Q&A: Paul Thind, Chief Business Officer, Outspark

We reported last month that Outspark had hired Paul Thind as its Chief Business Officer. Thind previously spent 3.5 years at Sulake, North America, working as general manager and helping orchestrate some of Habbo's content partnerships, celebrity promotions, and large ad sales initativies. Outspark formally announced Thind's new role today where he will  oversee the company's "growing game publishing business, its portal community initiative and help the company continue to expand and enhance its immersive online social community." We spoke with Thind yesterday about leaving Habbo and making the switch from virtual worlds to social games. 

Virtual Worlds News:  For starters, why make the switch?

Paul Thind: I had been at Habbo for almost 3.5 to four years. With Outspark, I really found the experience to have a lot more potential for what the user can do. Users were coming to a portal with many different games and it also allows the user to build a community. With the engagement opportunities and where the company is going, it's really poised for explosive growth. I spent some time thinking about it and looking at potential possibilities and what could come and then spent some time with Susan [Choe], the CEO and Founder, and realized we had some of the same ideas for growing the company.

Habbo was great, but it was really time for me personally and professionally to get into the gaming space. Free games are very exciting, and especially with the possibility of adding a community. Because I'd been focusing so much on the casual virtual world, it gave me a lot of experience in monetizing those communities and creating engagement. That's what Habbo had to do. Here the engagement is in the games and you stick around for the communities.

VWN: You have that experience helping to build a community in Habbo. What plans do you have for Outspark?

PT: I think if you look at where the company has come from, it's been focused on a certain demographic and core user. Number-wise I'm very impressed with what the company has been able to do. It's been around about 3 years [ed: a little over 2.5] and is pushing 3 million users [now at 3.3 million registered users] who are very active. And some of the backend that they're able to collect for business intelligence is superior to what I've seen anywhere.

It's definitely a place about creating a community where these people can hang out. It's there with creating a profile and playing. And we'll see how we can enhance those. We'll be announcing some things over the next couple of weeks that we're working on. I think the exciting part is all that you have access to when you sign up.

With Habbo it's a little limited and it's focused on the teen demographic. The possibility of teen and young adults playing games is very exciting. Habbo has a great growth path, but for me being in the music industry and then working in social media and virtual worlds, games was really attractive.

VWN: Can you talk about your goals for OutSpark?

PT: It's building on the success they have there. There are quite a few things with community best practices in terms of running events and monetizing virtual goods. Outspark certainly has the team, and it's looking at what promotions are happening and the features. Ultimately the bread and butter has been the games, so it's sourcing the best games and working with the developers and really listening to our users.

That's where the portal really comes in. It allows user-generated expression and uploading from what they're doing in the games. It also allows us to see what's popular and what's not. And we have a really great community team. I think enhancing that with a little more social networking or the virtual playground is where we're going.

VWN: Can you talk about any of the specifics for growing the virtual playground?

PT: If you check out the site, you'll see we have the games there. We have different ways of building out features for gameplay and game dynamics and what the user has done. That appeals to the status and I think adding different content releases to the different levels, just tightening things up in the ways that users can pay for the service or adding enhanced features around VIPs or different features like gifts. It's really making our experience in the virtual playground crisper.

You'll see other types of services and the level of interaction that can really grow to service the community beyond just being a place where they can play a game. It's so much more than that. It's a place where a hardcore gamer may turn someone else onto music or anything else they want to project about themselves.

I think the experience that's been missing, though, is the casual gamer. That's something from Habbo where we were going after the mass market and some of the tools just weren't there. Habbo does a great job, though, of really being in the community and listening to users.

VWN: You've been working in the virtual world space for a while where it's all about that community and casual, free-form interactions. How do things change for you moving into the game space with OutSpark?

PT: It's about playing a game together, getting to know someone through their style or stats, and then hanging out. I think where it is going, be it a virtual playground or virtual hangout that builds on that.

