Google Acquires Zagat

Google has purchased Zagat, popular restaurant review site, for an undisclosed sum that is estimated at less than $66 million.  Google made the purchase to improve its local products. As stated in the Google blog, “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering—delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”

Facebook Testing Page Recommendations
Facebook is testing a Page recommendation widget, which prompts users to write a recommendation for a Page. Facebook is hoping this widget will make it easier for friends of reviewers to find and connect with Pages.  When questioned about the widget, Facebook responded by saying “We’re always testing new features with small percentages of users to provide us feedback to help improve the service. The tests inform many of the improvements we make to the site and help shape new products.”  Facebook is also testing friend’s filters in the news feed: http://mashable.com/2011/09/08/facebook-news-feed-changes.

Twitter’s Active Users

We finally have a pulse on how many active Twitter users there are. Typically, Twitter likes to share number of users, which is currently around 200 million, rather than active users. This week, Twitter finally broke the news that there are over 100 million active twitter users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users logging in everyday. Adding to these stats, Mashable explained that “Twitter now hosts roughly a billion tweets every five days, 230 million tweets every day, and has hit a new record for tweets per second: 8,900.”

Smartphone Satisfaction
Apple should be grinning over the recent study completed by J.D. Power and Associates on Smartphone satisfaction. The study, which surveyed 6,898 Smartphone owners, found that Apple Smartphone’s had the highest customer satisfaction. Criteria included overall satisfaction, performance (35%), ease of operation (24%), Smartphone features (21%), and physical design (20%). Apple scored 830 points based on a 1,000-point scale. The industry average, for comparison, was 788 points. HTC was the closest to Apple with 801 points. See the full study here.

Smartphone Usage

Speaking of Smartphone’s, how is the average consumer using them? According to a recent study by Pew Research, Checking in on apps like Foursquare are at the bottom of the list. The survey, which was conducted on 2,277 adults, found that 92% of Smartphone users send and receive texts whereas only 12% checkin on geolocation services. View the charts below to see how Smartphone activities rank:

-Anna (@alucas9)

New #4sq Features
Foursquare has made two notable updates to their app this week:

Tips List
They have added a tips list feature, which allows people to categorize a group of places. So now, for example, you can create a tip list for your favorite local bars or coffee shops.

Event Check-Ins
Foursquare has also announced official event check-ins. Foursquare has partnered with ESPN, movietickets.com, and Songkick to populate it’s database with sporting, movie and concert events for you to check-into.

Higher Ed and Foursquare
In an article this week, InsideHigherEd discussed “A recent survey by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that 98 percent of higher ed institutions are on Facebook, and 84 percent are on Twitter.” This is a contrast to the 20% of campuses that have adopted an institutional presence on Foursquare. Foursquare use among colleges is expected to rise as officials realize the opportunity to interact with students while they’re on campus. Just think of the engagement opportunities – such as turning a college tour into a virtual check-in game or making students aware of campus events as they’re happening.

Skype Wi-Fi
Skype has a new app for iPhone and iPad users called Skype Wi-Fi. Skype Wi-Fi allows users to connect to more than 1 million Wi-Fi Hotspots around the world. Normally you will be charged by the minute (starting at $.06 per minute), but this weekend only you can try the app for free for 60 minutes. Find out more.

Social Media Marketing Infographic

Mashable Infographic

-Anna (@alucas9)

Facebook Streaming Movies:

Warner Bros. is testing out streaming movies on Facebook with “The Dark Knight”. The movie rental costs users $3.00 (Facebook will receive 30% of revenues) and can be watched for 48 hours after purchase.  If the test goes well, we are likely to see more video streaming options on Facebook.

Foursquare v3.0:

Foursquare’s latest app version, v3.0, has some innovative new features. They have done away with the “tips” tab and replaced it with an “explore” tab. The explore tab will look at your information (where you’ve checked in, who you’re connected with, your favorite places to check in) and what you’re looking for (nightlife, sushi, etc.) to show you what Foursquare thinks you’ll like nearby. You will also be able to see how many of your friends have been to a recommended place, and what reviews have been posted about it.

The iPad 2 Available Today:

The iPad 2 has arrived. You can order it online now, and purchase it in store starting at 5pm local time. They will be sold at the Apple Store, AT&T, Best Buy, Target, Verizon Wireless, Walmart and select Apple Authorized Resellers. Starting early today, people were lined up at Apple Stores all over the country in hopes of being some of the first to get the latest tech gadget.

Image from CultofMac.com

SXSW Interactive:

South by SouthWest’s interactive portion was kicked off today in Austin, Texas. Five days of networking events, presentations, announcements and exhibits, all centered around emerging technology. For those of us who can’t be there, we can follow along with the hashtag #SXSW or visit our favorite social media news websites (such as http://techcrunch.com/sxsw/) for updates.

