k.b.skobac.com

Why Tumblr Should Sell to Twitter Instead

2013-05-19T20:08:00.001-04:00

Awesome photo borrowed from The Verge

If the rumors or to believe, the ink is drying as we speak on a deal for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr. This is Marisa Mayer's biggest move yet in her effort to make Yahoo! relevant again. I'm a big fan of Marisa and rooting for her to bring magic to properties that Flickr that I still rely on. But as a Tumblr user, I can't help but wonder if this is a terrible fit. In short, here's why: Yahoo! has a horrible legacy with forced integration, has never been innovative when it comes to monetization models, and is lacking any real creative credibility at the moment. Tumblr users, myself included, have to be worried about all of these things.

As a regular user it may seem funny to think so intensely about the business functions of free consumer platforms like Tumblr, but the truth is we have to. Tumblr founder David Karp fought the good fight by keeping regular banner advertising off Tumblr's enjoyable platform for so long. But free platforms have to make money somehow, and as we're learning time after time, the harsh reality of business is often bad news for us. The question is whether Yahoo! is capable of recouping a $1.1 billion investment in Tumblr in a way that makes sense for itself and the Tumblr community.

Advocates of this deal will point to Google's successful acquisition of YouTube as an example of how the relationship between Yahoo! and Tumblr should be structured. But YouTube actually benefited immensely from Google's ownership and was more synergistic than it may be looked on the surface. Google's infrastructure innovations have helped reduce the operating expense and increased the compatibility of the platform. Google's ad targeting and performance pricing were both exactly right for YouTube. And search is incredibly important for YouTube. Does Yahoo! have that type of synergy with Tumblr? I'm not so sure.

If Tumblr really had to sell, I would have much rather seen Twitter as the acquirer. In many ways, Tumblr and Twitter are incredibly compatible. David Karp and Jack Dorsey are both creative leaders who have proven they care about user experience. Tumblr's diverse content posting platform would be a perfect way for Twitter to fill in support for all media types in its growing Twitter cards platform. Tumblr has recently started making money through native advertising techniques that replicate Twitter's monetization-- promoted posts and promoted accounts-- and both platforms approach the advertising with careful restraint, which is greatly appreciated by users as compared to Facebook. Twitter and Tumblr also both have the respect of a younger audience, which means their loyal fans would probably not be appalled and run for greener pastures if the acquisition took place (which is a major fear should the Yahoo! acquisition go through). Both companies use tagging and topic pages to tell cover events and tell stories through the power of their users. The examples of synergy go on and on.

Yet again we users are in a scary situation as a company we considers its on future. It's time for users to take some responsibility for these fates. We have to signal the ways in which we'd be comfortable with the services we use making money. We can be willing to pay, we can appreciate and support good ad experiences, we can willingly give up our data. Hopefully users and companies can work together to ensure the product we both love can thrive and secure their own fates. And if that's not possible, hopefully companies can make smart acquisition decisions that lead to outcomes like YouTube, not Flickr. I hope I'm wrong and Marisa Mayer is the right parent for the job.

Trading in my iPhone 4S for a Google Nexus 4

2013-02-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ever since I fell in love with the Google Nexus 7, I've been thinking about trading in an iPhone for an Android phone. As I mentioned before, I think innovation in the mobile Operating System space is largely coming from Google (and even Microsoft) right now, and in comparison Apple's iOS is starting to feel stale. The release of Android 4.1 Jellybean this summer was a turning point for Android, but there wasn't a phone worth buying yet until Google released the Nexus 4, a flagship phone in the same lineage of Nexus 7 that would always feature the latest version of Android. As lucky would have it, I won a new Nexus 4 at a Google event, so this week I decided to take the plunge.

I popped the sim card out of my iPhone and transitioned full time to an Android phone.

I'm going to spend a lot more time with the phone before I give an official review, but until then it's worth sharing some my initial reactions for anyone about to make a similar phone change cold turkey. The phone itself is beautiful. It's slim and light, but with a big beautiful screen. Multi-tasking and cross-app integration is pretty fantastic (as It's always been on Android). Voice recognition and other typing alternatives like native swype-style keyboards make information input a breeze. The operating system is much more informative and actionable-- from better app notifications, to better data about your power usage. And I have really high hopes for Google Now.

