Being Buff: Marketing the social economy

The mobile social tsunami continues to build. The latest indication being this week’s interview with Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of the super popular social media blog, Mashable. The interview was done by financial giant, Bloomberg, at this year’s South By Southwest interactive conference – the mother of all social media conferences held annually in Austin, Texas. If it’s launched (as the mobile social network Foursquare was last year), at SXSW (the conference’s Twitter hashtag), it’s going to be big – at least for a little while…with social media early adopters. Cashmore said the hot topic this year was the “faceoff” between Foursquare and competitor Gowalla (seems Gowalla won as it beat out Foursquare for the Best Mobile Site award). When asked how businesses could monitise “lo- so” apps (location social), Cashmore said Foursquare already has deals with companies allowing them to offer free stuff to people who check in near one of their locations (a bar offering a free drink to someone checking in somewhere near by bar for example). This got me thinking about the various deals I’ve heard Foursquare has signed with companies in its attempt to monetise its growing network. In the last couple of months I’ve heard about Foursquare deals with:

* Metro local daily papers to deliver local news to people relevant to places where they check in.

* Bravo! Television to provide special badges to people checking in at locations related to Bravo! TV shows.

*New York Times – In conjunction with the Winter Olympics, The Times offered tips to Foursquare users on restaurants, attractions, shopping and nightlife in Vancouver, Whistler and the nearby town of Squamish. The tips were pulled from The Times’s travel and entertainment coverage. Foursquare users who checked in at one of the suggested venues earned a New York Times Olympics badge.
Does mobile social media fit your objectives and strategy? If so, get going by checking out these great 9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing in this Mashable article by Shane Snow and please leave a comment about what you’re up to.

Tags: lo-so, Location, Mobile
Posted in Location, Mobile | No Comments »

If I ever wanted an excellent example of a project that demonstrates putting strategy and objectives before tactics this is it.
Grameen’s AppLab works with Africans to deeply understand their information challenges and develops mobile phone applications to meet those challenges. Some of the apps they have developed include:
* the Farmer’s Friend app that gives farmers tips on how to make things like pesticides from local materials instead of buying them, saving some of them enough money to buy land;
* an app to provide people with info on HIV and AIDS – information that many are reluctant to get in person; and
* an app that tells farmers the market value of their crop so they can challenge middle men who try to price gouge them.
No “social media experts” here telling farmers they need to be on Twitter and Facebook “because everyone else is”.
This is listening, learning and recommending appropriate solutions.

Oh yeah, and it’s co-sponsored by Uganda’s leading telecommunications company, MTN and another little company called Google.

Have you got a story about how appropriate use of technology is making a difference? If so, please leave a commment.

Check out a video about AppLab.

Tags: Africa, developingcountries, Mobile
Posted in Mobile | 1 Comment »

I just experienced another example of the value of smart phones – this time, as a learning tool.
While biking with my 5-yr-old to school this mornig, we passed an embassy (of which there are lots in Ottawa). On the lawn was this flag:

.
My kid asked: what country is that from? When we got to his school I pulled out my iPhone and Googled “flag with yellow on bottom and blue on top” and the first result was the Wikipedia entry about the flag of the Ukraine.
Problem solved. Daddy and munchkin smarter. Bonding moment. Oh, and then to top it off, I did this blog post on my iPhone. That’s value.
Do you have a story to share about the value of your smart phone? Please share by leaving a comment.

Tags: iPhone, Mobile
Posted in Mobile, iPhone | 2 Comments »

One of the most important uses for my iPhone at work is to get things done despite the IT security firewall. I’ll explain.
Part of what I do at work is explore new social media tools. That involves signing up for new tools and services that are often in the beta testing phase and may not be around for long. For these kinds of things I prefer to sign up using my personal email rather than work. But, because my personal email (Gmail in my case) is blocked at work, I would have to wait to go home to sign up for such things. Enter iPhone. With my iPhone at my side, I sign up using my work computer but entering my personal email. I then simply access my personal email on my iPhone to click the activation email that most new services send you to activate your account. I can then access the activated tool from work. This is a huge time saver and yet another reason why everyone will have a smartphone as soon as they make them more affordable. What’s your strategy?

