Online Behaviour: Lobster Traps & Panda Forests

The following article examines why Google has had such a hard time breaking into the social media realm of the Internet. Although the article itself speaks to competing corporate online goliaths, it provides some insight into consumer behaviour online and suggests some best practices to keep people coming back. R.I.P Wave 2009 – 2010.

After researching what pandas do all day, I was struck by how panda-like we are when we use the Internet.

Roaming a massive world wide web of forests, most of our time is spent searching for delicious bamboo and consuming it. 40 times a day we'll poop something out — an email, a text message, a status update, maybe even a blog post — and then go back to searching-and-consuming.

For a decade, Google has trained us to optimize our pandic selves:

The kind of application that Google knows how to make well are the kind that embody a panda's "eats, shoots, and leaves" model of Internet behavior. Pandas spend every waking hour foraging — aka searching — and consuming. The most successful Google applications serve such a utilitarian mandate, too: they encourage users to search for something, consume, and move onto the next thing. Get in, do your business, get out. Do a Google search, slurp down information, move on. Pull up Google maps or Gmail or Google news, do something, leave. Where Google does not excel is in making applications that are by their nature for lingering and luxuriating — the so-called social applications.

What's the main difference between successful Google applications (search, maps, news, email) and a successful social applications? With Google applications we return to the app to do something specific and then go on to something else, whereas great social applications are designed to lure us back and make us never want to leave.

Consider this example: Google Answers focused on answers and failed; Yahoo! Answers focused on social and succeeded. The primary purpose of a social application is connecting with others, seeing what they're up to, and maybe even having some small, fun interactions that though not utilitarian are entertaining and help us connect with our own humanity. Google apps are for working and getting things done; social apps are for interacting and having fun.

Put another way, Google designing social apps is like Microsoft designing iPod packaging.

Now, consider the Four Horsemen of Hotness in 2010: Facebook, Quora, Foursquare, and Twitter. Think deeply about why none of these four could have been developed inside Google.

Facebook is a lobster trap and your friends are the bait. On social networks we are all lobsters, and lobsters just wanna have fun. Every time a friend shares a status, a link, a like, a comment, or a photo, Facebook has more bait to lure me back. Facebook is literally filled with master baiters: Whenever I return to Facebook I am barraged with information about many friends, to encourage me to stick around and click around. Every time I react with a like or comment, or put a piece of content in, I'm serving as Facebook bait myself. Facebook keeps our friends as hostages, so although we can check out of Hotel Facebook any time we like, we cannever leave. So we linger. And we lurk. And we luxuriate. The illogical extreme of content-as-bait are the Facebook games where the content is virtual bullshit. Social apps are lobster traps; Google apps do not bait users with their friends.

Quora is restaurant that serves huge quantities of bacn and toast. Quora is a dozen people running dozens of experiments in how to optimally use bacn to get people to return to Quora, and how to use toast to keep them there. Bacn is email you want but not right now, and Quora has 40 flavors of it that you can order. Quora's main use of Bacn is to sizzle with something delicious (a new answer to a question you follow, a new Facebook friend has been caught in the Quora lobster trap, etc.) to entice you to come back to Quora. Then, once you're there, the toast starts popping. Quora shifts the content to things you care about and hides things you don't care about in real-time, and subtly pops up notifications while you're playing, to entice you to keep sticking around and clicking around. Some toast is so subtle it doesn't even look like a pop-up notification — it just looks like a link embedded in the page with some breadcrumbs that appear in real-time to take you to some place on Quora it knows you'll find irresistible. For every user's action, bacn's and toast's fly out to others in search of reactions. (Aside: if I were Twitter, I would be worried. Real-time user interfaces are more addictive than pseudo-real-time interfaces; what if Quora took all of its technology and decided to use it to build a better Twitter?). Social apps are action-reaction interaction loops; Google apps are designed just for action.

