Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

How iOS is WeOS

How iOS is WeOS
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

Instead of waiting for the so-called ‘Facebook phone’ to come out, there’s already a pretty decent mobile handset running an operating system that’s somewhat social today and will be far more social this fall. It’s called the iPhone, and the upcoming software update is so social that iOS should be renamed WeOS.

For people looking for a high-end smartphone, there’s no contest anymore. Apple’s update, iOS 6, will ensure Google’s Android is limited to budget and mid-tier smartphones (the update applies to the iPad too, but Apple already has a de facto monopoly there).  Even if Google catches up, most of its consumers will remain far behind. Apple’s Scott Forstall said that 80% of its customers are running the latest software version (iOS 5), compared to the 7% of Android users who are running the latest version (4.0).

Apple’s tour of iOS 6 promotes 10 key upgraded services and four additional ones, so let’s go through each one and see how social it is.

Maps: Not social. They look gorgeous though, and the free turn-by-turn navigation is one less reason to go with Android.

Siri: Somewhat social. Siri will now be able to post and review Facebook updates and tweets.

Facebook: Entirely social. Facebook isn’t just part of Siri; it’s embedded everywhere in iOS 6. Apple writes, “Share a photo to Facebook right from Camera or Photos. Post your location right from Maps. Brag about a high score right from Game Center... Never miss another birthday or get-together, since Facebook events are integrated into Calendar.” Really, what more could Facebook users want out of a phone? Also note that the map integration further boosts Facebook’s location services over rivals like Foursquare, even if Foursquare claims to be about recommendations instead of check-ins now.

Shared photo streams: Entirely social. Select photos and share them with who you want. Photos are viewable on the web if someone isn’t running a compatible Apple device. Friends can like and comment on photos.

Passbook: Nominally social. This new version of a mobile wallet stores boarding passes, movie and concert tickets, coupons, loyalty cards, and gift cards. It’s conceivable that some stored items could include social hooks –“check-in to the concert with a friend” or “share this coupon on Facebook” – but this is more of a digital locker than a promotional vehicle.

FaceTime: Inherently social. Video chat over cellular networks and not just Wi-Fi. It still only works with iOS devices.

Phone: Inherently social. Remember the whole phone functionality of the iPhone? There are new features like replying to calls with text messages and setting reminders to call someone back.

Mail: Inherently social. New features include VIP lists for favorite contacts and easy ways to attach multimedia to email.

Safari: Nominally social. The one potentially social upgrade is that photos and videos can be uploaded from the web browser without switching to another application. As this becomes more widespread across operating systems, it could remove one reason for developing native mobile applications.

Accessibility: Not social. People with various disabilities will appreciate the upgrades.

Find My iPhone: Nominally social. It’s easier to contact someone who finds your iOS device and wants to return it.

Find My Friends: Entirely social. Upgrades include location-based alerts for when key contacts such as family members leave a venue or arrive home.

Remodeled stores: Not social. The iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore benefit from user reviews, but the upgrades aren’t social.

New features for China: Very social. This last update might as well be called ChiOS with all the support for Chinese speakers and Chinese internet services. This includes a number of China’s social services, since Facebook remains in the proverbial Mongolia well outside the great firewall of China.

Not all of the features are social, and some merely play catch-up to Android, but Apple’s got the best track record of creating products and features that people widely adopt. That bodes well for iOS 6, which can just as well be considered WeOS 1.

 

Death to Internet Week

Death to Internet Week
(Long Live Mobile Week)
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

Happy Internet Week! Did you realize it was that time of year again? It’s one of the holiest weeks on the digital media calendar, nestled between the first and second Social Media Weeks, and well ahead of Advertising Week and Social Week. Also, don’t confuse it for Foursquare Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, neither of which take place during Internet Week, but they keep the spirit alive year-round.

Enjoy all these weeks while you can. If they are to maintain their relevance going forward, then all of them will disappear and will be rebranded Mobile Week. Good luck telling them apart, but that would at least achieve some degree of honesty in nomenclature.

Consider some recent milestones:

• Facebook announced it has more than 500 million mobile users. There’s no turning back now that Facebook has the majority of its audience accessing the service from mobile devices. In March, 83 million people used only Facebook’s mobile services and not its online site; this jumped 43% from 58 million in December. For Twitter, this is old hat. Back in September, Twitter’s CEO said that 55% of its active users logged on via a mobile device.                 
• TechCrunch reported that Facebook’s 900 million users give it a 90% reach of all social media users, based on the 1 billion global social media users mentioned in a new social media report from the ITU. Its reporting could use some work. First of all, a quick search revealed that the ITU cited the 1 billion figure last year, when Facebook had a mere 750 million users. Second, the ITU counts China’s leading social service QQ in the total. QQ has more than 700 million users as of last September. Given that Facebook is banned in China, and given that QQ has also continued to grow rapidly, that means the number of combined users for those services alone is at least 1.6 billion and will likely top 2 billion in the coming months. The growth for QQ is, surprise, getting a major boost from mobile. Its Mobile QQ Game Hall application recently surpassed 200 million users, and that’s just one of several mobile services QQ offers.
• Facebook users are spending more time with the property on mobile devices. comScore reported that U.S. Facebook users spent an average of 441 minutes per month accessing it via mobile properties, compared to just 391 minutes via PCs.

