foursquarein30

This 'internet' thing is a Fad!

2009-12-05T07:39:00.001-08:00

Act One: The year was 1997 (plus or minus) and I had just landed a job with AT&T as a 'middle markets' account executive.

My clients were companies that spent lots of money each month on toll free and long distance.

We are talking $.28 per MINUTE baby!

AT&T rolled out one of the first commercial/corporate website development and hosting offerings. For a meager $5k per month we would build you a five (count 'em 5) page site!

Here are some actual quotes from prospects I pitched this to:

- I am confident sure this 'internet' thing is a fad!

- our customers want to talk to us not a - what do you call it? - oh yeah...a website!

- this business will NEVER go 'on the web!'

Act Two: The year was 2000 (I think the world was supposed to end...)

I worked for Lucent as a 'call center specialist' selling $1m+ phone systems.

My clients were companies with hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of agents that talked to people all day long.

Lucent was one if the first to launch 'text chat' for customer service reps. Our technology enabled reps to chat with up to four customers at once!

Here are some actual quotes from prospects I pitched this to:

- our customers will only talk to people...they don't want any part of this 'chat' nonsense.

- I am confident sure this'chat' thing is a fad!

- We will NEVER chat with our customers

I could go on but I am pretty sure you get the point....

Chicago Tribune Article on Foursquare

2009-12-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

Foursquare Fun: Newest Social Media Site Is Complement to Twitter

By JULIE WERNAU / CHICAGO TRIBUNE / Published: Wednesday, December 2, 2009

CHICAGO | David Kadavy steps into a local coffee and tea shop and clicks "check in" on his iPhone's Foursquare application.

His phone tells him six other people have also checked in, and it provides tiny pictures of them. The Foursquare application automatically updates his Twitter account - his 1,035 followers now know where to find him along with those half-dozen others.

The bearded 30-year-old Kadavy, a freelance Web designer and foodie (he has a "tweet what you eat" site) is playing an increasingly popular game that experts believe has a shot at turning social media into a money-making enterprise.

Playing Foursquare involves exploring restaurants, pubs and coffee shops in major metro areas. The payoff for playing can range from special deals or freebies at eating and drinking establishments to scoring points, Boy Scout-like badges and "mayorships," essentially bragging rights for hanging out at particular locations.

"Foursquare, the thing that's unique about it is that it has the opportunity to monetize restaurants, locations and activities that people would do - a little bit better than Facebook or Twitter does," said Michael J. Lis, owner of Speck Media, a Chicago marketing firm.

Foursquare's users have been increasing by 45 to 50 percent each month, according to the New York-based company. It boasts 100,000 users internationally.

Foursquare is among a handful of upstart companies that have tapped into the combination of social media and a user's geographic location along with the fact that mobile phone game players seem increasingly open to meeting up with people they get to know online. Some tech bloggers call Foursquare the next Twitter, but Foursquare bills itself as a complement to Twitter - a way to take the connections and personas people create online and move those experiences into the real world.

Keeping users entertained will be its ongoing challenge, according to Flurry, a mobile applications analytics company in San Francisco. It classifies Foursquare in its "location based social network" category.

"To keep users engaged, the company running the service has to frequently add new features, devising new ways to allow users to interact and remain entertained," said Peter Farago, Flurry's vice president of marketing.

Flurry estimates that out of every 100 new users, fewer than 10 will remain active on these systems two months later. The reason: There are fewer opportunities to launch the application than say, Facebook, because users have to actually be somewhere in real life in order to have a reason to use it.

A year ago Foursquare, which 33-year-old co-founder Dennis Crowley named after the classic playground game, was little more than an idea sketched out on his table.

But it has emerged in only eight months as the hottest of its kind, surpassing competitors Gowalla.com (stamp your digital passport and earn rewards at the places that you visit), Brightkite.com (discover what's happening in your neighborhood) and Loopt.com (pinch, tap and drag an interactive map to find your friends and what they're doing), according to Compete.com, which estimates site traffic based on the daily browsing activity of over 2 million U.S. Internet users.

Crowley co-founded Foursquare in March with Naveen Selvadurai, the developer of such iPhone apps as WWJD, a sort of magic 8 ball where users ask Jesus what he would do, and Drunk Dialer, which challenges users to dial when the numbers move around.

