Verizon iPhone Announced:

Many AT&T haters/iPhone lovers have been hoping, speculating, and anxiously waiting for the Verizon iPhone announcement. At a Verizon press event on Tuesday, the Verizon iPhone was finally announced. The details:

• The iPhone 4 will be available through Verizon on February 10, 2010 (available for preorder online on or around February 3rd)
• The iPhone 4 will cost $199.99 for the 16GB model, and $299.99 for the 32GB model with a new two-year service contract.
• A feature AT&T doesn’t offer: The Verizon iPhone 4 will support personal hotspot services, allowing up to five devices to share the iPhone’s 3G data connection.
• For those who can wait: The Verizon iPhone 5 is expected to be released in July.

Foursquare Launches New Business Pages:

Foursquare has created a new area on their site called Foursquare for Business. Foursquare for Business is dedicated to teaching business users how to get started, claim a venue, and make the most of Foursquare. This section also encourages businesses to offer specials for users and/or mayors. On Thursday, Foursquare launched an Ambassador Card Program to recruit more businesses.

Jeff (@JeffKelleyRVA) and Dean (@Dbrowell) got to take a tour of the new Tumblr office.

Tumblr Opens Up Shop in RVA:

This week, popular blog platform Tumblr opened the doors to their new office in Richmond, Virginia. Headquartered in NYC, Tumblr chose Richmond for their second office location. President John Maloney and Creator/Product Director David Karp came to town for the opening. Last night, Tumblr hosted a meet and greet close to their new digs at Legend Brewing Company. The event was packed full of people welcoming Tumblr to town.

MySpace Downsizes:

MySpace downsized by 47% this week.  500 some jobs out the door. As USA Today explained,

“The rapid rise and fall of MySpace underscores a classic cautionary tale in the tech industry: The high-flying startup that comes crashing down to Earth when the next big thing — in this case, Facebook — comes along.”

It appears that parent company NewsCorp may be looking to sell.  MySpace CEO Mike Jones put out a statement, which included “Today’s tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability.”

NewsIe In Beta Testing:

A new social media platform, NewsIe, launched (for beta testing only) this week. The concept: social news. Social news on Twitter and Facebook normally involves friends sharing news and blogs they’re interested in. With NewsIe, you choose the people you’re interested in and get news and blogs about them. You start by importing your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn friends and selecting famous actors, musicians, politicians, and business people you’d like to follow. Then, NewsIe will provide real time news and blogs mentioning those people.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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…

RICHMOND, VA – When the clock strikes midnight on September 8, Feedback, a social media research and consulting group, will have completed a whirlwind first year that included two dozen new clients in 16 states, tripling the team size at the Richmond offices, acceptance into Worldwide Partners Inc. (the world’s largest owner-operated global agency network), and some of the biggest speaking engagements of the founders’ careers in a variety of industries.

Immediately after the 8^th, Feedback embarks on a new year that includes clients in Europe, the Caribbean and South America, their second cross-country tour for a new national client, new office space and new employees.

Feedback is proud to announce a tremendously successful first year as well as the hiring of Jeff Kelley as Senior Experience Strategist, Brad Carr as Technology Specialist, and Brittney Trimmer as Experience Specialist. Kelley comes to Feedback from the public relations world, and previously served four years as a business and technology reporter with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He is also the force behind the Richmond satire web magazine Tobacco Avenue.

“Our first year was not only full of crucial initial milestones, it completed many goals we had set for future years as well,” said Feedback CEO Jeff Thompson. “To take this from a glimmer to operating internationally in twelve months has been a fantastic journey, and we look forward to breaking more records in year two.”

Executive Vice President Dean Browell, who helped found Feedback with a PhD emphasizing generational differences online, added: “Hitting our philosophical goals were as important as hitting our financial ones. We have an incredible team of intelligent, creative people that work hard and play hard with the support of great partners and friends that do the same. Clients love that we love what we do, and that’s what you get when you combine results, expertise and passion.”

ABOUT US

Feedback, Inc has proudly differentiated itself with social media strategy formed from a research context, applying ethnographic research in the social space beyond simply Facebook and Twitter. A combination of high-level, research-informed strategies leading into expert implementation to complement and enhance marketing and PR efforts is why clients and agencies from around the world have contacted Feedback since it was formed in September 2009 by Jeff Thompson, Dean Browell and Experience Manager Anna Lucas. Because Feedback often operates behind the scenes, contact Feedback directly for client names we can share.

