jjprojects: our social web » Foursquare

Is Foursquare about to offer image uploads at last?

John Johnston — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:27:28 +0000

Do these tweets just now from Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley mean Foursquare is about to offer image uploads as part of an app update, at last?

I certainly hope so. I think it really needs it to keep people’s interest up over the longer term. I know he’s said before they have been planning to add the feature. Perhaps now is the time.

Foursquare and Facebook Places: educate me, entertain me, supersize me.

John Johnston — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:42:21 +0000

I thought I’d share a couple of nearby Foursquare offers as a snapshot of what’s going on in the geolocation space, just in my local area. Regular readers will know I’ve written a few other posts about Australian businesses experimenting in the geolocation space.

I see we have the University of Technology, Sydney offering a free movie ticket for the Foursquare Mayor of the UTS Library on a certain day. Interesting new way to encourage students to study? If you come an study at the library regularly, we’ll reward you with some entertainment.

Of course we also have fast food chains starting to offer the “supersize me” types of deals we’re all familiar with.

Never to be outdone, I see that Facebook is now introducing Facebook Deals, which is layered on top of Facebook Places, to provide a similar service to local businesses and users of Facebook.

What kind of offers have you seen in your local area? Anything that’s tempted you yet?

Have you tried Instagram iPhone app for image sharing yet?

John Johnston — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:37:27 +0000

Here’s a little iPhone app I’m now using that I think is pretty cool.

Instagr.am is a new image sharing service (currently just for iPhone) that enables you to take a photo, or use an existing photo from your iPhone photo library, and share it. There is also a decent choice of interesting filters you can quickly apply to each photo and preview before uploading.

I think the really handy things about this service are that it’s really easy to use, and that you can crosspost the images to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr if you so desire – greatly increasing the sharing aspect. You can also locate a photo using Foursquare before you share it. As Foursquare doesn’t yet have image uploads the way Gowalla does, it’s a welcome addition.

It’ll be interesting to see how this service develops, if it develops. Surely they’ll be adding platforms other than iPhone, if they have the funds to do so.

If you’ve used Instagram, what do you think of it? Good enough to keep using? If you haven’t, do check it out.

I’m now using the new Seesmic Desktop 2 app. Here’s why.

John Johnston — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:24:32 +0000

All the social media news right now seems to be about the New Twitter features. I just want to take a moment away from that to say that I’ve now started using the new Seesmic Desktop 2 app on my Mac, for my desktop social networking needs. So far, I’m impressed with it, enough to keep using it on a daily basis.

It has to be said that I do still visit the individual social network web interfaces on a regular basis, but I’m finding that there are some really useful aspects to the new Seesmic Desktop version.

I’ll spare you the full rundown of features as that’s been well covered elsewhere, but here are the main reasons why I’m liking using it a lot. I have been a user of Seesmic Desktop since the beginning; well, from even before Seesmic bought the Twhirl desktop Twitter client and developed the app into what it is today.

One change that I wasn’t sure about, especially running on a Mac, is that the new version uses Microsoft Silverlight platform, rather than the previous Adobe Air. I needn’t have worried about that. It’s seems to run okay, no problems there.
I really like the ability to be able to post and view messages from numerous social networks in the one tidy interface. The usual timelines I have open at one time are: Twitter (2 different accounts), Facebook, Linkedin, Google Buzz and Foursquare. This does of course take up a whole monitor in screen real estate but it’s very useful to have them all in the same place.

It’s more than a little useful to be able to select any number of services to post any new message to, without using a service such as Ping (which is also included as one of the accounts by the way).
There’s a full set of features available for each network. For instance, for Twitter accounts it’s possible to view favourites, send DMs, reply, reply all, follow, unfollow, block/report spam, retweet, quote, favorite a tweet, add to Twitter Lists, copy messages and translate.
I like the ability to be able to add my bit.ly account API key to the app, so I can track data on shortened links I post to the various services.
I like the addition of the Seesmic Desktop 2 Plugin Marketplace, which will no doubt be added to over the coming months. There are already some interesting plugins in there. For instance, when you add the Klout plugin, every tweet in your Twitter timeline displays the Klout score of that tweeter.

