I’m enjoying foursquare as I dig into the mobile platform. I was also lucky enough to be using the mobile platform so much that I got upgraded from a normal user to Superuser – Level 1. There are three superuser levels outside of the normal users on foursquare:

Level 1:  You can edit venue info (address, cross streets, Twitter names), mark places as closed, and let foursquare know about duplicate venues.

Level 2: All the option of level 1 plus you can actually merger duplicate venues.

Level 3: All the option of level 1 & 2 plus you can start to create badges on the platform.

I can’t wait to be upgraded to the next superuser level. It’s interesting as foursquare is only four employees and they are harnessing the community to help clean up the database of venues vs hiring tons of staff to do it for them. TechCrunch had a story a few weeks ago about how after upgrading some users to superuser level 2 they went from 2,000 duplicate venues to 200 in less then 2 hours. That’s amazing amount of work in only a few hours.

It’s fun using the mobile platforms and seeing where my friends are in parts of the city and even places close by. Plus when it gives me a recommendation of a friend who likes a place close by to where I’m checking into… it’s awesome. However, I do have some recommendations for foursquare:

• Allow superusers to edit venues & tags on your mobile website
• Allow users to add or edit tags for venues on the mobile website
• Improve the connection for users using your mobile website. I find sometimes my BlackBerry won’t connect to the website.
• If someone is entering a franchise or a chain…. it would be cool if users could check a radio button and the system would pull the intersection and add it to the venue name. To many people are entering franchises or chains with just the name and not taking into account that other locations will need to be added later. This is an issue as you can’t have a place with the exact same name.

I’m loving foursquare and even with the small issues above… I can’t wait to start using it as I travel across the country and around the globe.

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Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program melds the unique principles that design offers business strategy with a vision of the future of business as sustainable, meaningful, and truly innovative—as well as profitable.

Nathan’s talk is titled DESIGN IS THE PROBLEM: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable. I’ve always found the Unfinished Business Lecture Series events to be top notch. It’ll be great to hear how Nathan thinks design can be used to make our future better.

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The Open Data Lab is an opportunity to explore the innovation possibilities of open civic data in Toronto. Join City subject matter and technology experts, community stakeholders and talented members of Toronto’s vibrant technology and design communities in an interactive and collaborative afternoon imagining commercial, social and civic applications of the City’s newly launched open data program.

Hope to see some of you there. I can’t wait to explore the first datasets that the city is going to rrelease and see how we can help make the city a better place with the information.

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GUEST SPEAKER: Gary Vaynerchuk, Online Marketing Trailblazer, Social Media Sommelier and Author, “CRUSH IT: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion” (Harper Collins, Fall 2009)
TOPIC: “Tools to Take Advantage of the Social Media Revolution and WIN”

Look forward to seeing some of you there.

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So I want to thank Duane for opening his blog up to me.  Who am I?  I’m a blogger from Cleveland, Ohio.  Where is Cleveland, Ohio?  Yeah, that would be a small city from the Midwest, where it is cloudy everyday except with the exception of 3 days.  Where the seasons change from Cold, Winter, Hot as hell, then Construction.  All kidding aside, I love my city.

Ok, enough with the boring stuff.

So what am I supposed to write about?  My blog definitely doesn’t have a theme, or at least a clearly stated them like this fantastic blog.  As I poke around on this blog I can definitely see a theme and I hope I don’t screw this up too bad.

Social networking and more specifically Twitter is an addiction.  I can’t get away from it.  It’s like having an intervention with someone who is on heroin.  I can’t shake the habit.

Recently my followers on twitter, and the readers of my blog were brought into my inner circle.  Through Twitter I was able to let everyone in and see, from my eyes, the birth of my newborn daughter.  I have a 7 year old, but back in 2002 Twitter, Facebook, and my blog were not around in the capacity it is today.  With the advent of Twitter I was able to keep all the family from across the nation updated on the progress of the delivery of the new addition.  With just a few punches on the keys of my BlackBerry I was able to broadcast photos of the new addition with in minutes to everyone all at the same time, and as Twitter was updated, all the friends and family that were holding vigil on Facebook waiting for word were also updated.

So is Twitter just for wasting time on a boring day?  Is it a viable news source? Sure.  But I know 7 years ago when my first daughter was born, it took me 3 days to even print photos I took on film and then mail them out.  Now, I didn’t even have a 35mm camera, or a regular digital camera.  I was able to get it all done with 1 BlackBerry.  Now most would think that what I did was absurd.  Many people I meet that follow my Twitter always tell me that my wife should kill me for Tweeting while she was in labor.  Sure that may be, but every single person who said my wife should kill me also admitted to being riveted to Facebook and Twitter the whole day as my wife and I embarked on an adventure together and with you.