For more information, visit Feedback on the web at http://www.feedbackagency.com, on Twitter as @feedbackagency, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/feedbackfband by phone at (804) 893-3437.

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The sun will come up.

Charles Barkley will say something unintentionally hilarious.

Facebook will emulate what it doesn’t buy.

On the latter point, Wednesday evening Facebook debuted Places. The premise and execution of Facebook Places is remarkably similar to the first two sentences anyone may use to describe any number of check-in applications: It’s a way to share your actual location with others online; it also allows you to observe where others have checked in. Where many other applications seek to go from that starter definition, be it MyTown with games, Foursquare with tips, Gowalla with stickers, or ShopKick with deals, Facebook has simply stopped limply (but maybe effectively) at the first point of entry.

There’s a few other tricks to Facebook Places, and the following video, dripping with a sincerity that suggests they have suddenly figured out something others haven’t, demonstrates them:

Also inevitable is that Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal will be given a test run before most other humans. Unlike his usually predictably estatic review of Apple products (generally done in time for Steve Jobs to use an actual Mossberg quote as a part of his Keynote presentations), Walt was actually a bit matter-of-fact about Facebook Places. Not cold or harsh, just… well, “Meh” would probably be the most effusive meta-adjective I’d use.

This is because what may become the most short-term-advantageous thing about Places is what it does for others, including those other check-in services. The APIs that could come streaming out could hook into and help fuel the growth of any number of companies Facebook as threatened or tried to buy recently, several of whom (Gowalla, Foursquare and Yelp) actually appeared in some form on stage with Facebook for Places’ debut. And yes, businesses can claim their “Place” via a Page as we and others mused months ago.

And what about long-term? Well you can better believe Facebook didn’t debut this to merely dip a toe in. Cross-platform geo-location ads, sacks of data on visitations and total domination of the “place” space is clearly a mid-term goal. Actual quote from Zuckerberg: “…certainly you can imagine these things in the future.”

We have been recently musing on the concept of “place” (including, “How Location Could Change The Future of Pages” last March) insofar as the web toys with tying itself to real-world geographies and the inherent opportunity and fear laden in those watching this wrestling match happen. But one thing we’ve always said about Facebook — their nearest, truest competitor in a spiritual sense was never MySpace, but Windows. They want to be the start, constant and end of the web for many people — the entry point in. And for many, they are. So now marry location ontop of that and you can begin to see how powerful they could become for the general public. For and to the general public, I should say. Being in Facebook, as a valid location that people actually visit in real life as well as “Like” could become the equivalent of having your name and address in the phone book in the 80′s and being a store that’s in the Mall. You want to be “seen” there- and now you can, by friends who aren’t even nearby to see you.

This, of course, begs the privacy question. But if we rest for a moment and assume that this is about who you allow to see your location, we can hopefully still talk about “place” and Facebook’s role in it in a rational fashion. I could choose to not tell a single friend where I was on Facebook and still find it incredibly valuable to know that a restaurant I hear about in Richmond, VA called “Strange Matter” has been visited by several of my friends, I could reference it in a Status Update and get real recommendations of what to eat there and tips such as bringing your own quarters for the vintage arcade games. 3/4 of that scenario already happened pre-Places, but now I could potentially verify that it’s a cool place that several of my less chatty friends have also patronized recently. It becomes an early indicator for me in a single search, allowing me then to pursue more info through other means (Yelp reviews, call-outs for other recommendations on Twitter, etc.).

Facebook Places doesn’t change the game as much as it does solidify it, make it whole and, likely, make it ubiquitous. What it does more than really innovate is fire a cannon in a battle previously fought by slingshots as it brings its half-a-billion active audience into the check-in game. But don’t be distracted by the battle to see whose or what type of check-in system wins. Instead, start to look ahead, with us, at what this will mean for the intersection of real and web location in the years ahead.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

UPDATED August 19, 2010: Not that Facebook Places is available in #RVA just yet. #Fail #FacebookPlaces, #Fail.

One last note: Notice that Places logo? As TechCrunch points out: “It’s a 4. In a Square. Yeah.“