EARNING BADGES

Foursquare users can earn badges for accomplishing different "feats." Each time they do, users unlock a badge. Users also compete to have more points than their friends: 5 points for the first time a user checks in somewhere new, zero points for a duplicate check-in within the same week and travel bonus points for each subsequent check-in after 4 p.m. to reward bar-hopping.

Here is a sampling of badges that can be earned.
- Newbie: First check-in

- Bender: Checking in four nights in a row

- Crunked: Checking in to four or more venues in one night

- Local: Checking in at the same venue three times in one week

- Super User: Checking in 30 times in one month

Pros and Cons of User Generated Content

2009-11-26T06:57:00.000-08:00

I pulled this from Junta42 post... strongly recommend bookmarking and following @juntajoe

NOVEMBER 25, 2009 - The Pros and Cons of User-Generated Content

Thanks to Dara Solomon, Community Manager at FunAdvice.com, for putting this timely piece together on user-generated content. More and more, marketers are asking how or if user-generated content should fit into their overall content marketing strategy. Dara provides a good overview below to help you in your decision making.

As the Internet continues to sprawl, entangle with, and seemingly overtake many aspects of our lives, different issues also begin to reel us in. Something interesting to think about is the debate on websites using “user-generated content” (UGC) versus “traditional” content.

The concept is simple:

user-generated content includes any site where the user (that’s you or possibly your customer) can write and publish content, whether it is video content, blog posts, advice websites, and the like. No Rupert Murdoch involved there. Contrarily, “traditional” content includes pages run by local and national media, business pages, and any website where the content was professionally written, edited and published (your content marketing).

Working for a site, FunAdvice.com, that contains almost entirely UGC, it’s starkly apparent in my daily life that UGC has both pros and cons.

Pros of User Generated Content:

Voice: As we all witnessed, the Internet played a huge role in the 2009 Iranian election protests. Whereas without UGC, much of the protests would have been peripherally covered (through Iranian traditional news only), UGC allowed blogger Joe Schmo in Iran to post his protests for the world to read. It’s not debatable that UGC gives people around the world a voice, whereas traditional content does nothing of the sort. As for the inherent debate on Democracy, maybe later. For now, a definite pro.

Upcoming: The current teenage generation uses the Internet. According to a late 2007 Pew study, 94% of American teenagers polled use the internet/email. As this occurs, teens are watching TV (traditional content) less. UGC seems to be the way to go if trying to hook the future generation.

Simpler: It could be argued that UGC is easier from a site owner’s perspective– considering content is written for you rather than by you. I’ll leave you a minute to ponder that; it’ll come up again later.

Self-policing: Not only is it possible to not have to write much content, there are ways to get the community to actually police themselves. Over at FunAdvice, we use volunteer moderators to help keep abuse and spam at bay.

Sounds good and dandy, right? So why isn’t every website based on user-generated content?

Cons of User Generated Content:

Credibility: For anyone who has asked a fairly simple question on an advice site and received a myriad of different answers, this issue comes up immediately. Who are these people generating this content, and what makes them experts? How much wrong (or even dangerous) information are they disseminating to the world through their blogging and incorrect advice?

Bias: Also seems to be a no-brainer. Unless the site is a specifically-stated political party site, bias isn’t explicitly told in UGC. It’s up to the reader to gauge which information doesn’t hold bias. And many people aren’t capable of this determination.

Moderation: Unless using self-policing options (see Pros), there is an issue of moderating UGC sites (especially advice sites). How much work is involved with making sure illegal or abusive activity isn’t published on your watch? And is the work worth it for the possibly biased and incredible information?

Ownership: When examining traditional content, it’s easy to see who the owner is (Rupert Murdoch). Ok enough of those jokes. In all seriousness, who actually owns the content on user-generated sites? The host? The user who wrote the content? Both? Intellectual property laws regarding the Internet have a long way to go to catch up with us today.

So where do you personally stand on this debate? Is UGC the wave of the future and a possibility for your company, or just a way to spread junk en masse?

A Case Study on Using foursquare to Inspire Customer Loyalty

2009-11-24T05:30:00.000-08:00

A must read article.... The Pit gets social medial AND how to inspire customers!

Remember: the time to build loyalty is way before you need it.

View in full screen mode by clicking the button below:

2009-11-23T08:06:00.000-08:00