But there's also a lot of surprises. Though the phone is very fast, the touch response feels a bit slower, akin to how Windows trackpads often feel compared to Apple. And even though the operating system itself is fantastic, many applications aren't matching it in quality. It seems many companies delay in rolling out their best features to Android, so applications I love on iPhone are only subpar on Android (for example, Evernote Hello doesn't have business card scanning functionality yet, and Nike+ doesn't have friend leaderboards or Path integration yet-- both popular features on their iOS equivalent). And some great apps are still missing all together.

Also, Android's old selling point-- the most powerful versions of Google own applications-- isn't even true anymore. The latest versions of Google Maps, Gmail and Google+ on iPhone are pretty killer, even better, I think, than what's on Android right now. I think this is because on iPhone Google has a the highly evolved standard gestures of iOS, a refined standard that doesn't yet exist on Android (things like pull to refresh, left-swype menus and click-to-top headers).

So it will be an interesting ride. I can already see a ton of pluses and minuses of both iOS and its standard hardware build (the weight and size is definitively easier to hold, but harder to read on) and the operating system (a more open OS leads to better integration but less polished functions). I'm sure I'll learn a lot more as I spend an extended period with the phone. And then come July, when the next iPhone comes out, I'll be ready to make an informed decision on what platform I'm going to commit to my next two years. In the mean time, let me know if you have any Android suggestions or questions.

Our Vineviewer Vine Search Engine Gets Some Love

2013-02-08T13:11:00.002-05:00

We launched our labor of love VineViewer (a Vine video search engine) to the public one week ago now. It's been an exciting seven days, so I wanted to provide an update on our web app.

Since roll-out, our development partner Firefall Pro has been killing it with feature updates and stability optimizations. Now each Vine video has its own "card" which includes a link to the video post's original Vine post page as well as the shared Twitter post page. You can search for multiple keywords at once, and search results now have unlimited scrolling. Videos fail much less often, but when they do, we serve a nice error graphic instead of a 404 page. There's a new "about" message that appears when you roll over the corner plus (+) graphic. And the design is a lot cleaner overall.

We've gotten some pretty awesome coverage in the press:

A full article in FastCompany Co.Create
Featured on AdAge: Creativity
Bylines in Business Insider and Media Bistro: AgencySpy
Listing in AdAge's Ad Critic Top 20

And most of all, people seem to really enjoy using it. Over 2,600 people have used the app so far, to search for everything from video game clips to peeks at the winter storm Nemo. And the average visit duration is climbing to now over 3 minutes per visit (amazing, considering Vines are 6 seconds).

I hope VineViewer grows as a part of the Vine community. We'll be thinking about ways to make it more useful. In the meantime, continue to share it, and let us know what you think.

We Built a Vine Search Engine

2013-02-01T13:38:00.001-05:00

Last week Twitter launched a new video product called Vine, which enables users to quickly & easily record and share 6 second videos. Vine's big innovation is its way of enabling people to stitch a video together without having to use any editing tools, the result of which is a drastically lowered barrier to making an interesting looping clip. I'm loving Vine because vine videos feel really raw and intimate, characteristics that are unfortunately sparse these days now that just about every photo is cropped to a square, filtered and bordered.

But as much fun as it is to watch Vine videos, there's unfortunately no way to easily search for vines of topics of interest. Enter VineViewer:

VineViewer is a fun utility developed (rapidly) by SS+K and Firefall Pro designed to allow people to search the growing library of vines based on their tags. We were really excited by the launch of Vine. Like everyone else in our business, we immediately began thinking of different ways we might bring vines in on our client work. In doing so, we lamented that there was no simple way to search for vines of a specific topic, like love for Valentines Day.

VineCreeper is in in constant beta, and may evolve as we come up with more ideas for Vine. We hope people enjoy, and use at their own discretion.

We concepted and created VineViewer in just a couple of days, to fill a need and interest we had. It's certainly rough around the edges, and there are some more features we'd like to implement (like a widescreen view and endless scrolling), but we wanted to launch it immediately for all Vine lovers to enjoy. Learning about new social tools is all about using and prototyping, not polish.

So search for cats, puppies, babies and NYC to your hearts content. Let me know what you think, and share it with your friends.

Blogging is set to have a new golden age

2013-01-23T18:32:00.000-05:00

The welcome screen of Medium.com (created by Biz Stone & Ev Williams of Blogger + Twitter fame)

Today Quora announced a new blog functionality. It's not surprisingly getting a lot of attention because, on the surface, it appears to be a pivot for the company. But in reality it feels like a natural extension of Quora's platform, in support of Quora's core mission:

Quora's mission is to share and grow the world's knowledge

And while interesting, smart question asking has unearthed some even more amazing knowledge, without the right question a lot of great knowledge won't be published. So Quora's blogging product enables everyone with something great to say about a topic to contribute to it through a blog post. That's Quora's innovation on blogging, by the way -- adding the ability to post original insight to a topic, without having to worry about building a following.