Posted in Mobile, Smart phones | No Comments »

Just got back from Podcamp Toronto 2010 which was a great event once again. Like last year I facilitated a discussion on mobile social media and wanted to get that up. I’ll do a longer #pcto2010 blog post later this week.

Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (25.6MB)

Posted in #pcto2010, Location, Mobile | 4 Comments »

This is a new post series aimed at showing the many uses of smartphones that will lead to everyone having one within the next one to two years.
On my way to Podcamp Toronto I used my iPhone to do the following:
* check in at, and add places in Foursquare and Gowalla.
* check gmail
* check out Podcamp T.O. tweets from Podcamp Toronto attendees, and only those, labelled #pcto2010 using TweetDeck
* listen to music
* check T.O. weather
* use Maps to find out how far the bus station is from where I’m staying
* use it as a flashlight so I didn’t have to turn on lights at my friends’ place who have a young child with sleep issues
* use the alarm clock feature to wake me up from a well deserved nap that I will now take!

Tags: #pcto2010, iPhone, smartphone
Posted in Mobile, Smart phones | No Comments »

For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to tag places in the new mobile social network Foursquare.  Tags are labels that you give to content on the net, like tagging a picture of you and the family “cottage” or “summer09″ or tagging a blog post about skateboarding tricks “skateboard: or “rad”. The tags may or not be visible on the page – but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that they’re visible to search engines like Google.

My interest in tagging places in Foursquare was the tags being visible to Foursquare’s search engine. 

Here’s a concrete example of why this matters….

I was at a local Bridgehead coffee shop that sells only fair trade, organic teas and coffees.  I searched for “Bridgehead” on the Foursquare website, found it and tagged it “fair trade” and “fairtrade” (never know how people will spell it). Now when someone near that Bridgehead searches for “fair trade” in Foursquare that Bridgehead shows up. Before I tagged it it wouldn’t.

This is the power of location-aware mobile – especially for impulse based products like food. When someone wants it, they search for it and find the nearest place to get it.

Here’s what the Foursquare page with the tagging feature looks like:

Tag – you’re it.

Tags: Bridgehead, Location, Mobile
Posted in Location, Mobile, Tagging | No Comments »

Local public sector social media expert, Mike Kujawski, wrote a great post a few weeks ago called Why you need to focus on mobile right now.

In the post Mike describe, among other things, how he used his iPhone and its apps to solve a number of recent business problems. One of his central points was that, contrary to popular belief, the iPhone is a business phone just like the Blackberry and people should start viewing it that way. If people start doing what Mike suggests it will be another step toward solidifying the unique selling point of the iPhone and smart phones like it: their comprehensiveness. By that, I mean their ability to do everything we need, replace many of our current devices – and become devices we hadn’t imagined we could have.

Some recent examples from my own life:

• Today my son and I had some time to kill between games at his hockey tournament in the suburbs. Like most suburbs, we were near lots of stores so I took out my iPhone and checked out the built in Notes app. I use it to make location-based to do lists (i.e @grocery store, @hardware store). Since it’s always with me, when ever I pass one of the locations I pull it out and check the lists and pick up whatever I have noted. I did this and knocked a bunch of things off the list;
• One of things on the list was getting some money from a Royal Bank machine to pay a hockey debt for the team. I used the RBC Finder app (that Mike mentioned in his post) to find the nearest RBC banking machine;
• When I was getting my kids skates sharpened one night this week his little brother kept himself occupied by working his addition and subtraction with the Kids Math app;
• I used Maps to find my way to the arena where the tournament was happening;
• I took pictures of the boys and effortlessly emailed them to their mom and grandma;
• I used TweetDeck to receive and respond to a request to record a social media event I’ll be attending this week;
• I downloaded Gary Vaynerchuk’s audiobook “Crush It!” from the iTunes store; and
• I listened to podcasts on my morning run.

