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You can learn more about all of Facebook’s mobile announcements here and here, but we want to draw your attention to one game-changing item: Creating a “deal” at a location in Facebook Places.
Facebook has done for “deals” what they did for buying ads… They made it super-simple, very logical and with a prowess that makes Foursquare’s process seem silly. Sort of like Apple does to Windows on a regular basis (sorry, baiting a flame war there :).
Go claim your location and start dealing!
Note: This is the first of many posts by the newest Feedbacker, Jeff Kelley.
Will Facebook die? It’s a question I get a lot. Perhaps because I’m a blogger and have a Twitter account and know cool techy tricks like how to turn off Google SafeSearch and I work for a company that makes its living doing work online, and therefore I’m supposed to know these things. Quite honestly, you’d be better off asking me if I’d one day like to own a grenade launcher, as I could give you a definitive answer: “Absolutely.”
Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Available on the iPhone.
But I do not possess such a weapon yet, and regarding Facebook’s death, all I have is an opinion. And my opinion is that Facebook will go away, and probably sometime in the next few years. But what will be left behind are the communities, concepts and connections that Facebook has created (all FarmVille farms will perish, though, hopefully by plague).
The problem for Facebook is that its best features – the features that are most widely used – are being copied and made better by other developers. You can go to places besides Facebook to talk to old friends, meet new ones, find upcoming events, discover new links, look at photos of folks, and – most importantly – stalk people you think are attractive. You just have to use multiple services to do it. Facebook is really the only place that people are going to do all that stuff in one place.
Tumblr, which many people don't realize has a very social backend.
We are fast approaching an era when people will be able to customize their online experience with a variety of social networking services instead of just one big one. To put it one way: You can shop at Walmart for everything, or take an extra few minutes and visit a bunch of cooler, smaller shops.
At Feedback, we’re already seeing signs of Facebook’s great unraveling. Know when bands become “too” popular? Even the original fans start to pull away. We’re looking at you, Dave Matthews Band.
If you cut past the movie reviews and privacy issues and research what’s being said about Facebook on a grassroots level, you’ll hear from serious web users who balk at Facebook for being too mainstream. That there are too many people on it. That there are an array of better services to use to network online. That there’s too much noise on Facebook. Complaints about grammar. About too much information. And enough with the baby pictures or photos of that giant new engagement ring.
RSVPhere is a cool events site that merges hard copy invites with the online world. It's also Richmond based.
Many people, while still keeping their Facebook accounts as a sort of abandoned online home (think MySpace three years ago), are turning to less-mainstream networking services such as Twitter, Tumblr or a mix of other apps and tools found on iPhones or Droids or BlackBerrys. Games made popular on Facebook because of the social aspects can now also be played on increasingly faster and better mobile devices, and with other people. Facebook’s Events feature (which has largely become an annoyance: “Come to my DJ party 12 states away!”) are made more personal and less obnoxious through Eventbrite or RSVPHere.com, the latter of which essentially allows you to create, for free, a little microblog for your event. People can RSVP through the site, and events stay a bit more private than they would on Facebook. Plus, it’s easy to use.
Paper.li turns links from your Twitter feed into a newspaper/blog-like format
You can share links and articles through a cool newspaper-like service called Paper.Li. A neat photo-sharing app for iPhone called Instagram is basically Twitter with pictures. Tumblr is the latest social media media darling. You can even add the location where you took the photo.
There are hundreds of these types of services. Many will fail. Some will not. And those are the ones that you will combine together as you desire, eventually bringing Facebook to its knees. That sentence was way too overly dramatic.
Facebook is already failing in some of its offerings. It may be too soon to call its Places location feature a dud, but Foursquare is doing a much better job of alerting burglars to empty homes.
You've probably gotten an invite from here before. of these invites before.
Now, enough hate on Facebook. Let’s be real: It’s a great thing. It’s fun. It has enormous use in the business world. It connects people to companies and brands to the masses. It’s a lead generator for everything to music to movies to news articles or those neat-o things on the Internet. Facebook has a long time to go before it’s gone, even by technology standards.
Whether Facebook is here to stay depends on how well it can respond to the growing market of individual services that can do the same things it does, and how people will use those services to create their own experiences. If that’s the case, Facebook may be to social media to what the Model-T was for the automobile.
-Jeff (@jeffkelleyrva, or @jephkelley for the lighter side)
From Richmond GRID (@richmondGrid), Autumn Issue:
Excerpt below from a feature on geolocation apps, popularity and more from Feedback, Inc’s Dean Browell (@dbrowell).