Okay that’s it. As I said, there are many more features but those are the ones that make it worth using for me. Have you tried it yet? What are your thoughts on it?

The Coke Machine Fairy: Coca-Cola joins growing list of companies in Australia using Foursquare.

John Johnston — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:49:37 +0000

Further to my recent posts, Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question’ and 10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing, it seems that Coca–Cola has now jumped in with its own contribution to Foursquare markeing. Enter, The Coke Machine Fairy.

I just noticed this a few minutes ago when I visited my local shopping centre, Broadway Shopping Mall. There was a “Nearby Special” banner on display as I checked-in.

It appears that Coke will be leaving “goodies” in Coke machines around Sydney on a daily basis. Instructions on how to play the game can be found here.

Will you have to change your name to escape your digital past one day?

John Johnston — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:16:16 +0000

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was recently reported as saying that because of the increasing amount of information we are sharing online, he predicts that one day people will have to change their names and reinvent themselves if they want to escape their digital pasts, should they want to. Is this an extreme point of view or already an online reality?

I’m sure most of us have Googled our names at some point to see what results are thrown up. You’d be silly not to in this day and age. Even if you don’t spend very much time online, it’s increasingly likely that your name will be referenced in relation to something yo’ve been involved with.

The degree to which your name can easily be found online can of course depend on how popular your name is, what name you actually use online, and how much online activity you have engaged in thus far.

Take my name for instance: John Johnston. Believe it or not, that’s not a very unique name in the world. However, partly for this reason, I mostly use my online identifier (okay, personal brand if you like), jjprojects. I don’t attempt to hide my real name, it’s just more beneficial in most cases for me to use jjprojects. However, because I engage in a lot of activity online, and because I do also use my “real” name in relation to jjprojects, my name still appears on the first page of Google results when searched for. I have no problem with what is found there.

I know quite a few people who engage in a lot of social media activity but have several different names, usually to attempt to separate their work life from their personal and political views, when they feel they want or need to do that. Needless to say, I’m not going to ask you to comment and say if you are one of those people :)

Many of these people are probably a little more online savvy than your average web user, so there are many people who use Facebook and Twitter (for instance) who mix personal and professional without a second thought to the consequences. It’s getting increasingly difficult to not mix personal with professional when it comes to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Do you ignore that friend request from that work colleague on Facebook you’d really rather not let have access to those personal pictures and comments you’ve already posted? Are many people even aware of what their privacy settings are set to on Facebook?

Even if you are aware of who could search for and read your online comments, and see the photos you’ve uploaded, it’s easy to forget. Then there’s the emerging location-based digital culture, in which more people will be leaving searchable traces of where they’ve been and at what time, without a second thought. Foursquare is verging on going mainstream and Facebook Places has just launched.

It has to be said that there is this emerging school of thought saying that we’ll eventually get over caring so much about people’s embarrassing moments and irrational emotional rants online, increasingly played out in real-time on the likes of Twitter and Facebook. The thinking there is that we are all human and we all make mistakes and do things we regret later. Let’s be prepared to forgive people their mistakes, let humans be human, and accept we are going to have more and more of our lives played out online. Let’s get over it and move on. Easier said than done.

It’s often said that common sense should lead when it comes to sharing online, but it may be a little more complicated than that. We are human after all. Humans are fallible. Who hasn’t done something they regret, especially when we were younger? If you are growing up in an culture that spends a lot of time online, those situations are no doubt going to be played out online. We all make makes, and sometimes it’s difficult (or impossible) to delete those mistakes.

What are your thoughts on this? By the way, if jjprojects suddenly stops all communication one day, you’ll know one of two things may have happened ;)

Facebook launches Facebook Places.

John Johnston — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:54:13 +0000

In Silicon Valley just a few hours ago, Facebook held a event to announce the launch of the much anticipated Facebook Places. The embedded video is a full launch video replay from the live event, if you’d like to see what was said by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook Places team and various partner companies.