Foursquare exists in a dozen dimensions. That statement is ridiculous on its surface; after all, even String Theory has only 11 dimensions. (Technically, it's 10 dimensions, because they start numbering at zero.) Whatever higher-than-the-highest reality Foursquare thinks it's building, one thing is clear: this company is more about chemistry than physics. Foursquare has studied the works of David A. Kessler, who studied hyper-palatable foods that had various combinations of salts, fats, and sugars that stimulate the diner's brain to crave more, rather than satisfy their hunger. The more a person uses Foursquare, the more a person wants to use Foursquare: the points are salts, the badges are fats, and sweet sweet mayorships are sugars that we fight over like we're Sneetches. Ok, so Foursquare's leadership thinks they're only 10% of the way there — I guess they have 11 other combinations of salts, fats, and sugars to perfect so that all we do all day, every day, is check into Foursquare. Social apps offer a steady diet of junk food to keep us addicted; Google apps offer mostly bamboo.

Twitter is a giant blue ball machine. Even the New York Times says not enough people understand what the heck Twitter is, for them to be willing to use the word tweet in polite company. But that doesn't stop lots of people from using Twitter. Perhaps they are enamored by a word that sounds ornithological in nature. I tried to explain it to my brother like this: tweets are little blue balls, and they get bounced around by a giant machine so others can enjoy them. Those people can react by copying the balls (retweets), swinging at the balls (at-replies), or beaning the originator in the head (direct messages). There are also lots of whales on Twitter—celebrity whales to attract us, and fail whales to repel us. As opposed to Facebook, which hates whales because whales distract the lobsters from the traps. At this point, my brother gives me a blank stare and says he's going back to Facebook. Which goes to show that a social app doesn't need lobster traps, bacn and toast, or 12 dimensions to be successful; it just needs balls. Social apps are whimsical and fun; Google apps are whittled and functional.

So why can't Google build social apps? Because Google's core values ("be useful", "do good by users") reject the very notion of lobster traps, bacn and toast, a dozen dimensions of junk food, and giant blue ball machines. Understanding those concepts is not easy. It takes lots of practice, and lots of patience, and lots of learning.

2010's leadership of Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter struggled for YEARS learning from FriendFeed, Dodgeball, and Odeo, respectively. The main mythical man month mega mantra—"build one to throw away"—isn't just a clever way to gracefully fail on the first iteration; it's the way we learn. I believe those collective experiences have given them the humility to know that most things don't work; the confidence to know that simplicity is more important than features; and the stamina to see their visions through the good, the bad, and the ugly that accompany startups.

Does Google have the patience to launch social apps that aren't widely used so they can learn from them? Not Lively.

Does Google have the ability to launch social apps that aren't utilitarian? Repeat after me: "A Buzz is a high-frequency Wave." And neither pandas nor lobsters know what those are, other than wacky experiments gone awry.

Has Google's culture-of-facts ever learned from Orkut? Good question for thetriumvirate. A humbler panda than me once tweeted:

So, to summarize: Google is responsible for Orkut, Wave, and Buzz. Ex-Googlers are responsible for Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter. Discuss.

Ok, I'll discuss. I have three main points:

1. Google cannot hire a Head of Social because no individual can change Google's DNA of building applications for pandas, not lobsters. Googlers who wanted to develop great social applications had to leave Google to do so.
2. Google cannot buy Twitter or LinkedIn or Quora (or all three!) because Google's culture has no respect for successful social applications. YouTube's office is still far from the Google campus to avoid the toxic attitude described by a former Orkut employee, "[Google has] an environment that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility, and I'm pretty sure this viewpoint was shared all the way up the chain of command to the founders."
3. Google cannot focus group its way to successful social applications. Henry Ford opined, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

And three reasons why Google should be concerned:

1. Facebook serves 3 billion LIKE buttons a day, serves one-sixth of all U.S. ads, hasmore traffic than Google or the next 99 sites combined, has 100 million mobile users and five times as many web users, and when it launches a Facebook search engine, it will be the second biggest search engine in the world right out of the gate.
2. Twitter's search engine is bigger than Bing and Yahoo combined. Not only is Twitter doing 800 million searches a day, but apparently they're the fastest growing search engine in the U.S.
3. Bing actually seems to have a better relationship with Facebook and Twitter, and in addition, Bing has gone out of its way to partner with Amazon as well as Appleand its soon-to-be-100-million iPhone OS devices.