None of this should be particularly shocking. It doesn’t matter whether a site’s offering the weather or selling snowshoes; in time, most of that usage will come from mobile devices. For social media, the changes are happening even faster for two key reasons:

1)     Mobile devices have always been designed for communication, so the only difference now is that people are using the devices more for data than voice. Younger Americans prefer texting to talking, and that preference line is creeping into older demographics each year.

2)     Social media is increasingly about sharing content. The easiest way to create content – especially anything involving sound, images, or video – is through a mobile device. Once that content is created, it’s now fairly effortless to share it. Sharing content is usually the purpose of creating it. The ends and the means are the same. Why create content? To share it. Why share content? Because it was created.

That’s why all these event weeks can save themselves from irrelevance and rename themselves Mobile Week now. Yet even if you accept the premise for Social Media Week, Social Week, and Internet Week, the one that may be a harder sell is Advertising Week. After all, advertising is everywhere, and it’s not just digital. On top of that, mobile advertising is a tiny share of the pie, and marketers are hardly closing the gap between where they’re spending media dollars and where consumers are spending their time.

Advertising Week should be the first to change its name. It’s traditional advertising – TV, radio, print, out of home, in-store – that’s most likely to reach people who have their mobile devices on them. It doesn’t matter what the call to action is; the mobile device gives consumers a way to express their interest by taking action.

We’ll see which week changes its name first. In the meantime, I wish you a happy Mobile Week, and I hope to see you at the next Mobile Week, which should be coming up any week now.

 

Facebook Acquires Itself

Facebook Acquires Itself
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

There’s no way you missed this week’s tech news: Facebook spent $1 billion to acquire Instagram, the mobile photo-sharing application sensation. This may be a factually accurate description, but it misses the heart of the story. What happened was, Facebook spent $1 billion to acquire a piece of itself.

Photo sharing has always been a core part of Facebook. The site was conceived as a way to rank the attractiveness of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fellow Harvard students. By May 2007, when few marketers were paying attention to Facebook, users had uploaded 1.7 billion photos to the site. Facebook reportedly notched its 100 billionth photo sometime last summer. Last August, when Flickr notched its 6 billionth photo uploaded, reports showed Facebook users uploading 6 billion photos every two months.

There shouldn’t be any question why Facebook acquired Instagram, or why it paid so handsomely for it. Sure, Instagram’s acquisition price was more than twice what was paid for a dozen other photo-sharing startups combined over the past fifteen years. Instagram isn’t just any photo-sharing site, though. It attracted 30 million users for its iOS apps alone, before a successful Android launch just days ago.

Beyond any numbers and superlatives, what Facebook’s executives must have realized is that Instagram should never have existed. This should have been Facebook’s photo application all along. Facebook has more than 400 million mobile users, and any of them using a smartphone has to grapple with subpar photo sharing. Once Instagram fully integrated with Facebook, it became even more obvious that Facebook was far behind. As Business Insider put it, “Without photos, Facebook is toast.”

Instagram isn’t just a major source of photo sharing; it’s also a major contributor of public location-based data. Last fall, when I checked LocalResponse to research location-based services for a major quick service restaurant, Instagram trailed Twitter and rivaled Foursquare to join the top three sources. This also fits in well with Facebook’s approach, where checking into locations isn’t that important, but adding location information to status updates and content is increasingly common. Facebook even constantly recommends that users add locations to their photo albums.

By acquiring Instagram, Facebook tacitly acknowledged that it had lost its focus on what Facebook has always been about. Instagram is an app that never should have existed in the first place. One wonders what would have happened to Instagram if Facebook took its engineering resources used in creating the timeline and applied it to creating the best mobile social media experience. At least now, Facebook doesn’t need to worry about Instagram as a competitor, and the deal ensures that no one else can lay their hands on the startup. Google and Apple could both have been interesting suitors.

This acquisition once again reminds marketers how visual consumers are. Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram aren’t flukes; people enjoy expressing themselves via images. But Instagram has also followed Twitter’s lead in using simple hashtags to categorize images. This is crucial for organizing information right now; it’s still difficult to retrieve and search for images unless there are adequate tags and descriptions. What’s old is new again; plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Just about any marketer that has experimented with an Instagram campaign has relied on using a consistent hashtag for identifying relevant images.

More importantly, this should be a wake-up call for all business executives. What other companies out there are embodying and executing on what you do even better than you are? What part of your corporate DNA has been stagnating at your headquarters, and where outside of your office is that DNA mutating for the better? What do you have to do to stay true to your identity, whether through in-house development or acquisition? Mark Zuckerberg found his answer for Facebook, and proudly paid $1 billion for it. Will it take that much for you to do the same?

The Curse of Meh

The Curse of Meh
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

The app Oink just joined the great pigsty in the sky, or wherever apps go to die. While many apps deserve to be put out of their misery, oftentimes I don’t have the heart to delete an app. The app may have something appealing about it, or it may be an early version that’s likely to improve. Such apps have something in common: they’re all “Meh.”