So who’s in your pocket these days – Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Facebook Places, or other? Why one over the other?
I’m partial to Foursquare, interested in ShopKick, find Yelp helpful and will try anything. Just watching the landscape.
So what’s the deal with Facebook Places? Plan to use it, screw it, or could you care less about those knuckleheads in Palo Alto.
It’s important to not get distracted by just the check-in aspect. Geo-location and even Facebook Places‘ role in it will be just as important for what it does for any of the 500 million + average users who never check in but nevertheless ends up impacted by the check-in data of others, such as choosing a restaurant or hospital based on who has been there or seeking the testimonial of a friend who they’ve seen has been there.
Who do you hope prevails in the geo wars?
For Foursquare and all the more geo-dedicated apps, there’s a long and storied history of innovating specialists having a place in the discerning consumer’s mind. Just ask Apple or the entire craft brewing industry.
If you were sitting in the captain’s chair over at Foursquare or Gowalla, what would you say to Zuck?
“You were supposed to just take Microsoft’s money.”
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. 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:
Facebook & Skype:
Facebook has been busy this week with partnerships. On Thursday, Facebook and Skype officially announced a new partnership. Facebook’s newsfeed will now be integrated into skype, and Facebook friends will be included into the Skype phonebook. The press release stated that “the Facebook Phonebook in Skype allows users to call and SMS their Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines.”
Bing & Facebook:
Another partnership emerged this week, when Facebook announced a new partnership with Bing. As Facebook’s official blog explained,
“When you search for something on Bing or in web results on Facebook (powered by Bing), you’ll be able to see your friends’ faces next to web pages they’ve liked. So, you can lean on friends to figure out the best websites for your search.”
The Bing partnership also makes it easier to find people to friend on Facebook.
New Twitter for Everyone:
On Wednesday, Twitter announced that new Twitter was available for all 160 million users. Twitter wrote “while we still (and will always) have plenty of work to do, we’re pleased with the positive reaction so far.” So while we may see some minor tweaks, it appears the new Twitter design is here to stay.
Gap’s Original Logo Is Back:
This week Gap announced on their Facebook Page that they have reverted back to their original logo. The logo change, which came about last week, was not well received by people, and they took to social media to criticize. People are still having fun with Gap’s attempted logo change, with http://craplogo.me and @GapLogo on Twitter, which has over 5,000 fans.
Qworthy:
My final pick is Richmond Virginia centric. It is a website, called Qworthy, which pulls the best items off popular streaming services. Created by Richmond local Tony Scida, @tonyskyday, qworthy includes the best of Hulu, Hulu Plus, Netflix, and more.
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. 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:
<<New Facebook Groups Explained
<<Gap’s Logo Turns into Crowd-Sourcing Project
Harrisburg University blocks students and faculty from using all forms of social media for one week (on computers):
Inside Higher Ed reports on Harrisburg University’s plan to shut down all forms of social media on campus for one week. Provost, Eric Darr has decided to block student and faculty access to social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL instant messenger. He is also disabling wiki and chat features which will make it impossible for students and teachers to communicate and collaborate using the campus’ intranet system, even from off-campus computers.
Darr says, “It’s not that, as an institution, we hate Facebook,” Darr told Inside Higher Ed. Instead, he wanted to see what would happen if colleagues and classmates were forced to talk instead of IM, to walk to offices and dorm rooms instead of emailing. He wondered if people had forgotten how to communicate face-to-face rather than online.
Mr. Darr, how are you going to block access to social media through cell phone usage? Are the cell towers clipped for the week? Dean Browell with Feedack comments on the article,
“There’s a disturbing angle to all of this that smacks of assumptions. Two of the four channels they propose to shut down are in drastic decline among their demographic (AOL, MySpace) and as other commenters have pointed out, the other two channels don’t require the campus system at all to operate. They sell $100 iPhones at Wal-Mart people, they haven’t needed your computer labs to get on Facebook for years. Twitter is utilized by a diverse demographic even through an inexpensive, non-smart-phone via text messaging.”
We look forward to the results of this experiment.
iPads in the Classroom:
Notre Dame’s assistant professor Corey Angst is taking his class paperless, and in a pretty fun way. His class is first and only class taught with Apple iPads. All 40 students get to use iPads in place of textbooks and other learning materials during the course. This is part of a year long study of e-readers by the University. Angst explained,
“We want to know whether students feel the iPads are useful and how they plan to use them. I want them to tell me, ‘I found this great app that does such and such. I want this to be organic…We have an online Wiki discussion group where students can share their ideas.”
They are hoping the iPad’s will help students manage real world projects, and will help the university enhance the educational experience.
