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Make your users do the work

by Nir Eyal, August 9, 2012 | Comments

How can making your users work more create retention?

The belief that products should always be as easy to use as possible is a sacred cow of the tech world. The rise of design thinking, coinciding with beautiful new products like the iPhone, has led some to conclude that creating slick interfaces is a hallmark of great design. But, like all attempts to create absolute rules about how we should interact ...

How Sports Infects Your Brain

by Nir Eyal, August 7, 2012 | Comments

The science of sports

How Sports Infect Your Brain by Nir Eyal in Users Note: I co-authored this post with Andrew Martin and David Ngo. It originally appeared in TechCrunch. This week, fans packed stadiums in London wearing their nation’s colors like rebels ready for battle in Mel Gibson’s army. They screamed with excitement and anguished in defeat. Many paid thousands of dollars to travel around the globe to ...

The art of manipulation

by Nir Eyal, July 1, 2012 | Comments

	When Is creating addictive products moral? Let's admit it, we in the consumer Web industry are in the manipulation business. We build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these people "users" and even if we don't say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly addicted. Users take our technologies with them to bed. ...
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The next secrets of the Web

by Nir Eyal, June 29, 2012 | Comments

Designing competitive advantage in start-ups

Right now, someone is tinkering with a billion dollar secret -- they just don’t know it yet. “What people aren’t telling you,” Peter Thiel taught his class at Stanford, “can very often give you great insight as to where you should be directing your attention.” Secrets people can’t or don’t want to divulge are a common thread behind Thiel's most lucrative investments ...

Never take your eyes off this hacker metric

by Nir Eyal, May 28, 2012 | Comments

Screen-shot-2012-05-23-at-10.13.16-am-266x300

The Tao of DAU and MAU

If you’re like me, you’ve had enough of the Facebook IPO story. For tech entrepreneurs struggling to build stuff, the cacophony of recent press is just more noise. That’s why when my friend Andrew Chen posted an insightful analysis of Facebook user data, I was happy to get back to learning from what the company did right instead of debating what its bankers did wrong. ...

Spotting the next Facebook

by Nir Eyal, May 18, 2012 | Comments

	Why emotions are big business Facebook will sell shares Friday in one of the biggest tech IPOs in history. New investors will gobble up the stock to get a piece of the global phenomenon famously started in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room in 2004. But while owning the stock will have quantifiable value when it trades on the open market, few buyers will be able to say truthfully ...
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Spotting the Next Facebook

by Nir Eyal, May 17, 2012 | Comments

	Why Emotions are Big Business Today Facebook will sell shares in one of the biggest tech IPOs in history. New investors will gobble up the stock to get a piece of the global phenomenon famously started in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room in 2004. But while owning the stock will have quantifiable value when it trades on the open market, few buyers will be able to say truthfully that ...
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Strange sex habits of Silicon Valley

by Nir Eyal, May 6, 2012 | Comments

Screen-shot-2012-05-04-at-3.48.26-pm-300x201

Fully a third of Americans would rather give up sex than lose their cell phones

My wife put our daughter to bed, brushed her teeth, and freshened up before bed. Slipping under the covers, we exchanged glances and knew it was time to do what comes naturally for a couple on a warm night in Silicon Valley. We began to lovingly caress--but not each other, of course. She began to fondle her cell phone, while ...

Strange Sex Habits of Silicon Valley

by Nir Eyal, May 4, 2012 | Comments

	@nireyal Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal is the founder of two acquired tech startups and now is a consultant and blogger who writes about the intersection of business, behavior, and the brain at NirAndFar.com. Follow Nir on Twitter here: @nireyal My wife put our daughter to bed, brushed her teeth, and freshened up before bed. Slipping under the covers, we exchanged glances ...
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Billion-dollar mind trick; How Instagram hooked users

by Nir Eyal, April 23, 2012 | Comments

The photo-sharing site is conversant in psychology as much as technology

Yin asked not to be identified by her real name. A young addict in her mid-twenties, she lives in Palo Alto, and despite her addiction, attends Stanford University. She has all the composure and polish you’d expect of a student at a prestigious school, yet she succombs to her habit throughout the day. She can’t help it; she’s compulsively hooked. ...

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