Urban Dictionary defines “meh” as “indifference; to be used when one simply does not care.” That’s an apt definition, and it’s the first definition I’ve found on the site that is completely G-rated. I have enough Meh apps on my iPhone that I created a second folder called “Meh 2,” and I now have more apps in Meh folders than I do in any other category.

Almost all of the apps in the Meh folders are social in a significant way. Oink was a classic example. It was a beautifully designed app for sharing recommendations, and it was fun to use. Yet I could never figure out when or why to use it instead of some other app.

I showed a friend my Meh system at South by Southwest (SXSW) last week, and he kept saying how much he loved so many of these apps, and then noted how seldom he used any of them. When Oink died, I wrote him, “There has been big news this week. One of my beloved Meh apps, Oink, just joined the deadpool! Let the Curse of Meh begin.” He responded, “Bummer about Oink… I loved the app, though truth be told, I never USED the app much, and I guess that’s the first big step towards the deadpool, as it were.” Bingo.

This massive generation of Meh apps is an inevitability. There are more than 500,000 applications available in the iTunes store, and another 400,000 for Android (with massive overlap). How many have you used, ever? We’re far past the point of anyone beyond a few full-time app reviewers having ever tried more than 1% of all apps.

Social apps, or apps that are largely social, face an added challenge. Not only do they need to be great, but they need to tap into the network effect where the app becomes more useful as other people join. That means that it’s disproportionately likely that a social app will fail.

A colleague came by to talk about SXSW, and then asked, “With all the apps out there, how can they survive if they keep catering to smaller and smaller audiences?” He was referring to location-based services such as Highlight that seem to cater to a relatively finite base of people who are open to constantly sharing their locations and meeting new people. It’s a fair question, as apps today tend to be unfathomably ambitious (“We’re the next Facebook, but with Google’s business model”) or targeted to very specific user bases (“Rural Americans with gay cats will love sharing this with their prematurely balding children”).

And then, there are surprises. There were blogging platforms before Tumblr came around and made blogging mainstream. It was easy to share photos before Instagram made it even easier and more fun. I don’t know what there was before Pinterest, but I don’t think people were sitting around clamoring for something like it, either. These are all far cries from Meh, they’ve earned their success, and they are inspiring many more to keep trying. That’s the upside of Meh: The reason so many apps wind up there is because enough others have set our expectations so high.

TripIt's Questionable Billing Practices Tarnish Travel App

I've been a big fan of TripIt for years, logging more than 292,000 miles of trips through the travel service that organizes travel plans into useful itineraries easily accessible via mobile devices. My enthusiasm for them was greatly diminished though recently due to their billing practices and clear lack of understanding why what they're doing is wrong.

Some time ago, I received a free trial of TripIt Pro which activates many of TripIt's bonus features like real-time flight status alerts (which often proved to be inaccurate, and less reliable than far cheaper programs like FlightTrack Pro) and updates on when flight fares drop and you can receive refunds (the one time TripIt kept alerting me to refunds was for the wrong flight, so it didn't apply to me).

A friend and colleague received the free trial at the same time, and alerted me several weeks ago that he was billed for the service once the trial ran out. He received no notice from TripIt, and only discovered it through Mint, which was tracking his finances. I find it problematic when Mint brings up fees like this. Mint had alerted me to some suspect fees from Citibank, and I was able to call the bank and get the fees waived given that the bank never alerted me to them. Citibank's customer service was far better than TripIt's, which I contacted once I discovered TripIt had charged me $49 in February 2011. Note that TripIt never sent me an alert that I would be billed or that I was billed. It was there for me to check on my own when going through my account on TripIt.

For those who use TripIt, you know you get A LOT of alerts from them. They're always telling you about upcoming trips, who's in your area, and why you should upgrade. They have no problem sending lots of messages to users. The only reason that I can fathom that they wouldn't alert people that they have been billed is dishonesty. They have yet to offer any other plausible reason for this.

I tweeted them on January 6 about the error and got no response.

I also posted on Facebook on January 9:

Warning to Tripit Pro users: Tripit will not inform you when your account is up for renewal and thus when you will be charged. When you discover you've been charged and ask for a refund, they will not give it to you. These are completely dishonest billing practices, and I highly advise against signing up for TripIt until things change.

Another user commented that I should contact the credit card company for a refund. I responded:

This is a bigger deal than asking for refunds. My problem is that TripIt does not notify users when you'll be charged or when you were charged. Either TripIt wasn't aware of this and should change it, or it's doing this intentionally. With all the notifications TRipIt sends users, this would be a logical one for them to include.

TripIt responded with a generic message:

We’re always willing to review a policy or procedure based on user feedback and this post has been passed on to management. Please note that billing information, including next billing date and amount, are available to all users at anytime in the Billing Information area of their profile...

I responded in turn:

I'm glad it's been passed on to management. I've received a lot of communication from TripIt but none even suggesting that it would be in customers' best interests to notify them when they will be charged. This is tone deaf customer service, and it's why I canceled my premium account and am exploring alternatives to TripIt's free services.

TripIt still never addressed the issue beyond 'passing the post on to management.'