For international users, it should be noted from the outset that Facebook Places will only be available in the US at first. Users outside the US will be able to see US Places posts on the web.

Amongst others, partner companies include Gowalla, Yelp and Foursquare. A representative from Gowalla detailed how Gowalla posts will be integrated into Places via the Places API. You can choose to attach an image to a post, as you can in Gowalla now. You’ll also be able to see Gowalla stamps in posts.

The Foursquare representative was less specific about how Foursquare will be integrated, to say the least. In fact you’d have to say he looked a little less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. But hey, how can you refuse to participate in having access to a location-based service that has access to a user–base of more than 500 million users, right?

It was explained at the launch that it is hoped that Facebook users will begin to discover serendipitous moments by checking in to places and finding that other friends are at the same location or nearby.

At first, Facebook Places will only be available on the Facebook application for iPhone and can also be accessed by “advanced mobile browers” (meaning those supporting HTML 5 and geolocation) at touch.facebook.com. Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch that there are not Android or Blackberry apps available yet. There are plans for these but no timeline.

In fact, Zuckerberg stated that there are quite a lot of things they aren’t doing with Places yet, including integrating Places with Facebook Events, which seems like a very obvious thing for them to do, especially as they have recently acquired Hot Potato. Zuckerberg said that they want to get things right before launching additional apps and features.

Facebook Places seems to be quite focused on including images and being able to tag friends who are with you when you check–in. You can also post a text update along with your check-in, as you can with most other location–based services.

There’s not a lot that’s new here, but it’s not really about that, is it? What’s significant is that it’s Facebook launching this location-based service. It’s going to be interesting to see just how many of the hundreds of millions of users start using this regularly. Not everyone has an iPhone or a mobile device capable of using the service, so there will be limited numbers to begin with, but still, Five. Hundred. Million. Users, and still growing.

For a full run–down of the features, check out Facebook’s blog post on the subject.

Facebook Places, much anticipated “Foursquare Killer”, about to launch?

John Johnston — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:58:08 +0000

The long anticipated geolocation feature from Facebook will be launching very soon. Apparently, “multiple sources” have told CNET this is the case. We have heard this before, from as far back as May, but surely it must be on its way now.

Word from said sources is that it will take the form of an Application Programming Interface (API) for other location-based services to be able to plug-into.

Mathew Ingram at Gigaom has pointed out that it’s likely to be more than just a check-in API, as Facebook has said previously that it thinks of places as more than just a way to add location information to a status update, or to ‘like’ a café or bar you visit.

Indeed, I too wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook Places launches with the ability to associate photos, videos and comment-style reviews. I’ve said before that the ability to upload images and associate them with venues in Foursquare would be a welcome additional feature. I’m sure they’ll add it sooner or later. Yes, I know Gowalla fans, Gowalla already has this feature, but Foursquare has the momentum.

Facebook has partnered with Localeze to provide a business directory infrastructure for the new location feature. This is the same company that powers Twitter’s Places directory. In addition, Facebook recently acquired Hot Potato, which is a service that focuses on user check-ins to events rather than locations. It remains to be seen how Facebook Places will be integrated with Facebook Events, but I’d have to say there must be a big opportunity there for that to happen. It could work out quite well.

Will Facebook Places be a Foursquare killer? What are your thoughts on that? Personally, I doubt it but it’s bound to attract a lot of users. Even if the percentage of Facebook users who take it up is reasonably low, with 500+ million users, it’s still bound to be a huge number!

10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing.

John Johnston — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:18:21 +0000

This is part 2 of a two part post about businesses in Australia using Foursquare. Part 1, ‘Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question’, can be found here.

So let’s take a look at what some businesses have been doing with Foursquare in Australia so far. Who are some of these initial experimenters and what are they up to? There are of course many more examples than I’ve described below.

Café Foursquare Specials

There are many Foursquare Specials already being run by cafés in Australia. In fact, loyalty programs run by cafés, bars and restaurants seem to make up the bulk of all Foursquare specials right now, and perhaps into the future. Here’s just one with a bit of a difference in my hometown.

