Marketing Technology » foursquare

Location Based Services Infographic Review

iamreff — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:23:04 +0000

This Mashable infographic on location based services fascinates me in some respects:

What’s surprising:

90% of LBS Early Adopters were using Facebook Places, yet Facebook down played LBS. It took Places off the market but reintroduced check-ins by integrating it into a social status. “Checking into with ”.

What’s not surprising:

Early adopters are much more likely to use LBS apps for the social elements than mass consumers
Mass consumers are much less interested in being the “mayor” of something. I always supposed early adopters were more “type A”.
Larger chains are investing more readily in LBS, yet app users are advocating for the small mom & pop stores
Interest in daily discount apps greatly exceeds interest in LBS apps

May poll wrap: Location Based Services: Fad or Future

iamreff — Tue, 31 May 2011 12:14:30 +0000

On Foursquare I have: 1,700 checkins, 41 badges and 11 mayorships. I’ve met new friends using the app and I keep in touch with many other friends through viewing and commenting on their checkins. Nonetheless it still feels like early days with LBS. New applications continue to come to market, existing applications are adding checkin capabilities and LBS vendors are adding new features. Still there’s a lingering, “what’s it all about?” feeling.

Poll Results

Interestingly the poll showed a dead heat. 50% think Location Based Services are a fad and 50% think there is a future for LBS. It will be interesting to try this poll again in 12 months.

photo credit renjith krishnan @ freedigitalphotos.net

4 Items for Brogan’s “Managing Social Presence”

iamreff — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:18:22 +0000

Recently Chris Brogan did a post on Managing Social Presence where he ended the post by asking want others want in a presence management dashboard. I’m adding my list of wants to those offered by those in the comments to Chris’ post. As an avid user of Hootsuite, I use its functionality as the jump off point. I’m thinking about what else I’d like in a presence manager.

1. Manage inbound & outbound streams (don’t just publish to other networks)

As many (including Suzanne Vara, Charlie_Screendip) suggested, not only do I want to be able to publish to multiple souces, but I want to be able to aggregate social presence into a single interface. More clearly, a lot of services allow to one to publish to multiple services, but I haven’t found a service that can analyze the content in all your streams and integrate them based on purpose, author, topic and relevance. The first person to do that is going to be HUGE. Know someone doing that? Drop me a note @iamreff.

2. Manage followers better

I’m trying to be better at curating at lists, but its a pain. I recently learned of a tool called Fourmulists and I’m trying it out as a way to dynamically organize my followers and find those with similar interests. It’s great that a multitude of niche products are sprouting up, I just wish they could be included in a single interface (as I’m sure they will as the space matures).

3. Provide Relevant info

Like many, I rely on social networks (especially Twitter) for breaking news. But some news I care about and some I don’t. I use Google Alerts, socialmention, Twitter searches and other mechanisms to find conversations relative to my interest areas. This needs to become easier. I want to be made aware of topics that are influencing people that influence me and my followers. Again based on purpose, author, topic and relevance. Revelant stuff to the top, irrelevant stuff to the bottom.

4. Relevant alerts

Once I can manage my social presence as described above, I want sensible and granular controls over notification. Notifications include UI, e-mail, SMS and device integration (vibrates, LED changes, chirps). An example of notification done poorly? Foursquare ping. There’s no relevance.

What tools do you use?

Like Chris, I look forward to a platform that makes managing my social presence easier. Until that happens, what are your tips and techniques?

Foursquare Ping needs context

iamreff — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:16:03 +0000

I’ve been evaluating Foursquare’s Ping feature that I recently uncovered in the Android release. In this post I’ll describe Foursquare’s Ping, what I like and what I would change.

Foursquare’s Ping

The problem with most LBS apps is that checking in is a solo event. Yes, you can notify friends of your location via the in app notification and also via posts Twitter/Facebook. But those are pull based actions for your friends. Your friends need to constantly check their apps to see if you’ve checked in.

Ping takes a step in the right direction by turning that notification into a push event for your friends. Now instead of having to constantly check their phones to check your status, they can wait for a signal. On Android phones the notification is a LED status light change and, optionally, a vibrate.

What I like about Ping

Here is exactly why Ping is great. How many times have you been at a restaurant/bar/club/trade event and you must interrupt your conversations to see if the rest of your gang has showed up yet? How many times have you observed people talking to each other but they spend half their time checking their phones for status updates? With Ping you can just wait for your phone to vibrate to tell you your friends have arrived. It’s a more refined and polite experience.

So what does Ping do well? I like that Ping notifications can be set at an individual level. That way the user has the capability to leave on notifications for their “best” friends and turn it off for others. Examples of people you might want to turn off include social acquaintances or co-workers. Proximity to people in the same office is pretty much a given – you don’t need a notification for that.

What I would change with Ping

There are a few nit-picky things that I’ll save for another day, but the big change that needs to happen is that Ping notifications need to be contextually based on several factors such as:

The level of friendship (besties/acquaintences/coworkers)
The setting (work/home/weekends)
The relative proximity (block/town/state)

The implementation could be simple. Just let me tag the level of friendship with my Foursquare friends: besties/acquaintences/coworkers. With that info and a basic logic engine, Foursquare could do some neat stuff. Imagine the following options:

[] At work, only ping me if a friend from out of state checks into a nearby location

[] On the weekend, ping me if a coworker checks into my town (avoidance mode!)

[] At home, ping me if out of town besties/acquantences checkin somewhere nearby

[] If I’m out of my state, ping me if any friends check in the same town

In summary

The ability to receive push LBS notifications is much needed. Ping is a step in the right direction, but its still a blunt instrument. There is opportunity to refine the experience by providing context to the checkin.

The Social Media Anxiety Epidemic

iamreff — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:43:26 +0000

In the past two months I’ve seen an anxeity at both technical and marketing conferences. Many attendees share a similar affliction – Social Media Anxiety. People fear that they are behind the social media curve. They fear their competitors are ahead of them and that they are in “catch up” mode. Conference dinner discussions continue to center on, “what is your social media strategy?”

While we may be at different levels of social media awareness, no one has a lock on “what to do” – things are moving too fast. Social media continues to morph and we’re all in catch up mode – always. New technology keeps popping up and we continue to evaluate and make go/no-go decisions. For example, how many people have figured out how to leverage Foursquare/Gowalla/Yelp for their brand?

Don’t freak. Don’t fear. Do…

Define your social media goals focusing on listening and message
Put together your social media team
Define your strategy
Try, test and measure
Keep adapting