TripIt clearly doesn't get the benefit of alerting users to charges, nor do they bother explaning why they don't alert people. Further proof comes from TripIt's Catina, who responded to a separate email I sent through their site:

Thanks for contacting us. Reviewing your TripIt Pro account based on your email address XXX, we see that you were billed on 2/11/11 for $49 transaction id is XXX . Your next scheduled renewal is 2/12/12. If you feel you were billed after that date, it could be that you have another account with a different email address that's not associated to XXX. We can only pull account information by an email address. At the time of sign up you entered your credit card information and agreed to the terms of service (which stated that if you did not cancel prior to the conclusion of the trail period that your membership would continue and your card would be charged).

You can view your transaction history and print receipts for each transaction, on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

To avoid the auto renewal, you can cancel your TripIt Pro subscription and keep your Pro benefits for the full term paid please see the instructions in our help page on this topic: http://help.tripit.com/entries/89464. If you wish to close your account, sign in to TripIt and click on your user name and then Settings > Close Account (http://www.tripit.com/account/delete). Be sure to select the 'do not contact' option if you don't want to receive any TripIt initiated emails in the future. Please note, if you are a paid TripIt Pro member and cancel your TripIt account no refunds will be provided.

So in other words, it's the "terms of service defense." But that still doesn't answer why they were charging users without alerting them. I explained this to them, and Catina said, "You stated, 'I was billed twice.'" I never said that, so the next exchange was all about clarifying something that Catina invented.

It was then that I posted on Facebook and got another form response from TripIt:

We saw your Facebook posting and wanted to inform you, your transaction history can be viewed on our web site (www.tripit.com), in the 'Your purchase history' section of the billing history page of your TripIt account. To access this area (after signing in) go to User Name > Settings > Billing info (you can find a direct link in our help page item: http://help.tripit.com/entries/393497)

I responded to Catina:

That still doesn't help as you never notified me a payment was due or then
processed. I will continue to post this on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere
until you change your policy. A refund is still requested as well. If you
were being charged for a service, wouldn't you want to know about it? I'd
actually be fine forgoing my refund if you change your policy.

Catina never responded, nor did anyone else from TripIt through this line.

I did take one more measure. I know someone who works with TripIt, so I reached out to her partially to let her know that I was going to raise the issue further, and partially to see if I'd get any better a response. She responded:

I checked with our team, and the intention behind auto-renewal is to prevent travelers from having a service lapse in the middle of traveling. The last thing we'd want to happen is for a traveler not be alerted that their plane is early/late (for example), when they're expecting to hear from us. However, we do provide a 2-week grace period following the charge, so cancellations can be made during that time.

Please know that your voice has been heard, and we're taking into consideration the suggestions you've made.

Again, my voice has been heard. Management received my request. Great. I responded to her:

My problem isn’t the auto-renewal at all. I understand that makes sense for some services.

Can you explain why they wouldn’t notify users that their auto-renewal is coming up, and that their auto-renewal was just processed? How does one even know when the grace period is if they’re never notified?

I heard nothing more from her or anyone at TripIt.

For a service built on notifications, and one that I thought was designed with the consumer in mind, I have been seeking alternatives. FlightTrack Pro, as mentioned, works well for notifications with a one-time $10 charge. Kayak's My Trips further organizes trips in a similar way that TripIt does and is proving to work well.

I'd like to keep using TripIt but can't if this is how they treat their users. Fortunately the alternatives keep getting better.

Ten Mobile Social Trends for 2012

10 Mobile Social Trends for 2012 and Beyond: Customer Engagement Technology World 2011 Keynote

View more presentations from David Berkowitz

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Ten Mobile Social Trends for 2012

How prepared are you for the mobile social tidal wave, tsunami, hurricane, and  Bieberquake that will hit us in 2012?

You better get ready. Gartner forecasts that there will be 7.4 billion mobile connections in 2015, when the Earth’s population is expected to be a mere 7.2 billion. And you know what everyone’s going to be doing with their 1.03 mobile connections per person? They’ll be undressing catalog models with augmented reality apps. But when they’re not doing that, they’ll probably be engaging with some kind of social media.

Following a keynote I just delivered at Customer Engagement Technology World 2011 on mobile social media, which you can view above or download at bit.ly/cetw2011, here are the ten trends to follow. You can find even more examples of these trends in the talk, with links in the appendix.

Here are the top ten mobile social trends:

1) Social Fashion

Why it matters: Mobile experiences can change the shopping experience to provide real-time feedback from friends, experts, and sometimes brands.

Watch out: Retailers and fashion brands might not love the real-time feedback when it’s negative.

Best in show: Go Try It On is one of my favorite digital experiences, especially for an app I don’t need personally (being married gives me all the real-time feedback that I need, and then some).

2) Tag, You’re It

Why it matters: Tagging is cool again thanks to Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and other services built on tags, let alone the humble hashtag popularized by Twitter.

Watch out: Keep tags simple and relevant. No one will use a tag just because a marketer tells them to do it.

Best in show: If you haven’t tried Pinterest yet, you’re missing one of the great phenomena migrating from trendsetters to the mainstream.

3) Interactive TV

Why it matters: Interactive TV is here. Almost all mobile internet users access their mobile devices while watching TV, and most of that activity involves socializing.