Survey says social media is less expensive and yields significant result in higher education:
Lipman Hearne and CASE partnered together to survey 212 CASE member institutions to research how marketing dollars are being spent in higher education and the return on that investment. Institutions that have integrated strategic social media campaigns with traditional marketing/advertising efforts have seen a wide margin of positive results. Key findings are significant and provide powerful real time success stories. Moderate-to-heavy users of social media were actually spending less overall per student on marketing activities. The moderate-to-heavies spent $83 per student, and the light-to-non-users spent $121 per student. Visit the blog and survey report for more data and key findings.
Higher Education Checks Into Foursquare:
Several Universities are leading the way with geolocation checkins. The University of Oregon, for example, incorporated Foursquare into their Welcome Week student tours. Friending the Oregon Duck and checking into 10 locations on the tour earned students a badge and 20% off at Oregon Ducks Sportsware. Another example is The University of Nebraska at Omaha. They have a microsite in conjunction with Foursquare that provides deals and encourages students to visit alcohol free businesses in the area. Harvard is another great example. They were one of the first colleges to embrace Foursquare with custom badges. Perry Hewitt, director of digital communications and communications services at Harvard, explained
“Harvard is more than classrooms and buildings. It is an interconnected community of people, ideas, and experiences, and we are actively pursuing ways to enhance those connections.”
Higher Ed Cartoon:
A snarky cartoon (sadly, mostly accurate) ridiculing the tone-deaf design of many college home pages, published on July 30 on the website xkcd and circulated widely in social media circles and on campuses:
About a week before xkcd published its cartoon, the higher ed consulting firm Noel-Levitz released a study of how prospective students are using colleges’ websites, based on more than 1,000 responses from college-bound high-schoolers.
Key findings include:
-Anna (@alucas9) and Heather (@Hmillar13)
Do you have time to search the web everyday to find the newest social media tools? If the answer is no, then you have come to the right place. 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:
Ping:
Apple had a big event on Wednesday, where they introduced Ping, a social network for music lovers. Ping allows you to follow friends and artists, have custom music recommendations based on your followers, and share concert details. You can access Ping by downloading iTunes 10, going into the iTunes store, and activating Ping. Read our blog ‘Social Network, Meet iTunes‘ to find out more.
Twitter Usage Up:
Twitter usage went up 33% from May to August. In August, Twitter processed over 2.64 billion Tweets. Twitter now has over 145 million registered users, and activity has more than doubled this year.
Chrome 6:
For Chrome’s two-year anniversary, they are introducing Google Chrome Version Six. Mashable describes it as “The Modern Browser,” Chrome 6 does indeed boast a number of improvements, but as with previous updates, the focus remains on speed and simplicity.” Download it here: http://www.google.com/chrome
If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em?:
Once the leading social network, MySpace is now syncing up with Facebook. This week, MySpace announced that users can now sync status updates with Facebook. You can also sync status updates with Twitter. Even with this new development, with the introduction of Ping, Myspace has to wonder whether their last niche, music, will be compromised.
Spot Trot:
I am including a local social media pick this week – this one derives from Richmond, Virginia. There are plenty of social media apps and tools being developed in Richmond, one of which is Spot Trot. Created by Joel Erb, Spot Trot has a big music twist to it. The app offers a customized mobile platform to artists, which they build for their fans. Clients include Dave Matthews Band and Tim McGraw. Partners include Live Nation and Apple. You can follow them on Twitter at @spottrot.
Much has been made in recent weeks regarding Facebook’s entry into the geo-location game, the heavyweight in the field entering a ring presently dominated by agile, well-supported upstarts like Foursquare and Gowalla. Social media pundits and aficionados are asking aloud, “Does the mere release of the Places platform signal the end of geo-competition yet in its infancy?” Early returns seem to indicate otherwise, as Foursquare, in particular, has reached significant milestones in the wake of the Facebook’s highly anticipated announcement. But are they safe? Is anyone truly safe in this arena? Observers need only glance askew, where once mighty MySpace sits alone, relegated to the sidelines and reduced to cloning parts of the competitors they once viewed as annoying wannabes, to wonder for themselves: Who or what could end Facebook’s reign as undisputed king of the social media mountain?
Bubbling beneath the surface, in various forms and degrees of release-readiness, lie a number of developing social networks who’ve set their aim squarely on the 900-pound gorilla in the room. From one perspective or another, they believe they have a different approach, an innovative solution to issues or concepts that Facebook either lacks or has consciously chosen to ignore. Do these teams of savvy coders and well-backed entrepreneurs have what it takes to even make a dent in a Facebook population that would rank among the world’s largest were it a sovereign nation? Will audiences respond in such a way that an anti-Facebook movement develops, leading to a mass migration ala MySpace circa 2007? These four startups certainly believe that they can.