So... Now would be a good time for a bold move from Google. YouTube is the only social application Google has ever bought that was and remains #1 in its category. What can we learn from that?

1. Google FAILED going head-to-head against YouTube. Buying YouTube in retrospect was a great idea, and keeping YouTube separate from Google HQ was a great idea.
2. Google FAILED in acquiring and integrating other social products. Blogger, Picasa, JotSpot, Dodgeball, Jaiku. None are their category leaders now. Some are dead. Why?
3. Google FAILED to create Google Contacts that are easy to edit and integrated with Facebook and Twitter. Why then should we believe Google can do something simple, entertaining, and interesting with Google Profiles?

Google is filled with adrenaline now that Facebook and Twitter are juggernauts in social advertising and searching. Google is ready to fight, but social applications are about loving not fighting. Google is from Mars, and social applications are from Venus. Anyone know someone who can build a rocket ship so Google can ride to the world of social applications?

My advice for Google's Trinity is to put on your thinking caps about social apps. Think really carefully about what you need, and why. Look to the glorious words of jwz:

"Social software" is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

And for all us lobsters, I just have one thing to say: "Yeah, you're all gonna be okay."

Source - Gizmodo

Six Ways Brands Should Think of Social Media as a Party

Just because you’re at the party, doesn’t mean anyone wants to engage with you. At the social media party, as in life, attendance isn’t sufficient to garner popularity. The following explains the nuances of social media interaction which can transform your brand from wallflower to rock star.

I've been using this analogy for some time now and it seems to resonate with everyone who hears it. If you are a brand looking to connect with consumers through Social Media, think of Social Media as one giant party. Here's why:

1) Social Media is one giant party.

Let's set the stage.

Imagine the social web as one huge cocktail party. In one corner of the room, a group of moms are talking about education and parenting issues. In another corner of the room, a group of recent college grads laugh over Will Ferrell's latest movie. Everywhere you turn, different groups of people are enjoying themselves, sharing stories, discussing current events, pop culture, trends, etc. All the groups are mingling, making new "friends," and the most influential people in the room have the most "followers" hanging on their every word.

Sound familiar?

Social Media is a true reflection of society today--and what better representation of social behavior, fragmentation, hierarchy and influence than a giant party?

2) Lead with "people stories," not "product stories."

Marketing has taught us to always lead with our "product story": distilling our message down to a "unique selling proposition" and driving it home with features and benefits. As a brand marketer, your first priority has always been to show or sell your product. And it works well--if you only have 30 seconds to sell your product through a message that's blasted out into the world. However, if you walk into that party and the first thing you do is try to sell your product, nobody will talk to you and you certainly won't get invited back.

You walk into the party and head for the group of moms in the corner. If you interrupt their conversation to talk about your "new and improved hydrating face cream" or your "ultra-absorbent paper towels," chances are you will alienate the group or simply be laughed out of the room.

To become the life of the party you can't lead with product stories; you need to lead with people stories. If you want that group of moms or those recent grads to listen to you, you need to enter the conversation on their terms. You have to start a dialogue with something that is important to them, not what's important to you. Only then will you have earned the right to talk about yourself. People need to like you first, then they'll ask what you do for a living.

This means it's critical to have the right "opening line"--a way to enter the conversation that starts with the consumer's agenda but can seamlessly migrate to your agenda.

3) Use content to make connections.

The right story, joke or anecdote at a party goes a long way, and social media is no different. If those moms are talking about parenting issues, turn them onto a parenting expert who can help with their problems. If those grads are laughing over Will Ferrell's latest movie, give them something similar to laugh about or recommend another movie for them to see.