Watch out: Check-ins and other gimmicks won’t have the same staying power as experiences that provide relevant content and active communities.

Best in show: There are some great contenders here, but I like IntoNow to use during TV programs and Shazam during the ads.

4) Q&A

Why it matters: Mobile social media makes it possible to get instant feedback from local experts.

Watch out: Very few local apps scale, especially for real-time experiences.

Best in show: Opinionaided is addictive. More than 100 people bothered voting on whether I had something in my teeth. Oddly, they couldn’t agree.

5) Putting ME in RecomMEndations

Why it matters: We’re not all the same, so how come recommendations are the same for everyone?

Watch out: Few services do personalization well, either because the social graph data is limited or the personalization takes too much work.

Best in show: Foursquare still nails this better than any newcomer I’ve tried so far. Seeing where your friends have been and what they recommended is both powerful and rewarding

6) Social Context

Why it matters: For people sharing their location, you can find out who is nearby and what you have in common with them.

Watch out: Many find this creepy, even if it’s all opt-in.

Best in show: Sonar has become one of a handful of apps that I use regularly; it’s perfect for habitual location-sharers.

7) Geo-Gaming

Why it matters: Mobile games can be far more fun if they’re based around real-world locations.

Watch out: A lot of people just want to kill pigs and cut ropes.

Best in show: I’m addicted to Traveler’s Quest for burying and finding virtual treasure all over the globe, but Life is Crime is also a well done version of Mafia Wars using real venues, and the latter runs on Android.

8) Augmented REALity

Why it matters: Merging digital experiences with the real world offer imaginative new ways for people and brands to tell their stories. New applications will have people using AR to find people, not just places.

Watch out: So far, it’s still mostly gimmicks.

Best in show: The Airwalk virtual pop-up store by Goldrun may be the best AR campaign run so far.

9) Near Field Community

Why it matters: Near field communication (NFC) becomes far more interesting when it taps into social media.

Watch out: Hey, Jack, in Springfield! Can we borrow your phone? The rest of us 300 million Americans are waiting for our turn to try NFC since our handsets don’t have the hardware.

Best in show: Look how excited this guy from Engadget is to buy a Coke from a vending machine just because he’s using NFC. Now imagine if there was an incentive for him to buy one for a friend.

10) Facial Recognition

Why it matters: Mobile handsets are just getting powerful enough with fast enough connections to process facial recognition. Whatever you’ve seen so far using webcams will seem like child’s play.

Watch out: It better be 1,000% opt-in or people will flip out. And it doesn’t play well in places with more sensitive privacy concerns, like schools, strip clubs, or Europe.

Best in show: Face.com has processed 34 billion faces so far and is just getting started.

Face.com isn’t the only one. We’re all just getting started. How are you planning to use mobile social media in the months and year ahead? I’m excited for the opportunities we’ll have to learn from each other.

 

Checking In On The Check-In Class Of 2010

Keanu's sad because none of his friends are checking in anymore

Checking In On The Check-In Class Of 2010
originally published in MediaPost

Remember when check-ins were the future of social media? Remember when Foursquare was the next Facebook, Gowalla was the next Foursquare, and Whrrl was the next Gowalla? Yeah, I’m glad we’ve moved on, too.

Yet it wasn’t long ago that these check-in apps were so prevalent that I used eight of them concurrently, and then showed how they differed by including a celebrity persona that embodied each one. Things have changedm though. At last week’s OMMA Social event in San Francisco, I kept winding up in conversations with people wondering what happened to the check-in craze. The hype has faded, leaving check-ins in the proverbial chasm that must be crossed for the activity to become mainstream.

So what happened to the one-time pioneers of the check-in world? Here’s a review of the Check-In Class of January 2010.

Buzzd (Lindsay Lohan)

2010: “Buzzd is a little too cool for me so I don't use it as much as the others, but if you're more into bottle service than cupcake trucks, party on.”

Today: Buzzd quietly faded as a consumer app, and founder Nihal Mehta pivoted the business. Today it’s LocalResponse, “the world’s first cross-platform check-in based ad network,” allowing marketers to reach consumers publicly sharing their locations (full disclosure: I’m a LocalResponse advisor).

CauseWorld (Lance Armstrong)

2010: “Every time you check in somewhere, largely at retailers and restaurants, you earn karma points that you can donate to a number of charities, all thanks to sponsors.”

Today: CauseWorld is gone, but its good karma has been reincarnated into Shopkick. Now, points are earned not just for checking in but for scanning objects at a store, creating more opportunities for marketers to reach consumers. With 2.5 million users so far, it has achieved more success than many check-in apps ever did, though it still has a long way to go before it scales.

Foursquare (Ashton Kutcher)

2010: “Foursquare is responsible for a lot of how we think about mobile social media, from ‘merit’ badges to local advertising. It's tough to say how well Foursquare will play to the masses, as the whole idea of checking in creeps some people out.”

Today: Foursquare remains the king of check-ins, which sounds great except when you find out the rest of the royal family either contracted cholera or left to join the clergy. Foursquare has grown, notching 10 million users, but most people still don’t get the point of checking in. I still love Foursquare and look forward to its next act. It needs that next act, though.

