Last night’s Product Management class covered two important business areas: Business development (Guest lecturer to remain anonymous) and “Tips for success in growing revenues” – Guest Lecturer: Steve Tennant. I’ll put up tennant’s slides when/if they become available. The BD talk was from an individual from a big company with a lot of paranoia any time any of their people talk, I appreciated the chance to learn.

A couple of metaobservations. In a case study, one observation was that advertisers just won’t advertise against user-generated media. There is too much concern over potential porn, infringement and old-fashioned crappiness, making many UGD projects unprofitable, despite guarantees you put in place. Hardly news: i remember randy Farmer mentioning this being a problem back in his palace days. Interesting that with the prevalence of UGC it still hasn’t been solved though.

Secondly, it was pointed out that 99% of your end users will watch the work of the 1% who will actually make content with any tool you offer, which means you have got to make certain that you have enough traffic that 1% of that 1% will actually be cool enough to attract an audience (Don’t forget Sturgeon’s law!), or the whole thing is unprofitable.