But Quora's new blog product is just another developing in an even more exciting trend: a new golden age of blogging.

After years of stagnation in the blogging space, the last few months have seen a flurry of blogging innovation. Svbtle, Medium, Branch, and Quora have all created new publishing platforms that embrace smart, intelligent writing in unique ways. They all embrace design as a way of enhancing the writing and reading experience. And all of these platforms are helping to fight back against the trend of character counts, meme machines and animated gifs.

Branch, in particular, has me really excited because of how it's making social dialogue interesting again (more on this from me soon).

So if you've forgotten what it's like to write longer than 140 characters, or you're tired of just seeing auto-animated images, and you want to dive into some really interesting, thought-provoking content, start exploring one or two of these new platforms that are helping reignite a new golden age of blogging. And share with me what you've found.

My Social Media Footprint, January 2013

2013-01-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of the year, I like to take stock of the websites, apps and technologies that I'm using on a regular basis. This time I returned to an exercise I performed four and a half years ago when I drafted a map (see below) of my social media presence. The social web has grown exponentially since 2008, so obviously there are more properties than ever on my map. But what's more interesting is some of the trends that are illustrated.

For starters, websites, apps and tech have all merged so much so that doing different lists seems a bit silly. For this exercise, I used a loose definition of listing websites & apps that revolve around social interaction, be it creation, communication, management or sharing.

Also, many sites have changed classifications since 2008. For example, my old graph has Tumblr listed as an aggregator, but since then Tumblr has switched from a pull-type service to a creation platform. In fact, aggregators as a whole have basically gone away.

And social productivity was certainly a thing in 2008, but it was an outlier, not a tentpole category as it is now. That feels like a reflection of the evolution of corporate IT, which has largely embraced things like Google Apps, DropBox and Evernote.

It's crazy to think how many social properties I've enjoyed that weren't even around four years ago, and amazingly are already obsolete (things like Posterous). And certain categories are starting to be disrupted again, though they were relatively stagnant all this time. Blogging is one of them.

I look forward to doing this exercise many times over in the years to come. It's always interesting to sit back and take stock of how the web is evolving. For the sake of comparison, here is my map from 2008.

7 Discoveries and Observations from the CES 2013 Conference Floor

2013-01-15T09:23:00.002-05:00

1. No matter how good you think your TV is now, it can always get better.

This year television manufacturers showed off new Ultra High Def (UHD) televisions that have 4K resolution, or about four times the resolution of today's high definition screens. These big and beautiful TV's show virtually no pixelation when displaying UHD content (though upscaling non-UHD content may be less compelling). Also present were new curved televisions that enable viewers to have a more balanced viewing experience (each inch of the screen is equidistant from the viewer), and an impressive dual-view 3D TV by Samsung that enables two people to watch different high definition 3D broadcasts in full screen at the same time from the same television.

2. It's more fun to use human interfaces and have physical interaction.

While TV's, phones, computers and cameras steal the headlines at CES, smaller companies tucked away in the corners innovating in ways you can't imagine are much more fun. And many of these companies are helping us to interact with the world a bit more by building physical interaction into technology. One particular cool gadget is Sphero, a hackable robot ball that you can control via your iPhone, around a physical track. Sphero can also trigger augmented reality experiences, and be used itself to control computer programs through physical manipulation. Also peek at Sifteo cubes, small computer cubes that pass information between each other, enabling all sorts of interactive puzzles and games.

3. Health technology and the quantified self are at a tipping point.

All sorts of companies are making health-tracking devices, from health start-up fitbit, to Nike Fuel to Jawbone Up, that track anything from how many steps we've taken to how well we're sleeping. But wearable bracelets won't be the only way we measure, share and analyze our health data. Withings has a connected scale that measures your weight, BMI, heart rate and even the air quality around you. As more companies enter the health tracking fray product innovation will collide (Withings has a wearable monitor now, and Fit Bit has a connected scale). The bigger question will be how well these companies can guide our real life health improvements based on all of the data we're collecting.