The right content will allow you to make instant connections. And that means you need to think of your fellow party goers as audiences rather than consumers. Like a publisher, you need to help or entertain first; showing or selling comes later.

4) Embrace fragmentation.

Just like a party, social media is made up of many groups. People with different interests, different likes and different dislikes. This means that you can't use the same opening line with moms that you used with those college grads.

Every audience is unique and you should speak directly to each group. This means you may need a few different "opening lines" if you are going after different audiences. In the same way you would "work the room" at a party, the way to get scale in social media is to break your audience into segments. As you walk around having conversations with different groups of people, you naturally adjust your talking points based on who you are speaking with. At the end of the night you will have met everyone at the party; if you are interesting, relevant and sociable, people will remember you and be willing to learn more about you (and your products).

5) Leverage the influencer.

Have you ever walked into a party where you didn't know anyone? It's not impossible to meet people, but you certainly have to work hard at it.

Now, what if you walked into the party with the most popular kid in school? You get instant credibility, everyone in the room knows who you are and talking to them becomes that much easier.

Simply put, leveraging the right influencers makes you "cool by association." You don't have to work as hard meeting people, you get to talk about yourself more and instead of trying to figure how to start a conversation with people, they will come talk to you.

6) Engagement trumps impressions.

Brands are obsessed with impressions. For them, it's always been about reach and frequency. Well, when it comes to social media, the name of game is engagement, not impressions.

If you walked into a party and just stood against the back wall, people might "see" you standing there. You may even make eye-contact with a few of those moms you so desperately want to talk to--but what good will that do?

You could go to 1,000 parties and stand against the wall at each one of them. Eventually people may recognize you--but they won't know anything about you and there's still no basis for them to have a relationship with you.

The Social Media Party is not about making eye-contact (impressions); it's about shaking hands (engagements). It's about meeting people, talking to them, sharing with them--it's about engaging with them and participating in the conversation.

Final Thought

The party analogy is a whimsical way of saying that brands can't treat Social Media the same way they treat other mediums. For the first time in history, brands are trying to navigate a two-way channel of communication. This means they can't talk at consumers. Instead, they need to engage with audiences. Social media requires a value exchange between the consumer and the brand.

So when it comes to developing successful social media campaigns and programs:

1) Pretend like you're getting dressed up for a giant party.
2) Lead with people stories, not your product stories.
3) Use content to make connections.
4) Try to align yourself with the "in crowd" so people will want to talk to you.
5) Don't just make eye-content, shake hands with the people you want to meet.

Source - AdRants

Facebook & The Continued Decentralization Of The Internet

The structure of the Internet resembles a collection of walled gardens. Organically, countless website and platforms such as Twitter have emerged yet there remains little interaction between these individual “walled gardens”. The tides of changes are upon us. Recent changes to Facebook have greatly accelerated the erosion of these walled gardens furthering the decentralization of the Internet. Take a peek at the changes Facebook released at the F8 conference.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his pal from the recently acquired Friendfeed, Bret Taylor, showed off a whole bunch of new features that'll impact your entire Web experience today at the f8 developers conference. Here are the highlights.

• The death of Facebook Connect. No longer do you have to deal with a middleman forcing you to confirm Facebook Connect every time you want to use your Facebook login at another site or service. Facebook is moving to a one-click authorization, so once you're logged in to Facebook, you don't need to log in again and again and again. That leads into the next point...

• Open Graph. The number of sites that use Facebook and Facebook's collected data in extensive, interesting ways is about to skyrocket. So once you're logged in to Facebook, if you go to Pandora, you can see what your friends are listening to, what they like, and see recommendations from other users with similar taste. And it goes both ways--you can "like" an artist on Pandora, and that artist will show up in the "Favorite Music" section of your Facebook profile. And that's just one of 30 partners who will be part of the launch, including other online services like Yelp and IMDb, news organizations like ESPN, and Microsoft--which is going to offer Web-editable Office 2010 documents (read more about Microsoft's Docs here).