Considering the inherent mission of a would-be Facebook killer, Diaspora has a particularly apt name. Whether you consider that they intend to use an open-source distribution model or that their ultimate success lies in the dispersion
of the Facebook population in favor of their solution, these four NYU students have never lacked for ambition. Galvanized by the Facebook privacy debacle earlier this year, the team behind Diaspora set out to create a “personal web service that will put individuals in control of their data”. They gave themselves less than 40 days to raise the $10,000 necessary for the four of them to live on while they dedicated themselves and their summer to the project. Apparently, a chord was struck, as they raised ten times that amount in the allotted time. Somewhat curiously, even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was among the contributors. Recently, it was announced that the code would be revealed to other programmers on September 15th, with a “consumer facing alpha” expected in October.
While the Diaspora team may boast the most romantic origin story, they’re certainly not the only players in the game.
Google head Eric Schmidt’s personal VC firm has invested in a group called Trumpet Technologies, who, in addition to specializing in “mobile local search”, have charged two college students with designing a network they’re calling “Scoop”. While Diaspora seems to be all about privacy and control, Scoop aims to be the go-to source for the “wheres” and “hows”, providing up-to-the-minute info for the hyper-social set, hoping to find a niche as a service primarily accessed via mobile app on increasingly prevalent smartphones. They’re also taking a page from the Facebook playbook, reaching into the social giant’s past as an exclusively college-based enterprise. This sentiment becomes a recurring theme.
Farther along in the development cycle is Collegiate Nation, currently accepting signups to its launched beta. Born out of a mother’s outrage at her university-aged sons’ unwitting offerings of the private information that has fueled Facebook’s skyrocketing valuation, Collegiate Nation isn’t designed as a Facebook alternative, but as a staunch anti-Facebook community. 
It is college-only, as the name vaguely suggests, like many nascent networks who see opportunity in the fertile environment that served as their target’s incubator. While free during this phase of the launch, it plans to charge a nominal subscription as not to be beholden to ad networks. And privacy is paramount. The sign-up form even includes the caveat that non-students who have .edu addresses are committing fraud if they sign up for the service. If only they were as concerned with the appearance as they are about the sanctity of their network. Time will tell if traditionally poor college students will pay a premium for a site that looks anything but.
from the College Only media kit
The final entry in our survey takes a much more… suggestive… approach to the university-only, “walled garden” approach. College Only, with beta launches at seven schools in time for this fall semester, is the culmination of one NY entrepreneur’s serial attempts to recreate social media phenomena with a student focus. Combine the features of GoodCrush, a collegiate-oriented Match.com, and RandomDorm, a student-only Chatroulette, with a little Facebook circa 2005 and you have the gist of CollegeOnly. A quick perusal of the media kit reveals that this is as far from a concerned mother’s creation as possible, calling itself the place where “student bodies connect”. With the opportunity to post anonymously, as well as the promise of only light moderation, CollegeOnly may find its audience, but it may also find itself with the same privacy issues that once plagued Facebook, campus-exclusive or not.
While similar in goal if not execution, none of these would-be Facebook killers solves the perceived problem in the same manner. And while that’s a good thing for surveys such as this, the ultimate question of which approach most closely reflects the desires of the marketplace, especially a fickle one like the 18-24 set, will play out over the next few years. In terms of scope (and no longer being an undergrad), I’ll be keeping my eye on Diaspora. Just remember, MySpace was once the king of the social media jungle and while it lacked Facebook’s vision (or luck), it never made the type of mistakes that Facebook has over the past year or so. You have to believe an empire of a half billion users can fall.
The question is: Do any of these new networks have what it takes to be the next Facebook?
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments, leave them below or email me @ Thomas AT FeedbackAgency DOT com.
- Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)
A few interesting higher education-related news today show the emergence of “place” and geolocation as an interesting angle and channel for communicating with and meaningfully engaging new students.
First up, the University of Oregon spiced up Welcome Week with an interesting use of Tips, a special school-only badge and a self-guided tour of campus. About Foursquare gives details:
As part of the “Grand Tour,” the Oregon Duck has left tips around campus that will highlight some features of campus that students may not know about…Students who friend the Oregon Duck and check in at all 10 locations with tips on Friday, September 24 can show their checkin history to redeem a real-life InDUCKted badge. The badge is good for 20% on Oregon Ducks sportswear at the Duck Store.