4. Every device will be connected soon (so plan for bigger data plans).

Just about everyone seemed to enjoy playing with Samsung's new Galaxy Camera, an internet connected digital camera with an Android operating system built in. Now you can install your favorite mobile apps like Instagram right to your camera to filter and share photos as soon as you take them. Samsung also showed off a connected refrigerator that includes popular applications like Evernote, so people can collect recipes from anywhere and browse or view them directly on the screen in their kitchen. With the internet of things growing so quickly, ubiquitous connectivity and shared internet plans will need to improve along with it.

5. Kickstarter is one of the most exciting names in consumer technology.

One of the most anticipated announcements at CES was from Pebble, the ambitious smart watch that was funded on Kickstarter. The Pebble raised a record-setting $10 million dollars to build their product back in April, but didn't announce their shipping date until CES. If Pebble lives up to its promise once in the hands of consumers, the next CES might be much more focused on the independent technology innovators that are arising in part to innovative funding models like Kickstarter, rather than the big behemoth technology companies that lead the market today. In fact, many of those big market leading companies seem to be pulling out of CES all together.

6. The big four internet companies are confusingly second fiddle at CES.

Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook, known as the big four internet companies, have become successful through their merging of content, services and technology in a user-friendly way. Each, to different degrees, are defining what it means to be a connected product today, from user experience to content to ecosystem compatibility. And while CES is full of other companies making devices for those platforms, the names defining the space need to stand up and illustrate their vision for the future. There may have been hundreds of devices from different companies on the CES floor that included Android, but Google needs to lead the discussion of how all these devices will work together with Android at its core.

7. Welcome to the new CES, it's not just a trade show.

The biggest story going into the week was actually how few product announcements would be taking place, with many technologies likes cameras and phones now saving their biggest own popular trade shows later int he year and big names like Microsoft having left altogether. But a reported 150,000 people from all walks of life attended the convention this year, the largest audience in CES history. More significant may have been the tens of thousands of brands, sales and marketing companies who spent the week in Las Vegas talking about the implications of the consumer electronics revolution and its implications on media and marketing, without ever stepping on the conference floor. CES may be changing, but for new reasons its just as interesting and important none-the-less.

Instagram, Please let us pay! [My Digiday Article]

2012-12-21T09:34:00.000-05:00

I'm published on Digiday today discussing Instagram's latest woes, and how consumers will increasingly demand the option to pay for things again in exchange for more rights over our privacy and content. This is a topic I've written often about here and in social media. We're just now starting to see the ramifications of the "free" ad-supported economy. Twitter's API follies, Facebook and Instagram's privacy issues, and the endless folding of well-liked companies that can't make money-- this is all just the beginning. We as consumers need to start re-considering what we really want for free, and what we want to pay for.

The article also links to SS+K's work for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. You can read about how we tapped Instagram and other social channels to spread the For All message and drive the critical youth vote.

The Magic of Google Now and Thinking Different

2012-12-18T11:19:00.001-05:00

"To me the great irony is that Apple’s slogan was `Think Different,’ but today if you think different you’re looking at Android.” - Guy Kawasaki, former Apple Chief Evangelist

As anyone close to me knows, in 2009 I made a complete jump over to Apple products. I traded in my home PC for a 13" Macbook Pro, my work ThinkPad laptop for a (now) 15" Retina Macbook, my Microsoft Zune and Google Android HTC G1 for an iPhone. In every instance I was happier, inspired even by the differences. My laptops were reliable for the first time ever - they didn't suffer from memory lag, battery drain, or buggy trackpads. The G1, which was the first Android phone on the market, had been ground-breaking compared to my feature phone before it, but the iPhone put it to pasture with its sheer speed and app quality. I became, like most people in the Apple camp, transfixed with Apple being the height of quality and innovation.

But in the last year, things have begun to change. I spent a few months with a Windows Mobile phone enjoying the fresh take on a mobile OS, and in the last few months I've fallen in love with my favorite new gadget, the Google Nexus 7. The Nexus, and more specifically the new version of Android, is a revelation. Where all six of the previous Android devices I used before fell short, the Nexus shines. Navigating the device is smooth and intuitive, with true cross-app integration and action-oriented notifications illustrating the faults of Apple's silo'd approach. Widgets on the lock screen and "desktop" make carrying around the tablet more useful at a glance than the iPad. Small touches like built-in "swype" typing make the tablet typing faster.