Japan & Social Media:

When a tsunami and an 8.8 magnitude earthquake tragically hit Japan this morning, many took to social media. Some families relied on social media to get in touch with their loved ones, and Google even launched a Japan earthquake person finder to help victims and families locate each other.

There has been an overwhelming amount of support spread though social media channels:

-Anna (@alucas9)

UPDATE: Note that we weren’t meant to see these new features just yet. As they were rolled out, Feedback took quick screenshots and analyzed the changes. Shortly after (as in, minutes) Facebook took itself off the internet for nearly 30 minutes in order to fix the changes, saying some prototypes had inadvertently gone live.

Hello from snowy Virginia!

Facebook unleashed a number of interesting tweaks today, but none so significant as the addition of the Page Login concept for administrators of Facebook Pages.

Now when you visit a Page you are an admin of, you can actually comment as you (previously when admins commented on a Page they administered it only posted as though the Page itself was responding). You can do this because you have an option to essentially login to Facebook as the Page.

When you do this, you then see the world as the Page, complete with a newsfeed wall – and in fact all of the Notifications are now the Notifications of the Page.

As the Page, you post as the Page, Comment as such, ask Questions (now integrated into Pages) and more. So now that you ARE the Page, how do you get back to being you? In the upper right, you can switch back to yourself, referred to as the, “primary account” and login.

Other tweaks to include the disappearance of Tabs; Photos accessed through Notifications create a pop-up window for browsing; and a new face-recognizing, Photo-tagging feature is also being rolled out. There’s a new version of Comments, based on Questions, being trotted out as well.

An example of the new pop-up photo viewer

The Next Web has more on the changes here.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

The Best Of…
The best tech, music and more from 2010

Best, Worst, and Surprise Tech of 2010:

Mashable came out with a list of the best win, flop, and surprise tech of 2010. The winner for 2010 was the iPad. The iPad proved to be a huge success; Apple sold over 8.5 million in 2010. Mashable chose Google Buzz as the biggest flop of 2010, and Groupon as the biggest surprise of 2010. Google Buzz, essentially a mesh of gmail and the status update, never took off. The deal a day service Groupon, on the other hand, is so popular it is now worth a reported $6 billion dollars (Oh, and did I mention, Google tried to buy Groupon…).

Best (i)Tunes of 2010:

What is the top music of 2010? According to iTunes, the top singles include Train, “Hey, Soul Sister,” Katy Perry, “California Gurls” (feat. Snoop Dogg), Eminem, “Love the Way You Lie” (feat. Rihanna), and Lady Antebellum, “Need You Now”. Best selling albums of 2010 included Eminem, Recovery, Lady Gaga, The Fame, Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More, and Jack Johnson, To the Sea. See full list here: http://bit.ly/haj6vf

More Best of Tech:

Other tech items that make my list include Microsoft Kinect, which is a controller free game console.1 million Kinect’s were sold in the first month. Also, the iPhone 4 turned out to be a huge hit in 2010, with HD photo capabilities, Facetime, and a multitouch display. What were your favorite technology items of 2010?

The Night Of…
Ensuring a fun-filled and connected New Years Eve.

Time Square Countdown:

Access Time Square from anywhere. The official time square ball holiday app counts down and shows footage of the ball drop. So for those who can’t make it to NYC for NYE, at least you don’t have to miss the show.

If you’re in Time Square on NYE and are the mayor of the Time Square Visitor Center by noon on NYE, you win 2 tickets to the official New Year’s Eve VIP Party. Details here.

SCVNGR+AE=4Charity:

If you are in Time Square for New Years Eve, you might like to know that SCVNGR is teaming up with America Eagle this New Years Eve. For every SCVNGR task you complete, SCVNGR/AE will donate $10 to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Skal!:

IKEA has created the app, Skal!, which is a fun NYE toasting app. You pick your glass style and watch it fill with champagne. Clink glasses with the iPhone next to you and your contact information will be shared, and a snapshot photo will be taken of the cheers for you or your friend to post on Facebook or Twitter.

For the Kids:

Have kids? Jeff Kelley (@JephKelley) found this great website where you can set the time you want an animated ball to drop – be it 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, or 11pm. It even does the count down. So, change the clocks, put this website up, and the kids will think they’re staying up for the fun.

More To Come…
Looking forward to 2011

Is iPad 2 coming soon? When will Facebook update company pages (we’ve seen a sneak peek of what they’ll likely look like)? Will Verizon carry the iPhone in 2011? What new technology will we be introduced to at CES? With the ever-changing landscape of social media, I can’t wait to see what’s to come in 2011. Thanks for tuning into my picks of the week this year… exciting changes to come for my pick’s as well!  Happy New Year’s!

-Anna (@alucas9)

The update itself is a welcome overhaul of the look of the basic profile, drawing the viewer into a more image-related experience (such as your favorite authors rendered as their Page icons rather than words – thankfully you can edit the priority of the images shown now, not just a random sample of “Liked” elements as before).

