June 20, 2010

Consumer payments were driven by games and virtual goods

Ex Post Facto: Why paid consumer services are in a golden age. Ex Post Facto is becoming one of my, if not the, favorite curating/news commentary blogs. I'd argue that paid-for, even if freemium was quite widely discussed, was not a core Web 2.0 trait as many entrepreneurs and venture capitalists caught a bad case of the advertising bug when Web 2.0 was getting popular in 2005-2006.

Consumer payments have been fundamentally driven by increased consumer acceptance/usage of e-commerce, but went mass-market with the games/virtual goods, Facebook and premium text massage/mobile payments combination. That in combination with a greater number of experienced data-driven marketing and sales operators will make the next few years very interesting.

New York Times: One on One: Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures. Good interview, but nothing spectacular if you've been following Fred's A VC blog for a long time.

Business Week: Zynga Receives $147 Million Investment From Japan’s Softbank. Apparently Zynga has attracted additional funding from the Japanese media/telecom/Internet investor.

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