The biggest eye-opener of all is Google Now. At a basic level, Google Now is Google's take on Siri, but in practice it makes Siri look like a child. Google Now taps all of Google's intelligence and all of a user's personal information to actively help you throughout the day. Pull it up in the morning and Google Now will tell you your favorite team's sports score from last night, today's expected weather, have directions to your next appointment and how long it will take. Open it after a flight and Google Now will tell you how long it will take you to get to your hotel, some restaurants and sites nearby you'd want to try. The information is actively pushed to you based on what you signal to Google you need, from recent searches, email receipts, location history and more. It's smart, surprising and useful-- in short, magical. It shows you what's possible by tapping geo-awareness, personal information and crowdsourced intelligence at scale. It makes you forget about all of the privacy and personal information concerns, and maybe even wish you had more to give.

Recently I was speaking with some team members who are incredibly experienced and often "in the know". They had not heard of Google Now, were not familiar with it's capabilities. They carry Macbook Airs, iPads and iPhones, and presumed, as most of us do, that the best of what's possible is happening on one of those devices. But my re-awakening to the world outside Apple emphasizes why it's so critical to step outside your comfort zone and use different products once in a while. Why you should stop by a Windows 8 Store to explore the new Surface and HTC 8x. Why you need to try a Nexus 7 before you commit to buying the iPad mini. If you don't, you won't realize the possibilities that are out there, the break-throughs that are happening, the innovation that is being displayed outside of Apple's garden. You won't realize that iOS is starting to feel really stale, sitting back passively and waiting for you to ask it a question or jump into a single app experience, while Google Now actively pushes you everything you need and more. You won't "think different", the way Apple challenged us to.

Why I Bought Tweetbot, and the Rising Cost of Apps

2012-11-12T10:21:00.001-05:00

I just happily purchased the new Tweetbot for Mac client for $20, which is probably way more than anyone ever imagined spending on such a specific thing as a Twitter client. But it was completely worth it to me for a few of reasons:

Tweetbot's developers Tapbots do incredible work for the iPhone, iPad and iOS, and I want them to keep doing it. So I need to help them make enough money to stay in business

Tweetbot is not only the best desktop and mobile Twitter client available, it's probably the last great Twitter client that will ever be built because of Twitter's new horrendous API rules

I want to help push app paid app economy, which is suffering at the hands of downward price app store price pressure and unreasonable expectations, as proven by the Sparrow dilema

The reality is, as we move in the direction of $0.99 everything, or worse yet propagate the expectation that everything can be gotten for free, we force apps to be gimmicky, ad-laden, or catered to the lowest common denominator in the pursuit of hundreds of millions of users. As app developer David Barnard puts it:

Computer users used to spend hundreds of dollars for great software and pay again every couple years for upgrades. But over the past couple decades people have grown accustomed to getting more and more value from software while paying less and less for it. The web has played a huge part in that, but the trend was accelerated by the App Store and Apple’s management of it.

Extremely high quality apps that appeal to a niche crowd have a harder and harder time surviving. That will be the case until we return to being willing to reward high quality applications with adequate payment. Unless we're happy in a world where Google and other behemoths acquire everything interesting under the sun and decide each fate as it ladders up to their larger objectives.

So I'm following up my purchase of Tweetbot by purchasing Clear, another innovative app that I want to see pursue it's goal. And I hope others follow suit, because I'd like these products to have a chance at sticking around, and not just until Google buys them and shuts them down.

NYC Taps Twitter to Power Through Sandy's Aftermath

2012-10-31T14:39:00.003-04:00

In the wake of the craziness that was Hurricane Sandy, I'm really impressed with how Mayor Bloomberg has used Twitter to keep New Yorkers as up to date as possible on what's going with the city.

I've been following real-time updates all week via @NYCMayorsOffice, @MikeBloomberg, @MTAInsider and @NYCGov accounts.

Then this morning I noticed promoted tweets (which Twitter is providing for free to emergency services accounts) appearing in my Twitter stream highlighting the most recent city update tweets from the @NYCMayorsOffice.

And just now we were all invited to watch a live stream of Mayor Bloomberg's upcoming press conference via an embedded inline YouTube feed (see the screenshot above or the embedded tweet below).

Thanks Mayor Bloomberg, and your whole staff, for doing what you can to keep us informed!

Passenger cars will not be banned from Manhattan. Stay tuned for a briefing from the Mayor soon: youtube.com/watch?v=bWaFfZ…
— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) October 31, 2012

POV on Twitter's API Announcement

2012-08-17T11:28:00.000-04:00

Below is a draft of a POV on Twitter's API changes that I wrote as part of my work for SS+K. It's being published here post-dated as reference.