VIVO Café in Sydney (the George St location) is offering a free coffee with your meal when you check–in. In addition, Angela Vithoulkas, Director of VIVO Café tells me that VIVO is currently inviting people to unlock the Foursquare ‘Swarm’ Badge at the a VIVO Cafe Swarm event, with five dollars of the fifteen dollar cost of a specific meal going to the Sydney Community Foundation.

One thing I noticed about VIVO when I visited the café and met with Angela, is that this particular café is located very close to the Sydney Apple Store, so when you check–in to the Apple Store (which I did before going there), you see an in–app banner notifying you of the “Special Nearby”.

At present, there would have to be a higher percentage of Foursquare users visiting tech stores such as this than many other places in Sydney, so that’s certainly an added bonus for a nearby venue with a Foursquare special.

Multi–City Chain Venue Specials

The Wagamam a chain of restaurants offers a Foursquare special that consists of a complimentary miso soup with every main meal, for every fifth check–in. If you’re the Foursquare Mayor you get a free juice with any main meal.

Wagamama has also trialled Twitter tweetups as a way to incorporate social media into the restaurant experience. Michael Fieldcom, who has been involved with their social media strategy, tells me they have run ‘sneak-peeks’ of the new menu to various social media groups. People receive a free meal from the new menu in advance of its release. The sneak peeks are being held at five restaurant locations around Australia.

Ah tweetups, that takes my mind back to the very first Sydney Tweetup in mid 2007, which I co-organised. Twitter was a LOT smaller back then, that’s for sure :)

Curve Cafe + Bar at Vibe Hotel (also at their other venues, including Melbourne) for every second checkin is offering a “buy a drink and get a drink for a friend” deal, plus if you’re the Foursquare mayor you receive a “buy one get one free meal”.

Considering how easy it is to become the mayor in these early days of Foursquare, that’s not a bad deal at all.

Grill’d restaurants in both Melbourne and Sydney are offering a free Mini Chips with a burger or steak sandwich purchase. If you’re the mayor you get a free burger on Fridays.

Corporate Foursquare Special + Meetup

A Microsoft Office Mayor Meetup was held in Martin Place (a central CBD location) back in mid June. Organised by agency Ogilvy 360, Microsoft hosted the “world’s first Foursquare Office Mayor Meetup”, for the launch of Microsoft Office 2010.

Foursquare office-types were encouraged to check–in at the meetup to receive a copy of Office 2010. The first 110 office mayors to queue up got copies, and 300 Office Mayor Meetup t-shirts were also available. 141 people ended up checking in at the meetup.

Potential Local Foursquare Special Clusters?

You know how people often copy what plants and features their neighbours have in their front yard? Well it only stands to reason that we may find that Foursquare offers take off in certain areas in clusters, as venues see other venues in the area take the initiative. “What’s that window cling they have there? Foursquare? What’s that?”.

Melt Bar in Kings Cross, Sydney is offering a “Staff price round of drinks on your 3rd check in”. And just along the road a bit, BurgerFuel is also offering a “buy one, get one free” offer, if you check–in with Foursquare and you bring a friend along.

Not only Food and Drinks

In Brisvegas, at Casa Perdomo, I see an offer for one free Perdomo Cigar for every new visitor who checks in for the first time. Also in Brisbane at Anytime Fitness, I see a free 7 day pass is available on check–in; a pretty standard gym promo offer.

At the rather exclusive Sanctuary Cove resort on the Gold Coast, I see that Harry’s, boutique is offering a “Check–in and sign up as a VIP to receive a $25 voucher for your next purchase.” deal.

Over in Perth, I see that Connections Nightclub is offering free entry on Friday or Saturday if you check–in before 1am.

On the travel front, in Adelaide the South Australia Visitor and Travel Centre is offering a third night free if you check–in and book a 2 night stay from them.

These are just some examples of Australian businesses using Foursquare right now. As I said at the beginning, there are plenty of others too. If you have any other new and noteworthy examples of Australian businesses using Foursquare already, feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

If you are part of an Australian business and would like to get involved with Foursquare, and would like help with how to approach it for your specific business, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.

Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question (part 1).

John Johnston — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:49:52 +0000

This is part 1 of a two part post about businesses in Australia using Foursquare. Part 2, ‘10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing’, can be found here.

Foursquare only arrived in Australia last November, just 8 months ago. Needless to say, it’s still fairly early days for the location-based service on these (digital) shores.

I’m not exactly sure how many Foursquare users there are in Australia right now, but according to one source, there are at least 60,000 in Sydney. It would be great to get a current, official number from the company (none has been forthcoming from the company by the time of this post). It has however been confirmed by Foursquare that they have passed 100 million checkins and have over 2 million users worldwide. This is not huge compared to the likes of Facebook, with now over 500 million users, or Twitter with well over 100 million, but as I said, it’s still early days.

I remember back when Twitter had about 2 million users and was a relatively small community locally. It’s taken about 4 years to go from zero to over 100 million users. It’s changed quite a bit, especially from a marketing standpoint! With Foursquare, the second million users have been collected in just three months, and they have recently raised $20 million in funding for further development. However, Facebook has flagged that it will be launching a location feature soon, so it’ll be interesting to see how that impacts Foursquare’s fast growing user base.

Forrester has just come out with some research that suggests that Foursquare is still too small for major agencies and their clients to be bothered with, as even in the U.S. only 4% of adults online have ever used location-based mobile apps. Whereas, more than 11% of adults online have used Twitter and an estimated 28% of all internet users have signed up for Facebook.

Well it might be correct to say that in many cases, but I’m here to say that this certainly doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be used right now in certain circumstances, especially as Foursquare has the potential to be beneficial for many small and medium enterprises, as well at larger companies. I think it all depends on how and why you intend to use it, and how you approach using it.

For instance, if you are wanting to attract tech savvy early adopters (who are all using up-to-date mobile devices and using mobile data regularly) to your business or service , and there are plenty of businesses who would like to do that, why wouldn’t you think about giving it a go? Quite a few of these people are also likely to be heavy users of services such as Twitter and Facebook, which Foursquare checkins are often crossposted to. This group is also also more likely to write blogs.

Foursquare is also at the stage where, if you are a business using it to attract new customers and to reward loyal customers, you might actually get some welcome free media attention (traditional or otherwise) for taking the initiative. This certainly happened when Twitter started to catch on. Journalists take notice of local examples of wider tech and social media trends being used.

When Twitter eventually broke into mass pop culture, when celebrities started using it and talking about it, and it started being the talk of tv the talkshow circuit, some businesses and individuals who had been using it for quite a while benefited from already having experience with this new communications tool. They were one step ahead of the pack.

Could it be similar with Foursquare? Not sure but it’s certainly possible. Time will tell.

So, having said that, in my next post I’m going to take a look at what some businesses have been doing with Foursquare so far in Australia. Who are some of these initial experimenters and what have they been doing with it?

What are your thoughts on businesses using Foursquare at this stage?

Part 2, ‘10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing’.

jjprojects: our social web » Foursquare

Is Foursquare about to offer image uploads at last?

Related Posts:

Foursquare and Facebook Places: educate me, entertain me, supersize me.

Related Posts:

Have you tried Instagram iPhone app for image sharing yet?

Related Posts:

I’m now using the new Seesmic Desktop 2 app. Here’s why.

Related Posts:

The Coke Machine Fairy: Coca-Cola joins growing list of companies in Australia using Foursquare.

Related Posts:

Will you have to change your name to escape your digital past one day?

Related Posts:

Facebook launches Facebook Places.

Related Posts:

Facebook Places, much anticipated “Foursquare Killer”, about to launch?

Related Posts:

10 examples of businesses in Australia already using Foursquare for marketing.

Café Foursquare Specials

Multi–City Chain Venue Specials

Corporate Foursquare Special + Meetup

Potential Local Foursquare Special Clusters?

Not only Food and Drinks

Related Posts:

Local businesses: to use Foursquare (yet) or not, that is the question (part 1).

Related Posts: