our social web: news and opinion from John Johnston on the state of the social media.
It’s hard to believe that YouTube is now 5 years old. Although the domain was apparently registered in February 2005, this was the first video, posted on April 23, 2005:
It’s not a very exciting video, or very funny, considering it’s in the comedy category. Hey that’s YouTube for you, and the internet in general for that matter. You take the good with the bad but it’s all there. In fact, YouTube now serves more than 1 billion videos per day!
If you’ve just downloaded the new update to Tweetie 2, (iTunes link) you’ll have noticed the “surprise!” they mention in the update feature notes. This will no doubt be the last update before the app becomes Twitter for iPhone, after Twitter bought Tweetie from Atelbits last month.
The surprise is a slot machine game that appears every time you drag all the way down to refresh the tweets.
If you win the game, you get a message saying “Coming Soon, Tweetie Will Be Twitter For iPhone, Look For The Next App Update”.
Apart form being rather annoying (you can turn it off in settings), I’m not sure what the purpose of adding the game is at this point. I’d say it must have something to do with a fun (well not much) way of delivering various promotions when Twitter takes it over and makes it a free download. Or, is it just a fun way of delivering user tips and info? What do you reckon?
Do you find it annoying enough to want to turn it off or is it ok with you?
In addition to Foursquare attempting to make it easy for small, local businesses to sign up, the location-based service is also directly partnering with a growing number of bigger brands and major media organisations.
The news came recently that Foursquare is now partnering with The Wall Street Journal. The partnership will include daily tips from their restaurant review column, Lunch Box, and three new badges. Earning the badges will involve challenges in New York. For instance, the Banker Badge will require three check-ins within the New York financial district.
Amongst others, the growing number of brands Foursquare has partnered with now includes The New York Times, Bravo TV, History Channel, MTV, VH1, restaurant review service Zagat, Warner Bros., HBO, Condé Nast’s Lucky Magazine, the City of Chicago, Harvard University, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and even Starbucks.
If the partnerships work out well for the brands, businesses keep jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon, and if a lot of smaller businesses start signing up, it might just start to look like Foursquare really has something here. What do you think?
Location based social network Foursquare has launched a new do-it-yourself tool for businesses to register their venues and gain access to a free Foursquare analytics tool. Foursquare’s stated aim is to “encourage people to explore their neighbourhoods and then reward people for doing so”, and presumably to eventually make a lot of money in the process.
This new tool seems to be the beginning of the move to automating the process of signing up businesses. If it really takes off, it’s certainly going to need to be automated. There are a LOT of businesses out there that could end up using this if Foursquare becomes as big as Twitter, or bigger.
On Foursquare, venues now have a “Are you the manager of this business” link.
This link guides you to an easy 2 step business sign-up process. You confirm your business information, which is apparently verified manually by Foursquare. You can then go ahead and create the first Foursquare specials for customers to redeem by checking in repeatedly at the business venue.
In addition, to promote the specials at each business venue, Foursquare says it’s in the process of creating official “foursquare window clings”.
What could be of really good value to the businesses involved are the real-time stats that will be captured and displayed by the analytics tool. The stats will include: most recent visitors, most frequent visitors, the times of the day people check in, total number of unique visitors, and a historgram of check-ins per day – all fairly useful marketing information.
I don’t know about you, but if I were running a small business such as a café, bar or restaurant, I’d be all over this as Foursquare grows, and it seems to be going gangbusters. Apart from the time involved in managing the tool and specials, it’s free, for now.
What do you think of this new tool? Do you think this will work out to be a cracker business model for Foursquare, or not? Is it useful enough for businesses and customers alike?
A post by Loic regarding this Earned vs Paid Media survey by Nielsen and Facebook, caught my eye this morning. This survey was conducted over “800,000 Facebook users and more than 125 individual advertising campaigns from 70 brand advertisers”. They assert that the survey has uncovered new findings that hold important implications for advertisers on the web. Needless to say, the conclusion involves the use of a fair amount of paid Facebook advertising, but let’s put that to one side for now.
So what is the difference between earned and paid media on the web anyway? We could say, as Loic has articulated, that earned media is where a brand is attempting to build a community of real fans itself, by entering the conversation, by engaging with people.
The report itself states that, “the endorsement of a professional reviewer is always good, but study after study has shown that consumers trust their friends and peers more than anyone else when it comes to making a purchase decision.”, and that earned media, ” has to be earned through user engagement and connections between users and brands.”
Indeed, it’s fair to say that most advertisers seek to create and encourage brand advocates. These are people who become champions for their brands and also influence the perceptions and purchasing of the people they come into contact with. The big question that constantly needs to be asked of course is: how do you go about encouraging that to happen on the web?
In his post Loic also points out that it is surprising that Nielson is still talking in terms of “campaigns”, as it’s really now about long–term, daily earned commitment, and that the “buy a campaign to get reach and then move on to the next” model is leading to a dead-end, including in what is called digital or interactive marketing. How are those expensive banner ads really working out for you by the way? How effective are they really?
I’d have to agree about thinking in terms of short term campaigns. I think it takes time to build trust, not just for companies but for individuals as well, and you have to make a real, ongoing commitment to build that trust. It takes time, and must be done with patience and integrity. That’s what relaltionships are really all about, aren’t they?
It has been said a lot that most people are pretty sick of brands trying to talk and shout at them almost everywhere they go – via tv, radio, billboards, in taxis, in lifts, you name it, even on the web.
So you’ve got to be in it for the long haul, and you’ve go to be able to add something of value. You’ve got to really mean it. What is it you can add to the conversation that is not going to annoy me? For instance, if I’m a customer, if I have a problem can you help me fix it? Hey, if you do, I’ll probably tell quite a few thousand people about how helpful you are. If you are just trying to tell me about the latest product you want to sell me right away, meh, I’d rather chat to my friends. However, if one of my friends recommends you to me, yeah, I’m probably going to listen.