The real magic of the iPhone, however, is not in the individual apps – but how seamlessly many of them work together, especially to share things. I can easily email photos, videos, tweets or contacts at the touch of a thumb and then return to what I was doing. I can take a phone call while listening to a podcast and pick up the podcast where I left off when I finish my call.

All of this functionality makes the iPhone an all-in-one device that, as it gets cheaper, will fuel the growth that saw the number of Canadian wireless customers with smartphones increase from 25 to 32 per cent from October 2008 to October 2009 (JD Power and Associates 2009 Canadian Wireless Customer Satisfaction Study).

Is mobile is appropriate for your business and, if so, what’s your strategy?

Posted in Mobile, iPhone | No Comments »

It seems like not a day goes by that I don’t hear a reference to how the mobile social network Foursquare is growing in popularity. Today it was a tweet by Jeremiah Owyang,  “See how mobile social network FourSquare struck deals with Media and Zagat http://bit.ly/9a4z4u Retail, Media, CPG should pay attention.” (Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/jowyang/status/8850494854).

I’ve been playing with Foursquare for a couple of weeks and I understand the excitement. So I thought I’d share five reasons why I think Foursquare will be the next Twitter, at least in terms of popularity.

But first a short explanation of Foursquare and how it works (at least how the iPhone version does).

Foursquare is a application designed for mobile devices that gives you a list of places near you as soon as you open it on your mobile device. You can add tips about the places or add new places or check-in at places by clicking “Check In”. This tells your Foursquare friends (people you have friended on Foursquare similar to friending on Facebook) where you are. Those basics, combined with a couple of other neat features, mean Foursquare is heading for killer app status fast. Here’s why:

1. It’s really easy to use.

This is crucial and one of the keys to Twitter’s success.

2. It’s location based.

Foursquare uses smartphones’ GPS feature to tell you useful things about places nearby.

3. It’s social.

You and your friends can tell each other where you are and share tips about places.

4. It uses and respects the wisdom of the crowd.

It let’s people be content creators by adding tips about places.

5. It’s just plain fun.

Foursquare is like a game. When you check in at new places or add new ones you collect points or “badges”. The ever expanding list of badges include Adventurer (10 checkins at different venues), Explorer (25 checkins), Superstar (50 checkins), Gym Rat (10 gym trips in a month), Photogenic (checking in at five places with a photobooth), and Player Please (checking in with 3 members of the opposite sex). You can suggest a badge if the one you’d like doesn’t exist.

If you’ve checked in at a place more than anyone else you become the Mayor of that place and get a mayor badge. But watch out – if someone else checks in more than you can get tossed from office.

Foursquare is in beta so it still has some issues, like not being able to assign tags to places, but with the number of users growing steadily Foursquare’s creators will be getting lots of feedback so issues like this should be fixed quickly. And once they work out all the kinks Foursquare will be coming to a mobile device near you.

Posted in Location, Mobile | No Comments »

Sometimes I can’t decide what blows me away more, my iPhone or the blogging platform WordPress. Well I just installed a WordPress plugin WPtouch iPhone Theme that makes my blog mobile friendly when viewed on an iPhone or Blackberry Storm and the answer is clear: both are amazing. The iPhone version shows each post in nice, big, clear text with links at the bottom to comment on the post, email it, tweet it, or post it to a news sharing site like Digg or Reddit. I can view posts by category and search by keyword. Everything works fine except the tweeting which only works with certain Twitter apps like Twitterific and didn’t even work with them. Still it’s pretty smooth.
Please check it out and tell me what you think – especially if you have a Blackberry Storm.

Tags: Mobile
Posted in Blogs, Mobile | No Comments »