It also brings a few new tricks – or at least tricks new to Facebook that might remind you of a few other social sites. One such feature: “Highlighting” your top connections. As they say themselves:

Relationships with close friends can be just as important as family. Now you can highlight family members and the other key people in your life, like your best friends or coworkers — all right on your profile.

Sounds an awful lot like MySpace’s Top 8, eh? I can imagine the arguments already as we shuffle our best friends, kids, spouses and drinking buddies in a furious drive to avoid conflicts…

This “highlighting” comes from a tweak to the Friends List feature, allowing you to share your Friend Lists more like Twitter Lists. This makes your curated personal lists to potentially become a way for you to find similar interests, people, etc. (The new Facebook List features are well profiled at the blog Stayi N’ Alive.) Of course, you can never share your Lists and there’s a bevy of privacy controls to go with the new options.

There are lost of other smaller changes. My particular favorite is the “Projects” you can add under your employers – drawing attention to what you’ve worked on and who with, giving an interesting kind of due and credit to a particular idea or execution.

To see the new features and immediately update your own profile, visit: http://www.facebook.com/about/profile/

See the Facebook video on the changes here:

And to see the 60 Minutes Interview, see the two parts embedded here at Business Insider with some comentary on how Zuck came across.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

That bin may soon be seen on a corner in your hometown, thanks to The Onion‘s new Onion Nation franchising program. If your life dream was to write for the publication, keep dreaming. Franchisees essentially buy the rights to sell The Onion in their city and are responsible for the advertising, marketing, printing and distribution. As the Onion Nation says, “Leave the writing to us.”

This is an interesting move in the world of digital and traditional news media. Here’s a publication that would never be as large as it is were it not for the Web, and it wants to expand its print properties. Meanwhile, real newspapers continue their steady declines in every facet of the business: circulation, staff, advertising, the number printed pages and even physical size. And most real newspapers still haven’t figured out how to use the Internet (well, at least). Onion Inc., meanwhile, has perfected its online and mobile experience.

Yet The Onion has a true chance at expanding its network into middle-market cities such as Richmond, Raleigh, Nashville and those of similar size. The audience is already in place, to the point that merely having The Onion available in a mid-size town will become news in and of itself (expect Twitpics of the green bins). The Onion could bring particular competition not only to traditional papers, but many of the throwaway advertorials that float around on the free magazine racks near the entrance of grocery stores. Hip, young organizations will no doubt want to advertise in a publication whose main demographic is ["the coveted"] age 18 to 35 group. Heck, it might even be an honor to get a cold call from an Onion ad rep.

Contentwise, The Onion has long been protective of keeping creation in a tight circle. Articles submitted by the general public are sent straight to the trash bin. They don’t accept resumes. For the most part, writing for The Onion is a matter of “If we want you, we’ll find you.” I could see The Onion‘s non-parody entertainment section, the A.V. Club, eventually being localized in cities where the franchising effort proves popular. This could be a matter of Onion Inc. hiring or purchasing a pre-established local entertainment site (in Richmond, our hometown, that could be a site like RVANews.com or Richmond.com).

It’ll be interesting to watch the potential spread of America’s Finest News Source. So far, the company’s only major gaffe has been its abysmal straight-to-video movie. But beyond that, this is a strong company with steady growth and a quality product that could become even bigger and better. And as someone who has studied comedy writing for years, I hope to see The Onion in Richmond very soon.

-Jeff (@jephkelley)

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.”

Read the full article here…

Find more Feedback thoughts on Geolocation here…

One thing we learned from several agencies we met with, and what was confirmed by a recent study compiled by LIONBRIDGE, was that French companies are more reluctant to use social media tools to push out information. Companies in France mostly use social media to push out information without losing control of the conversation. In general, the French typically use social media to keep in touch with friends.

Paris, France

Another interesting thing we were told on our travels was that people in Belgium have not embraced social media very much, whereas people in the Netherlands, where the same language is typically spoken (Dutch), have embraced social media in a big way. In a Global Web Index Survey, stats showed that people in the Netherlands use social media most as a tool to stay up to date with current news and events.

Bruges, Belgium

Finally, as one would expect, many European countries don’t only use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. They use their own social media platforms. For example, in France, Skyrock is also popular. In Italy, Netlog and Badoo are used, and in the UK Bebo is used. Learn more here.

Cambridge, England

And as always, this is Anna of Feedback, and those were my social media picks of the week. Keep a look out for next weeks picks, which will be filmed from Las Vegas, NV.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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:

• 1 in 4 students reported removing a school from their prospective list because of a bad experience on that school’s Web site.
• 92 percent said that they would be disappointed with a school or remove it entirely from their lists if they didn’t find the information they needed on the school’s Web site.
• 76 percent of students supported schools creating their own private social networks for prospective students.

-Anna (@alucas9) and Heather (@Hmillar13)