Gowalla (Anna Kendrick)

2010: “You might be thinking, ‘Anna who?’ That's the reaction I still get when talking about Gowalla, even as it racks up investments and increases its global appeal.”

Today: Gowalla squandered its opportunity. You know when I knew it was dead? At South by Southwest, the hallmark tech event in Gowalla’s home city of Austin, no one was using it. Think I’m exaggerating? Check Google Trends on Gowalla versus Foursquare. Gowalla flatlined so much that you can hardly tell it’s still declining. I was wrong. Gowalla wasn’t Anna Kendrick. It’s more like Quinn Culkin, the younger sister of Macauley who had a couple brief acting roles before fading from public life.

Loopt (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, circa "Saved by the Bell")

2010: “Sure, it was in Apple's ads for awhile and may have a passionate fan base. But it seems short on features compared to its competition… It's the one I keep forgetting about.”

Today: It still exists. Every now and then, it inks some marketing deal. But it remains as forgettable as ever. Oddly though, if you check Google Trends, it seems like its entire fan base is in the Netherlands. Veel succes, Loopt!

MyTown by Booyah (Ellen DeGeneres)

2010: “MyTown has the most fun with location-based checkins… In MyTown, you buy properties and upgrade them, and then you keep collecting rent while finding new items to boost your points.”

Today: MyTown went from a market leader to a ghost town. Following a slew of frequent updates in 2010, Booyah’s only announcement between December 2010 and September 2011 was hiring a COO. Now it’s resurfacing, having just released MyTown 2 last week. Veel succes, Booyah! (Dutch is the fifth most popular language for “MyTown” searches; the Dutch sure love experimenting.)

Whrrl (Dame Helen Mirren)

2010: “Whrrl's not the newest or the hottest of the apps… It's not a must-use for me...”

Today: In April 2011, Groupon acquired Whrrl creator Pelago, naming Pelago CEO Jeff Holden its SVP of Product Management. Unlike Groupon’s share price, you can bet Holden’s undervalued. My favorite thing about Whrrl was the team behind it, and I wish the old Pelago crew the best.

Yelp (Michael Jordan -- on the Chicago White Sox)

2010: “It has the chance to be the Michael Jordan (Chicago Bulls style) of review sites, if it doesn't get crushed by Google. But now it's trying a new game, adding check-ins. While users love it for reviews, the notion of checking in is not part of its core purpose.”

Today: It’s not a check-in app and never was. Yelp’s growth remains meteoric; just check its own infographic from this summer. It needs all the success it can muster, because now that Google’s acquired Zagat, Yelp has bigger competition than ever.

If you’re keeping score, there’s hardly a resounding endorsement for check-ins. But there’s more to the story.

First, it’s odd that I didn’t include former check-in star Brightkite in the round-up, but it killed that functionality late in 2010 to focus on group texting.

The column also ran before the launch of SCVNGR, which includes check-ins but really hinges on rewards for location-based challenges. Even in that short window, it has quasi-pivoted, launching mobile payments spin-off LevelUp, though SCVNGR remains alive and well.

The biggest change to happen during this span is Facebook introducing check-ins in August 2010 and killing off the feature a year later. Tellingly though, Facebook made it much easier to share one’s location with every post. Thus, the check-in is dead but location is much more central to its functionality.

If you’re overwhelmed by this review, imagine using all these apps. I noted in the original post, “It gets to be a problem when you start interacting with the apps so much that you're not interacting with the people in front of you.” That’s a problem that is only getting worse. Yet that’s an issue that’s much bigger than check-ins. And on the flipside, the marketing opportunities for mobile social media are much bigger than just check-ins. The era of the check-in may have been short-lived, but the era of brands creating meaningful experiences through the combination of mobile, social and location-based marketing is just beginning.

The 'S' In 4S Stands For Social

What's more social than greeting cards?

The S in 4S Stands for Social
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Even as the world waits for the mythical Facebook phone to surface, there’s another social phone that has done pretty well: the iPhone 4S. It may not be exclusively social, but in many ways, the 4S embodies the theme of how mobile devices are inherently designed to connect people with each other.

Fellow columnist Cathy Taylor already wrote about Steve Jobs as an unheralded social media guru. Her rationale is beyond sound, although I’m not sure if the inimitable Mr. Jobs would have associated himself with the 220 people on LinkedIn (and far more on Twitter) who have used “social media guru” as their title. Cathy looked at Apple’s broader contributions and Jobs’ legacy, but what about the 4S itself?

I’m using the 4S as shorthand here. Tens of millions of people who haven’t bought the 4S can still access any of its features through Apple’s new iOS 5 mobile operating system. Both the 4S and iOS 5 were released publicly this month, and now we can see what they can do.

Find Friends

For the purists, the original point of Foursquare had little to do with points and badges. It was all about finding friends. The 4S and iOS 5 strip away all the gamesmanship and check-ins. Instead, they automate the process of sharing locations and finding friends.

Users won’t be focused on ramping up their friend tallies here. Many friend requests will wind up being temporary. One can locate friends over the course of certain travels or an event, and then end the connection.

