Hanging out with Robert Scoble at Tapulous, producers of Tap Tap Revenge, the #1 iPhone game

I am a huge fanboy of Robert Scoble. From his pioneering scobleizer blog (which he started while at Microsoft) to his new gig as Managing Director of FastCompany.TV, Robert is always doing interesting things on the Web.

Robert wrote the terrific forward to my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. The forward is the perfect way to introduce the new marketing world we’re all living in today. I am so grateful for him doing that for me! (Thanks again).

Remarkably, Robert has produced over 1,000 videos on the Web. I tagged along with him yesterday afternoon and evening to watch him in action. What a pleasure.

First, we visited Tapulous, producers of Tap Tap Revenge, the #1 free game on the iPhone. Tap Tap Revenge was #9 on the overall list of iPhone applications when we visited them last night and they’ve been rising fast.

How about this for a World Wide Rave spreading like wildfire: Tap Tap Revenge was downloaded by 200,000 people in just three days! On the second day of release, 25,000 people entered a tournament. Wow. What an amazing success! How about your product? Do you have people lined up to get it?

Watch Roberts' video here.

In the photo, left to right: Robert Scoble shooting one of his famous videos, Jeff Clavier, investor in Tapulous, Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, and Andrew Lacy, COO of Tapulous. Incidentally, Tapulous is a global company: Lacy is an Australian, Decrem a Belgian, and a lead developer is Canadian. Maybe the global nature of the company helps drive success?

What I found most fascinating is when Andrew Lacy talked about adding exclusive music tracks to the game. The music industry has come a long way. You used to have to go to traditional publishers to get music out there. Then MySpace was a way to self-publish music. Now a game applications (that is downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people in just a few days) is an ideal way for an indie band to get noticed big time.

Robert and I then went over the Future of Media Summit, where he stirred it up with some traditional journalists. I was sending a few live updates via Twitter, but mostly listening.

Scobleizer on Future of Journalism: old school journalists are not innovating because they are not telling stories in real time

Scobleizer on Future of Journalism: If I get a story wrong, I'll know about it immediately through comments, Twitter, etc.

Thanks for the fun afternoon and evening, Robert.

Comments

[MarketingTwins-Randy]

Enjoyed the phone call on DTM Coaching Excellence Series.

I'm half-way through Tuned In and enjoying it very much. I loved the hotel example you mentioned on the call today. No more "We have the fluffiest pillows in town" ads!!! Let's talk about the hotel can do for potential guests (personas).

-Randy

[Joel Halse]

On the topic of your book, specifically the chosen title 'new rules', here's an interesting post that may provide a methodology for measuring some of the impact online marketing is having on business.

Mcafee's focus is on the impact of IT. I suspect there is a direct link between IT and changes to marketing, and his results indicate that a rules change happened somewhere the mid 90s which lead to a dramatic increase in profit variation.

What I find really interesting is their focus on rules. While it lends credibility to the notion that a change in the rules can trigger a large variation in results, it also suggests that we are likely to see these significant edge cases (huge successes and failures) reduce over time unless further significant change is yet to come.

http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/comments/technology_beats_a_full_house/