Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest and coolest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place (and if the answer is yes, leave a comment with your favorites). I have searched the World Wide Web for social media information all week, and stumbled upon a few favorites along the way. Here are my picks of the week:
Super Bowl & Social Media:
This Sunday is marks the 44th Super Bowl. & from a social media perspective, this Super Bowl is unlike any other. Pepsi decided to create a large social media campaign in place of a super bowl spot, companies, such as Coca Cola, are using social media to generate buzz around their Super Bowl spots and the NFL is even getting fans involved socially. The NFL created hashtag #SB44, and if you tag your Tweets and Flickr photos with this, it will show up on the official NFL site’s SB44 Page.
Facebook Redesign:
This week, Facebook began rolling out a major homepage redesign. Changes include:
- The notifications bar has moved to the top menu
- The left menu is now used to display friends content
- Search is being emphasized more
- Easier to view photos, send/receive messages, chat, and interact with gamesRea
Read more from the Official Facebook Blog.
Hovercards:
On Wednesday, Twitter began rolling out a new feature to help improve user experience. Named Hovercards, this feature allows you to see additional information about a user just by mousing..ehem..hovering over the username. You will be able to see the users bio, whether you follow them or not, and easily interact with them all without leaving the page you’re on.
Happy Birthday to Facebook:
On Thursday, Facebook celebrated their 6th birthday. In Zuckerberg’s blog, he wrote: “Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.” It has grown from that to a global, massively popular networking site. Today, over 400 million people use Facebook.
Bravo & Foursquare
Foursquare is teaming up with traditional media. This week Foursquare and Bravo TV announced a partnership. On Monday, Bravo began offering specialized Foursquare player badges for players who visit any of the 500+ Bravo locations (the locations are based on select Bravo shows.) Bravo also plans to offer incentives and prizes for viewers who participate. It will be interesting to see if other advertisers follow suit and how such badges will change the make-up of Foursquare.
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Foursquare’s Next Step
by FeedbackIn a move that should’ve come long ago, location-based app leader Foursquare has opened the floodgates for brands to create their own pages on the service. Using, shall we say, an office admin account, it was easy to set up our page by linking it to our Twitter account.
From there, to meet the requirements for inclusion on Foursquare’s Page Gallery, I added a banner, wrote a few tips and it was set up in no time.
As of this posting, we’ve yet to show up on the gallery page. However, a lot of brands are there and more are certainly being added by the minute. But, why? Will Foursquare pages become a new go-to for major brands?
The answer, I think, is maybe. There’s certainly value here, as demonstrated by some of the brands that have piloted this program over the past year or so, such as The New York Times, Tiffany & Co., Starbucks and Bravo. MTV has used theirs as a brand tie-in for the Jersey Shore, complete with its own badge.
But there’s also tremendous opportunity for spam. If you use Foursquare, you’ve already seen brands signing up as people, even brick-and-mortars, which I don’t understand. From a “checking-in” standpoint, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that the sandwich shop around the corner or the major research university nearby is “following” you or stopping in at the local watering hole.
What makes a lot of sense, however, is for organizations that travel from event to event, like our local SPCA, or businesses that frequently operate in multiple locations (hello, food trucks) to use this new offering to share with their peregrinations with interested parties, without violating the terms of service or common sense.
What is likely even more important about this change is that Foursquare is looking for more content providers. They want more people to make notes and give tips for the locations that they index, so they can pitch their value to potential advertisers and partners. Requiring brands to make five recommendations in order to be listed in their gallery will lead to an explosion of content.
All in all, I think this is a welcome change and opportunity. But like everything else, it has to be done right. Rush out and sign up your brand today, but make sure you have a plan on how you want to use it. As always, that’s the only way to truly and effectively get the most out of your social media tools.
-Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)