Other apps beyond Foursquare have tried this. Marco, for instance, debuted in March 2010 and offered temporary sharing, with the added advantage of using SMS to connect people who didn’t use smartphones. Find Friends is limiting in that all users need iOS devices. That presents new opportunities for other apps to incorporate such functionality.

Cards

There’s something wonderfully old-fashioned about Apple’s latest approach to social media. Beyond bringing people together in person, Apple now makes it easy for people to send each other printed cards. This has the potential to change people’s behavior in unexpected ways. Suddenly it becomes more important to have physical addresses in your contact list.

Tweet

One short, simple word was added to sharing options in the new iOS browser: “Tweet.” Am I more likely to tweet links now that this is part of iOS? Sure. Will people sign up for Twitter just because they can tweet from the iPhone? That’s unlikely. Mostly, it will increase the volume of posts from iPhone-wielding Twitter users. Tweeting is just one of many options now, joining options to add a bookmark, add an article to the reading list, add the link to the home screen, email the link, and print the page. There’s a lot of clutter, and any more options will require Apple to redesign the menu.

Siri

The most important new feature on the 4S that isn’t in iOS 5 is Siri, Apple’s voice-activated virtual assistant. Does Siri encourage more social behavior?

It all comes down to the beholder, or in this case, the person beholding the iPhone. Social media may make us share more, and it may remove inhibitions, but it doesn’t turn an introvert into an extrovert. Similarly, the voice commands may be so intuitive that people use their mobile devices more to call, text, email, and schedule meetings with others. Or maybe people will check the weather and stock prices more often. It depends on the user.

Apple did prove that by adding a touch interface, people would interact far more with their devices, and with the media accessible through those devices. Apple rewired our brains so quickly that people like me, who grew up with keyboards and mice, now tend instinctively to touch any computer screen. If Siri succeeds, we’ll spend more time talking to our devices too, regardless of whether they accept voice commands.

Will those commands be more social, though? It’s not likely, but it’s entirely possible. It depends how much friction Apple removes in social encounters. If it becomes so incredibly easy to locate close friends nearby, send them printed notes out of the blue, share stories with anyone interested, and reach out to people via voice-activated prompts, then it will be intrinsically rewarding to do these actions more often.

The 4S and iOS 5 are perfect symbols for where social media is heading. Apple didn’t launch some new social network, and even the most social features like Find Friends don’t directly compete with social apps like Foursquare. Rather, Apple understands that our existence is largely social, and its devices should fulfill those needs for its consumers. That’s true for all brands now, and it’s up to brand managers to best orient these brands toward their consumers’ social needs.

Facebook's Little 'M' KOs Three 'Ws'

Facebook Mobile: big things in a small package (Image via Facebook)

Facebook's Little 'M' KOs Three 'Ws'
originally published in MediaPost

Facebook takes its leadership mantle seriously. Instead of merely coming out with a new iPad app, it changed in ways that will long cement its role as the most important suite of mobile sites and applications in the world.

Lofty claims? Perhaps. But they’re warranted.

Consider Facebook’s 350 million mobile users. Facebook surely hasn’t gotten there by offering the best mobile experience to date. Beyond some of its apps being half-baked, not all mobile devices make it easy to use Facebook’s mobile services. Facebook didn’t have to be the best; it just had to meet enough of its users’ needs. 350 million people don’t voluntarily do something that makes them miserable (though a few million people do somehow keep rooting for the Mets).

Consider how Facebook keeps its app users within its own environment. If a friend posts this column on Facebook and you tap the link from a mobile device, you’ll be able to read the full column on MediaPost while remaining within Facebook’s mobile app. Others have done this, including some Twitter clients. It matters far more on Facebook, though, not just because of the reach but because Facebook has always owned its own mobile experiences.

Consider how Facebook now directs its app users to other apps, as long as they tap into Facebook. This is the most significant mobile update Facebook has announced this week, and perhaps ever. Let’s look at it metaphorically: Mr. Zuckee is the most popular ice cream man in the neighborhood and has more kids lining up at his truck than he knows what to do with. To corner the market, he lets all the other ice cream shops in town accept Mr. Zuckee loyalty cards, but in return he gets the shops’ customer lists. That’s what has been happening all along since Facebook Connect launched. Now, with the new updates, Mr. Zuckee says that as a perk for being in the Zuckee network, he’ll drive kids to any other Zuckee affiliate. In more literal terms, Facebook will send its own app users to other apps on their devices, and will even direct people to those apps’ iTunes Store download pages.

All of this makes Facebook function more like an operating system than a publisher. It doesn’t control the whole experience yet. For instance, there are limits to how Facebook Credits can be used, largely to stay within the bounds of Apple’s policies. But Facebook now cements itself as the best portal on any mobile or portable device.

It’s very different than the portals we used to know. though.  The old Web portals used to be about delivering news, sports, and weather, with a side dish of email. Facebook is instead focused on delivering links and updates from friends, content from brand pages that users opt into, and quick access to their favorite apps, with a side dish of instant communication. Perhaps the weather and a few sports scores will be thrown in over time.