• Incredibly easy plug-ins. Since the new API is so easy to integrate into any site (it's just a few lines of HTML), you'll start seeing Facebook integration everywhere. Go to CNN, which has already integrated the new global Facebook authentication across its site, and you can "like" a story, which posts it to your Facebook stream. But you can also see a little pop-up showing what your friends have liked. This is different than the deep-diving Pandora integration. It's the easiest integration Facebook has ever offered, which makes it much more likely to spread fast.

• The social bar. Remember Digg's floating toolbar that appeared on lots of different sites, allowing you to use Digg services from anywhere? If you do, it's probably because you hated it--Digg eliminated it after a torrent of anger toward the bar from Digg users. In that proud tradition, Facebook is introducing their own floating toolbar, which gives access to services like Facebook Chat and friend updates. You will likely start seeing this on poorly designed sites soon, with backlash to follow.

• Credits. Facebook will start using a single currency, to be called Facebook Credits, for all in-Facebook purchases. This is likely to be a bit of a pain, since the currency will have to be converted from real currency like dollars or euros. Microsoft used a similar idea with its "Microsoft Points" currency, to general consternation, although it had some success with the system on Xbox Live.

• Location was a no-show. Despite the wide assumption that Facebook would roll out an oh-so-trendy location-based service (a la Foursquare or Twitter), there was no such announcement. Facebook even teased us with fun little check-in points via the RFID chips in our press badges, but it was not indicative of any new location-based features. Zuckerberg declined to speak in much detail about future location plans, except to confirm that it is being worked on.

Source - Fast Company

Location Location Location

Social media has drastically changed how we interact and communicate online but its impact on the offline world has been comparatively small. As social media continues to evolve, you should anticipate greater correlation between online and offline communication. As the following article explains, location is the missing link between the two worlds. Although location based services are far from gaining widespread acceptance, they will surely be prevalent in the coming years.

Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside. Where you never see another human being. This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in.

Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. The more time your spending on their sites, the more ads you’re being served. The more ads being served, the more money they are earning. No matter why these sites originally started, or what features they add, that is, quite literally, the bottom line. They’d have us strapped to a chair with our eyes taped open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, if they could. The only difference is that we’d have a contraption on our arms to allow us to click on the ads being shown every so often.

Thankfully, we don’t quite live in that world yet. And there are a couple factors pushing us the opposite way from that. Mobile devices are the biggest one. But even that is still just a screen. You may not be chained to a desk using it, but as plenty of people with an iPhone will tell you, you may end staring at this screen even more than you do a desktop or laptop monitor throughout a day. But there’s another up and coming factor working against our screen slavery: Location.

Social networking has been perhaps the most popular trend on the Internet over the past several years. At first the term was ironic. “Social networking” was anything but social in the traditional sense. But over time, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that you can do social activities such as play games, collaborate on work, and talk, online. And in fact, many times it’s even more convenient than doing it in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.

Ever since the term was born, countless people have debated the implications of taking social interactions virtual. At one point or another I’m sure that it has been said that it would be both the downfall of mankind, and the thing that would bring the planet together. The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.

If you’ll allow me to be embarrassingly obvious for a second: Sitting in a chat room all day, even if all of your friends are in it as well, is not the same as being in the same physical room with them. Even if you all are having great discussions in the chat room, and not saying a word when you’re hanging out with one another, there is just something that’s different. Something that social networking will never be able to replace.

That’s where location comes in. It has the power to be the bridge between social networking and actual social interaction. We’re already seeing the very early signs of this with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude, to varying degrees.

To the masses, most of these services still either don’t make sense, or are way too creepy. Social networks used to be thought of in the same way. This will change.

The people who do use these services likely have at least one story about a situation where a friend saw where they were, or where they planned to be, and showed up to meet up. Some have many of these stories. And for some of us in cities where these services are popular, this happens just about everyday. And it’s really quite amazing.