Habbo did a really great job of that, but I think a lot of the users realize they're just trying to market virtual furniture and then don't want to pay. Then you monetize through advertising and they get annoyed with that. Habbo is really good at the casual development side, but if you look at the games that are there, they don't engage the community past any certain level of time. With teenagers who are very fickle, we'd see them leaving after a certain period of time. That's why we'd have 100M registrations, but only a percentage is coming back.

That's getting away from engagement. What you want is somethign that's easy to access and easy to play a game and then build a community on top of that and have several levels for the user to access. That can add different features so that when you do have that better gun or piece of clothing, people know you had to put in some time.

VWN: So having games makes it easier to sell those virtual goods, gives them a sense of purpose?

PT: If you look at a rare item in a virtual world, people know you were there when it launched or you bought it before they ran out, but there's no achievement status. I think gaming is like life. If you're very good at something, you want people to know about it.

If you create that experience around certain games, I have a choice about it. If I'm a part of this community and they're good at one game--and really good at it, their status is at level 90 and they have all these goods and they're VIPs--I might be good at another. There's a mutual respect and still status.

It creates so many opportunities for the user that a sort of casual, one-track environment doesn't. Habbo is a huge success, obviously, and I don't want to say anything negative about it. But I'm excited about giving users more choice, and more choice within that one client. Giving them choice will ultimately create even more brand engagement. Then later on you can find other ways to monetize the environment. But you want to keep the user there longer and then make the lifetime longer.

Games do that. The churn of virtual worlds is such that unless there are always new features and additions, it's very difficult for those environments to retain their user base. If you're part of a community here and playing a game--it's why the lifespan of MMOs is so much longer. Giving the community access to more things is for me a better business model.

VWN: You mention that games create more opportunity for brand engagement, but Habbo obviously has had a fair amount of success with advertising. What changes?

PT: For one it's the brand sitting there, but there isn't really anything immersive about it. In games there are several sponsorship opportunities where a consumer goes through several cycles of either going back to change their avatar, being in a certain location, checking their status in consoles. There are a lot more touch points in gaming than virtual worlds.

And if you talk about engagement, certainly, the user has much more stake. The object is to continue and progress to the next level as opposed to a virtual world where, especially, everything is so casual. If the goal [in a virtual world] is to just get a password to a special room, I find that to be a bit boring, actually. I think you can do a lot more fun things with the games, actually. The mind can actually run a little bit wild with getting to a certain level and unlocking content and that content could be sponsored....

The engagement times can be there in virtual worlds, but with the amount of time you're losing the user, it takes a lot of tactical convincing to make that work.

VWN: Have you begun reaching out to brands? Is there response different than from your experience at Habbo?

PT: There are a lot of advertisers interested right now. We want to focus on the user interface, but we're very open to speaking to advertisers. Currently because of our focus on the portal and the user-based community building experience, you'll probably hear from us in the next few weeks on launching a game or two and really building the virtual playground out and different ways to monetize the site. We have some great relationships in place right now and prepaid cards out there right now. It's all really growing and we're working on tightening things. Before we engage anyone in sponsorships and advertising, we really want to spend the last half of the month developing that and begin reaching out in January.

VWN: Any final thoughts on joining Outspark?

PT: It's just about building on the success that's here. The business intelligence on the user and the data analytics we have is really some of the best I've seen. It really is pretty amazing what they've been able to do with regards to the registration funnel and looking at what the user is doing on the site. In regards to an in-house proprietary system, I haven't seen anything else like it. And that's the foundation here.

I think it's just outreach now and working on the CRM and viral marketing. For me it's just an exciting experience. I've obviously learned a lot with Habbo, and where I'm at now gives me a great opportunity as these things are converging. As communities are being built around gaming, companies are paying attention. 3.5 years at a company, especially a great company like Habbo, was fantastic, but now I'm excited to be working on these other opportunities.