing name for the band because there was only one member: Phil Elvrum. I went to the show early, and watched Phil personally haul in his own gear. He then proceeded to take out a marker and white butcher paper and make some larger-than-life drawings. Once completed, he hung his drawings behind the stage as scenery. Next, he set up his microphone and amp and played a show. When it was over he gave away the drawings to audience members and