Is it annoying if a friend shows up if you want to be alone or don’t want to see them? Of course. But that’s why it’s important that you’re in control of what location information you are sending out. Is it creepy if a stranger shows up to meet you somewhere? Of course, but that’s why privacy settings are so important.

Make no mistake, there are hurdles to location-based services gaining widespread acceptance. But the upside of it far outweighs the downside. And with that the case, these types of services are ripe to take off.

At the core level, using a social network to facilitate actual social interaction just seems to make sense. Though I poked fun at them in the intro of this post, don’t think that Facebook doesn’t recognize this. In some ways they already do this through their popular events offering. But anything they do with location — which it should be no surprise, they are working on — will go far beyond this. When you have a social graph with over 300 million users and you add a realtime location component into the mix, it’s going to change things.

I remember the first time I used sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster (back in the day) to find people that I went to high school with who I hadn’t talked to in years. It was a little weird, but also in some ways exciting. Imagine that transfered into the real world. Maybe you’re in a city with a person you went to high school with, but hadn’t talked to in years. It’s unlikely that the two of you were ever run into each other randomly, but maybe you can get pinged by Facebook location when they’re nearby. Maybe neither of you want to meet, and that’s fine. But maybe you do.

The word we keep hearing over and over again for such situations is “serendipity,” but really it’s not. None of this needs to be left up to chance. It’s simply an extension of social networking into the real world.

Another social network, Twitter, is already in hot pursuit of such functionality. Any day now, the service will turn on its geolocation service which will both allow you to send tweets with your location tacked on, and allow you to pass in location information from other services, like Foursquare. As a service with tens of millions of users, Twitter will be the first massive test of location as an extension of social networking.

It may be a while before users start truly taking advantage of it since it is an opt-in feature. But eventually, I believe we’ll see more and more users opt-in to be able to use third-party clients like Birdfeed which let them choose which tweets to attach their location to and let people know where they are.

And beyond individual user data, this location data will be very interesting as an aggregate. Undoubtedly people will use things like Twitter’s geolocation APIs to make services that can show where people are flocking to in realtime. This is the next step for what services like SocialGreat are doing with location data, showing hot spots in towns. And we already know that Twitter is planning to use the data to tailor its trending topics to show the hot things being tweeted about in specific places.

Social networking up until this point has been great. But it’s also really a bit odd. The core concept is still to gather your friends in a virtual construct, while the companies behind these constructs convince you to hang out in them as much as possible. Instead, they should be using the interesting social data they have to help you connect in other places as well. That’s what makes Facebook Connect is so powerful. But that doesn’t extend to the real world yet. But with location, it could. And that’s exciting.

Source - Tech Crunch

The "Twitter" Of Twenty Ten?

You like “earned media”. You look for ways to leverage new media opportunities. If that’s the case, you also should be keeping an eye out on Foursquare, the latest rage on the scene. Foursquare is like a location based social game that asks people to “check in” their whereabouts. Discover how six ways business are integrating their brand into this rapidly growing platform.

After a spectacular debut at South by Southwest last March, Foursquare is taking over the world city by city, gobbling up users like Facebook in 2006.

Such viral growth, combined with the GPS app’s focus on brick and mortar shops and venues, has made Foursquare a fertile advertising medium for many businesses.

Here are a few ways businesses are already making use of Foursquare. (It must be noted however that other competitors like Gowalla can and do provide similar potential and functionality, but none have experienced quite as sharp a growth spurt as Foursquare.)

1. Digital Punch Cards
Foursquare tracks your GPS location and allows you to “check in” to nearby venues in order to leave tips for friends, rack up points or win badges, or become the “mayor” or king of the coffee shop (library, nightclub, whatever). Some businesses are giving incentives for people to keep coming back by offering deals like “Check in 10 times and get a free sandwich.”