What’s also fascinating is how different these announcements are from what happened at f8 in late September. There, to much fanfare, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Timeline, a revamped profile page customizable with more multimedia and actions. Yet the Timeline has one massive flaw: It doesn’t work well on mobile devices. It’s a two-column format with rich images and a modular layout. Mobile profiles, however, default to a linear, more rigid format.

Zuckerberg seems to know the future of Facebook is all about mobile usage. Along with the new apps, Facebook is enriching everything it can at its mobile site, m.facebook.com. In time, the mobile experience will be the focal point of Facebook, and this may well have been the last f8 to not issue important mobile announcements. In time, the PC-based site will be where people go to tinker with their profiles and where brand managers administer pages, but for most people, Facebook will be an overwhelmingly mobile experience.

Here are Timeline updates I’d love to see from Mark Zuckerberg. “September 22, 2011: announced Facebook’s Timeline.” “October 10, 2011: effectively killed off Facebook’s Timeline.” Sometimes even those making the future happen to get blindsided by it.

Why They Stopped Using Foursquare

originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

Why They Stopped Using Foursquare

This may be shocking news, but not everyone's actively managing their identities on 10 social networks and 50 location-based mobile services. Some early adopters have even reached a point where they feel they've been adopting a little too early. They're the ones we'll hear from today.

When I recently browsed my Foursquare contacts - admittedly to remove some dead weight because I was getting too close to the 1,000 friend limit - I saw that a number of friends had stopped using it. I wanted to know why, and several were kind enough to share their stories.

This isn't about bashing Foursquare. The majority of my friends are active users, with their most recent check-in happening within the past week. Yet to acknowledge the obvious, most people - even most smartphone owners - have never used Foursquare. Those who tried Foursquare and stopped are in a unique position to speak to some of Foursquare's challenges, and some of the challenges for location-based services in general. Interestingly, as I was soliciting opinions for this piece, Facebook killed its Places check-in service, and distant runner-up Gowalla killed off some of its popular features. So it's an especially important time to understand the user value proposition of social location-based services.

Below are several thoughts on why people stopped using Foursquare, along with the date of their last check-in. For more thoughts on this, you can find a vibrant discussion on Google+.

Robert Wollner (April 2011): I don't like people knowing where I am and what I am doing unless it is very fun and very exciting. Similar to the value of Google+, I don't like the idea of coworkers, friends, family, and clients knowing what I am doing at all times.

Anonymous (December 2010): In truth, I didn't check in on Facebook all that much so I guess I won't miss it much anyway, and I don't plan to start using Foursquare again. I only ever used Foursquare and Facebook to check in when I was somewhere I wanted to remember or when I was somewhere with a group of "real life" friends (which Facebook is better for). While I played with Foursquare for a while, I didn't really get any benefit from it. The location-based deals idea is interesting though if it ever takes off. I'd love to get the benefit of deals for being a regular at places I like.

Walt Ribeiro (June 2010): I used to be a huge Foursquare user, but yes, I haven't touched it in more than a year. When Facebook places came out I stopped using Foursquare that very day. Then I began using Facebook less, and as a result haven't 'checked in' much at all. All the investment I had to do in order to become a mayor, just to save 10% on a $2.00 soft drink seemed senseless to me when I began to look at the time I was investing in these companies. That, and the idea of "investing social capital" was not something I wanted. My friends and followers don't care where I am, it had nothing to do with my music company or music fans, so the whole thing seemed more like a fad than a business strategy.

Jeff Rutherford (August 2010): Social media fatigue. I've used SCVNGR, which I liked a lot more than Foursquare, but even with SCVNGR I'm not a regular user. I do use social media a lot, but checking in to physical spaces is something I only do occasionally. I have two small kids, and everything I do in social media I question the time spent vs. what I'm gaining. Checking-in to physical locations ranks pretty low, so I don't do it that often.

Susan Bratton (February 2011): A boring waste of time. Something someone else wants me to do for them. No value. Focused on my own deliverables. Feel the same about Google+.

Ian Jindal (May 2011): I initially had fun with Foursquare - easy mayorships, interesting places and some discovery. After a while though the game became too much: my wife complained, my roaming fees increased... Then a few small things started to annoy me [that] culminated in my abandoning Foursquare and deleting the app ;) They were, in no particular order:

- I didn't care where other people checked in. It was Twitter spam. I didn't find anything of interest in real-time and none of my followers or real life friends cared either (i.e. no utility, no fun).

- The check-in is too crude. Places mixed with events and so the purpose/benefit is reduced. May as well just tweet with the location turned on.

- Other than mayorships, there's nothing else to the game.

Taken together, the brief game magic evaporated. There's only room in one's life for a couple of systems and between Twitter, microblogging, TripIt and one experiment (currently Google+), that's me full :). Of course I'm 45 and currently feeling rather grumpy, so I'd not assume that this is a general position ;)

Ian and others are hardly grumpy. They've just figure out what works for them, and in these cases, Foursquare doesn't. For a much greater group of people, Foursquare hasn't made the case yet to try it out. The value of these mobile social services is evolving, and it's something that Foursquare, its peers, brands, marketers, and of course consumers will have to figure out.

So where do you stand? Share your thoughts on the Social Media Insider comments, in Google+, or if you're so passionate about it, create an event on Foursquare and leave your opinion as a tip.