So I guess the overall point of this stream of pointless banter is this; when people are questioning why we have the technology we have today and want to talk about how much of a waste it may be, just think of this, how has your cell phone made your life easier and how has it made you more connected?  With social media booming the way it has, it is allowing us to connect to people we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to meet.  We are creating relationships that 10 years ago would have been unheard of.  We are creating micro communities within a larger whole.  Without my blog, I can’t imagine my life today.  Without Facebook, the only interaction I would have had with my classmates from high school, college, and other professions would have been when I saw them at reunions, get togethers, and otherwise bumping into each other by happenstance.  These days I am able to keep in touch with almost everyone I feel is important with just my phone, a feat just a few generations ago could never even fathom.

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Well there are some things that we’re doing actually to track interaction within Twitter and Facebook. Facebook has their insights which aren’t great you know, but they are there and show what fans are doing on your page as far as video views, commenting and that kind of thing. On Twitter a strategy that we use is Bit.ly.You know, we are posting things and using Bit.ly links to link back to our content. Then we are able to show, you know if it’s Travel Channel and we are linking back to content on their page about bambi (sp?) foods. We are able to track how many people are actually clicking on our links and viewing that content and that’s what its about. So if you are getting a bunch of people following you but they are not doing anything after that. It’s just you know, they want a follow back then that doesn’t do anything for your brand. But if we can show them…

1) Here is how many Twitter followers you’ve

2) Here is how many clicks this link to your talents blog got from our Twitter post.

That’s what meaningful and that’s showing hey they are engaging with your brand and actively… what we like to call active influencer’s. They are actively engaging with your brand and posting comments, sharing and again retweeting.. how many people are retweeting or replying what we are posting on Twitter.

A click on a Bit.ly link is no better then a click on a banner. You can’t prove there was any real value just because someone clicked on it. Retweeting is great but it’s more important what they do when they get to your page. Leaving a comment there or signing up for your contest or newsletter is what you can show to clients as real value.

If you’ve 10,000 people clicking on your link but only a few hundred views and or comments on your video or signning up for your newsletter then that’s not really getting the client what they wanted. I think Bit.ly is great but just showing that to the client isn’t enought these days. Any client who takes that as value is wasting their money.

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What I really loved about the event was that I felt like I learned something real and that I could use with a few current clients as well as future clients. A good chunk of the day was spend with Chris lecturing and the last two hours had us break into groups and apply what we learned, which I think was really where the learning launched off into outer space for me. A few of the key highlights from the day were:

Trends & Strategy

• The change in the web from being just a place for data into a more people centric web
• Increased in broadband brings new opportunities like 280Slides or Hulu.
• A lot of firms working on the same problems means a great opportunity for standardization
• A lot more future looking firms are building web app vs native apps (think Gmail for mobile phones)

Identity

• Better filter + user agents are helping people navigate the web
• Data is fast becoming your capital online. But not just your photos or video but the comments and relations you’ve build on the networks as well
• This one is a little far reaching but the idea you can have multiple identities within one social network. i.e. If you are on Facebook, you can decide the content your high school friends, business contacts and your post high school friends see by picking different identities. Flickr & Facebook are trying to do this but we are not quite there yet.

Building Blocks

• Having list or To Dos lets people know what they have to do when they sign up for your service. Linked In does a good job with this using the completion bar on your profile
• Avoid duplication of accounts
• Use OpenID, Facebook Connect or Google Connect to have users sign up so they don’t need to create another profile somewhere. Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success — By The Numbers

As I mentioned above. We broke out into groups for the last couple hours and this is what we came up with for Porter Airlines:

Port Airlines Social Ideas 2009

After working on this great mini-project yesterday. I kinda want to go in there and pitch Porter Airlines now.

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I think Foursquare has a chance to beat out tumblr and chi.mp for social site I lose interest in quickest (via Twitter)

He was hopping there would more to it and he was only really telling the people, within his network, where he’s at. He asked me if he was missing something and I think he was to a degree. I told him to check out two recent New York Times articles:

Foursquare, a Social Network Site, Puts Users Face to Face – http://bit.ly/aPiSW

Foursquare: Not Just a Game, but a City Guide – http://bit.ly/1txlfY

Both articles highlight the value that people in other cities are getting from the mobile social network. It takes time for any social network to find its legs, let alone provide tons of value to a user.

One of the key benefits to foursqaure and the first article points this out as well. It’s not cluttered with everyone and their mom. foursquare has a more intimate feeling to the site.

I’m going to try and do a review of my first week experiene with foursquare later this week as I know I’m still learning to use the system and the value that I think it has to provide me. If you know me… feel free to add me on foursquare.

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• Caching Improvements – The application uses the device memory more efficiently
• News Feed Filters – The ability to toggle between ‘News Feed, Status Updates, Photos & Links’
• Feed Pre-fetching – The user will not be required to wait while their Facebook Feeds are updated

I’m really enjoying the enhanced features and the ability to filter a lot of my the content on my BlackBerry. Don’t really care for the ability to view my own profile, but that’s just me. I’m hoping there is a way to speed up the loading of ones friends list. It still hangs a bit with this update. I only have 138 friends and figured it would be faster by now. However, I’m happy with the new update and can’t wait for the next one.

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