2. First Check-in Specials

If it’s your first time visiting a certain venue, there may be a treat in store. Some businesses are running specials in order to get Foursquarers to stop by, and they’ll give you anything from a free coffee to 25% off a purchase if you show them your phone. “We offer $2 off any well drink upon your very first check in,” says Elise Oras, social media manager of Del Rey, a tequila bar in Seattle that’s been bent on utilizing the app to its fullest.

3. Secret Coupons

Some businesses are luring Foursquare users to their venues by offering secret coupons that show up when you’re in the area. Foursquare team member Tristan Walker explains, “We’re running a promo now with Fatburger venues in LA. When I’m about to check into a place near one of those venues, I’ll see a drop down that says ‘Special Nearby’ that’ll tell me to head to that Fatburger, check-in and unlock a secret code. When you do check-in, you’ll unlock the code ‘make sure to say burger enlargement please when ordering’ and then you’ll get a free upgrade!” He adds, “It’s stuff like this that gets us excited. The kind of thing that allows brands to engage with customers in interesting ways. It’s been really successful.”

4. To Do Lists

One of the features of the app is that you can write your own list of recommendations for your friends to do around your city.

Some businesses are creating their own to do lists for people that come by their venue. It’s a great way to get people engaged and create a favorable impression on clients.

5. Raffles
A hotel in Amsterdam recently announced a raffle for its smartphone-touting clientele, explains Dennis Crowley, one of Foursquare’s co-founders.

Each user who checked into Foursquare was entered into a raffle for a free dinner and a free night’s stay. This creative promotion came as a surprise to Foursquare itself, says Crowley. “We never imagined some of the things people are doing with Foursquare, but it’s pretty cool.”

6. Mayor Specials

The most infamous example of Foursquare marketing involves the competition embodied by the mayor status. Many venues are offering perks to the user with the mayor’s title, which has sparked further frenzy among users keen on claiming their territory.

“We offer our Mayor a free medium coffee based drink or a Texas beer when they check in,” says J.R. Cohen, general manager of The Coffee Groundz in Houston, Texas. “So far it has caused such a stir between many friends of ours that they are fighting over checkins.”

“We offer an all day happy hour for the Mayor & 1 guest,” Oras adds. “We have had a few mayor battles where literally someone came in for a drink just to steal back the title of Mayor.”

There are certainly more than just six ways a small business can leverage Foursquare and its community of hungry socialites to build a business, brand, or clientele. “Any type of in-store promotion you can conceive we want to make it so Foursquare can run it,” Walker says.

Source - The Next Web

One great thing about new media is discovering all the creative ways marketers are integrating brands into these new environments. Sure it’s easy to jump onto Facebook with a Fan Page but there’s so much more that can be done. One great example is the recent campaign by Ikea. In an effort to drive awareness and brand engagement, Ikea asked consumers to “tag” (behaviour intrinsic to Facebook) their showrooms for the chance to win products. The outcome for Ikea? Thousands of consumers engaging with the brand and organically spreading news about their product.



Source via YouTube

How Online Communities Are Changing The Way We Watch Television

This is another example of the blurring borders between the offline and online world. It’s also great platform for a brand sponsorship. TV shows in the UK are engaging their audience directly into television programming by inviting them into the conversation. By way of Twitter, the audience now has the option to become a part of a richer TV experience. The conversation is out there, it’s up to your to herd it.

Earlier this year we posted a series of examples of online communities in the TV industry. We looked at the way ‘old’ and ‘new’ media combine, how television broadcasters and production companies are working with online media. The examples we chose were all of ways in which online communities can be used to provide an additional set of experiences for a viewer, often after a programme has aired. From Channel Four’s Sexperience online community which supported the Sex Education Show to HGTV’s Rate My Space online community for people to share home improvement photos and tips.

These communities all have one thing in common – they provided an additional set of experiences for a viewer that enhance or extend their experience with the programme. They are for people who enjoy the programme and who want to engage more or find out more.