The University of Nebraska at Omaha is using a microsite in conjunction with Foursquare to encourage students to visit alcohol-free businesses in the area. The effort includes special deals for the students checking in and promotional opportunities for the participating local businesses.
This isn’t the first time colleges have embraced Foursquare as a means to encourage students to interact with their environment. Recently Foursquare made custom badges for Harvard to correspond with custom tips, info and of course to allow officials to track participation.
“Harvard is more than classrooms and buildings. It is an interconnected community of people, ideas, and experiences, and we are actively pursuing ways to enhance those connections,” said Perry Hewitt, director of digital communications and communications services for Harvard Public Affairs and Communications.
What better assets to combine than a tech savvy community and a collection of buildings in an educational realm constantly under evolution away from brick-and-mortar. The concept of “place” online helps marry the importance of physical location with the information flow of the virtual space.
Oddly enough, despite the recent debut of Facebook Places, Facebook simply Facebook debuted Facebook Universities, a special Page dedicated for interacting with the facets of your educational community except for Place and dumps you immediately on the “Deals” tab – so you can interact with sponsored brands before you get to your provost. Sigh. We assume there’s more to how colleges can use Places and of course there will be check-ins regardless.
How next Fall will look for colleges and universities, when the hundreds of millions of Facebook check-in and Foursquare and others are only more rampant, will be the true test. How will your institution watch, research, strategize and take advantage of these trends? Throw us a line, we can help.
P.S. We would like to lift up one of our favorite blogs, “About Foursquare” which is one of the quickest to deliver media sites on Foursquare developments. Check it out.
09
LET’S MAKE A DEAL… WEBSITE!
by FeedbackLet me start off by saying that I’ve been meaning to write this post for weeks, if not months. I first heard of Groupon while visiting family in the Hampton Roads area and looked it up to see if there was something similar for Richmond. It had yet to launch in either location, but at least the publicity had started in Tidewater. It’s such a simple concept at its foundation: Buy with friends, everyone saves. My first thought was pooling money in college to rent a van for a weekend trip to the beach or camping. But clearly, Groupon has always been about something bigger. By the time it launched in Richmond, I had begun to see and hear about it everywhere. Daily emails from Advertising Age, articles in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, even the TV news magazine Nightline (embedded below) were all doing features on the group buying phenomenon. For those of you who don’t follow along with those resources, here’s the story.
Groupon was founded by Andrew Mason, now 29, a musician by trade, who was doing web design work with a Chicago serial entrepreneur by the name of Eric Lefkofsky before accepting a scholarship to pursue a Master’s degree
in public policy from the prestigious Harris School at the University of Chicago. The engine behind Groupon was developed as part of a fundraising site called The Point, where people could pledge donations to a cause, but not be charged until the pre-established goal was met. The site attracted a wide range of non-profits, but ultimately, Mason’s desire to monetize the project lead him away from charity and towards collective buying. And thus, Groupon was born in November 2008.
The ‘cult of Groupon’, as detractors have called it, developed rapidly. Mason told Nightline that they started with just seven employees, but has since grown into the old Montgomery Ward headquarters in Chicago’s River North district, with a workforce of several hundreds. The product seems so obvious: One great deal, every day, in your inbox. Like The Point, when a pre-determined sales figure is reached, the deal is on. Groupon and the deal-offering business split the proceeds.
Naturally, with such stunning success and an easily replicated concept, Groupon has inspired myriad imitators.
In Richmond, in particular, LivingSocial seemed to launch at the exact same time. Established sites like Yelp have gotten in on the act, while one-time Internet titan AOL has also set aside a URL for a similar project at Wow.com. Even the largest retailer in the world, Walmart, is looking for a piece of the action: it 
debuted a feature called Crowdsaver on its Facebook page that offers a low-priced offering based on consumer demand as demonstrated by the amount of “Likes” a deal receives. Facebook itself will surely get in on the action soon.
With two years of dizzying success under their belts, as well as a boatload of revenue and investment cash, Groupon seems adamant to maintain its position, aggressively buying up clones around both the country and the world. A nationwide offering from the Gap that broadened the otherwise locally-focused business model attracted almost a half million individual sales. You can expect similar deals to follow. Meanwhile, the imitators who don’t sell out will seek to distinguish themselves, perhaps with added gaming elements or rewards for repeat buyers. For many consumers still fighting the effects of the economic downturn, the prevalence of such deal sites is a breath of fresh air.
As always, I appreciate your comments and questions. Find me on Twitter or feel free to email me: Thomas AT feedbackagency DOT com
-Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)