New mass media - It's the math, stupid

Recently, I interviewed Max Levchin at length. Max is the founder and CEO of Slide, the online personal media company that's a hit on Facebook with some 50 million users on that social network alone. I'll be posting the interviews shortly. For now, check out his video pitch he gave to Vator.  In it, he said something that underscores his philosophy about creating media: Get a bunch of mathematicians and technologists to create a platform that encourages engagement. User engagement leads to user participation. In other words, building the right features to engage the audience is more important then spending dollars on traditional PR and other marketing gimmicks.

In the end, if you're going to be big in this game, it's about optimizing your math - getting your matching algorithms perfected, and your user experience personalized down to the nth degree. 

You won't get big on a crappy product, despite the bells and whistles and cool messaging around it. You've got a better chance to succeed, if all the little cogs spin perfectly together.