Things have changed in just a few months – the latest use of online communities for TV programmes is very different. They are now being used to add a social dimension to the actual viewing experience. Using online community tools to enhance a viewer’s experience while they are watching the actual show. We’ve written before about how two live shows in the UK have been experimenting with this use of social media tools: Live TV and real-time chat: X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. But a new example from the UK shows how this use of online communities to enhance TV programmes is not restricted to live programmes.

Come Dine with Me is a popular cooking competition show on Channel Four in the UK. The concept is simple but addictive: four contestants host a dinner party for the other contestants on four subsequent evenings. Each host is rated by the other contestants and the person with the highest score wins. It’s a show that has always attracted a lot of discussions online as a quick Twitter search shows. Channel Four has now capitalised on this by hosting its own discussions on its site whilst the show is on air.

The Come Dine With Me ‘Play Along’ community shows how you can harness the conversations that are going on already and also enhance the viewer experience. The discussions in Twitter had always been of three kinds:

1. People giving their own ratings of what is happening on the show – saying the score they would have given for a particular dinner party
2. People commenting on the food or the ambiance at the parties
3. People talking about the contestants – who they like and why, and who they are less keen on

The Channel Four online community now allows people to do this in real time and on their site whilst the show is on air. They allow you to score each contestant against a set of criteria (and see the average score given by your fellow community members). They allow you to chat about what’s happening on screen and the host of the chat prompts you to discuss what is happening right now.

This is a great example of online communities really adding value to a viewers experiences in three ways:

1. They allow you to interact with other viewers who are sharing the same experience and who are interested in the same things
2. They are add a new dimension to the programme – letting you take part in the contest to
3. They have the benefit of being hosted by the same people who are broadcasting (or producing) the programme – you feel like you have inside access to information

The way we watch television is changing. Online communities are changing it. They add a new, social dimension to actual viewing experience. In time more and more programmes will be accompanied by online discussions and debates in this way. It will become the norm for many people to sit in front of two screens rather than just one.

Source - Fresh Networks

The Next Facebook

Facebook still reins king of the Canadian social network scene but there are a few players on the horizon worth keeping an eye on. Bebo is said to be a hybrid of Facebook and MySpace platforms. One of the leading features of the network is the video streaming and sharing capabilities. The following is a short synopsis of the network.

MySpace isn’t the only site riding the social networking trend: rival Bebo is growing like a weed. Bebo even looks set to overtake MySpace in the UK market, according to the Guardian. (Nonetheless, the Guardian published a similar article last month claiming that FaceParty was the biggest threat to MySpace in the UK, so take it with a pinch of salt). From the site:

"Bebo is the next generation social networking site where members can stay in touch with their College friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out. From previous experience, the people who work at Bebo have learned a lot about what makes social networks fun, and believe that with Bebo they’ve taken social networking to the next level."

Essentially, Bebo is MySpace meets Facebook. It also provides video sharing (via VideoEgg widgets) and built-in Skype presence. While the designs may be more controlled than MySpace pages, most of Bebo’s success seems to arise from network effects - users join Bebo because everyone else is using the site. By the same token, Bebo may have trouble expanding to other markets, since these networks can be self-reinforcing.

Source - Mashables

Social Map Of The World

Facebook is the talk of the town in Canada but does it have the same appeal in other parts of the world? In a visual format, the following link depicts the popularity of different social networking platforms across the globe.

Just an interesting infographic that shows the top social networks across the world, courtesy of Le Monde. You'll want to click and expand the graphic or click over to the source to see the details.

A couple of interesting things for me: (1) Friendster, the social network first mover that is so widely considered a failure here in the US that its brand name is sometimes used as a verb meaning 'to be lose your lead and be trounced by a competitor who learns from your mistakes and does what you do smarter and better,' is still tops in Asia; (2) two of the top properties -- Gaia Online here in the states and Cyworld in Asia -- are not mere MySpace-style social networks; both incorporate virtual world elements, hinting that Second Life or no Second Life, consumers (especially youth and teens) are moving toward virtual worlds to interact with one another.

Source - Greg Verdino