The big news in the tech industry this week was Twitter's long-expected announcement of changes to their API (the tools 3rd party applications use to plug-in to Twitter). Twitter announced that the company would no longer support carte-blanch use of their API by 3rd parties. Instead,Twitter is enforcing everything from design guidelines to build principles. Their stated purpose is to focus any regular Twitter user engagement (think: the usual things consumers do on Twitter, e.g., read, reply, retweet messages) all happening on official Twitter 1st party applications. Their demand (disguised as a request) is that 3rd parties focus on building applications that provide an inherently different functionality, especially enterprise-oriented capabilities, such as measurement and media integration.

While Twitter is clearly within their rights to place rules on 3rd parties who want to integrate with their product, the move is being seen as incredibly controversial because Twitter's success as a platform was largely a result of the types of 3rd party developed innovations that Twitteris planning on forcing out or shutting down. In fact, Twitter Search, Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Android, Twitter eMail summaries and Twitterfor Chrome are all functionalities built by 3rd party companies and purchased by Twitter. In many cases, theses applications were built to give users experience that they wanted or needed, but Twitter didn't have the bandwidth to provide. In many ways, 3rd parties carried Twitterthrough the dark period where Twitter was often broken and unreliable. By restricting 3rd parties, Twitter is not only turning its back on the community that helped build it, but also potentially stifling the type of future innovation that could take the platform to new heights.

Twitter's argument for these decisions is mainly two-fold:

Consumers need to have a consistent experience and reliable expectations when engaging with tweets. The company believesTwitter content needs to be uniformly designed and packaged with all of its functionality so users everywhere recognize the content asTwitter and know exactly how they can interact with it (i.e., always be able to reply or retweet).
Twitter needs to be capable of earning enough revenue to support itself, and the way to do that is to make sure users are spending their regular tweeting and reading time on a standard Twitter platform that Twitter itself can monetize, through their standard promoted tweets, trends and search products.

Ultimately these changes complete Twitter's transition from communication company to media company. Like Google with its move towards universal search and rich media snippets, Twitter is bringing more content inline into its feed through their new "Twitter Cards" format, trying to maximize the time-spent and eyeballs on its own domain. It may not be the vision Twitter's original power users and developer community envisioned for the company, but it's clearly the direction it feels is necessary for its optimal future. The outcome will be a more refined and uniform experience that helps Twitter grow its mainstream audience, but loses some of its advocates and puts it more directly in competition with news and entertainment media companies than ever before.

While much of the outcome of the new API rules remains to be seen, expect a few implications for brands as we head into 2013:

Custom brand products that pull in and display tweets, including Facebook tab applications or website plug-ins, will need to be updated to fit the new display guidelines. This reduces the ability to customize the look and feel, but will likely increase user engagement.
Since Twitter Cards (inline content previews) will start to be featured abundantly across the Twitter ecosystem, brands will want to include links to supported 3rd party content in their tweets to maximize engagement potential.
Since the future of existing 3rd party reading clients is up in the air, companies like Flipboard will likely start to iterate in directions away from Twitter content. Brands need to consider where they invest in media and partnership dollars if they are investing in any of these environments.

We will be watching the Twitter ecosystem + platform developments carefully, and provide further guidance on the implications, directions and opportunities as they become clear. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Rediscovering the Joy of Social Media With Path

2012-06-08T07:24:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you don't realize you ever had a problem until you have the solution. For a while now, without thinking about it much, most of my social networking has practically been the same experience as building a resume. Every post on Facebook, Twitter or Flickr was curated knowing that, besides my friends, hundreds of co-workers, clients, perspective employers and more would potentially be viewing. When Klout launched, it was the ultimate manifestation of the symptom I didn't know I had: living in public had driven me to focus too much on the necessity of perception.

Then a few months ago, enter Path. A social network that defies everything that defines every other social network. Want people to see your content? Too bad, it's only on your phone so there's no place for most people to view it. Want to post a link you think will make you look smart? Too bad, you can only share original content. Want hundreds of friends + followers? Too bad, you can only have 150 (which is based on Dunbar's law of the number of real relationships you can mentally manage).

What you can do? Share the song you're listening to at that exact moment on your iPod, or the location of where you're standing, or the thought you just had, or the moment you're about to go to bed. Stuff that only a few people care about. Stuff that you have to create with your phone, the most intimate application you have, by yourself. Stuff that no one will see. And did I mention Path was created by one of the first Facebook employees, after he helped build what is now the most public platform on the planet?

But Path, a mobile only social network defined as much by its limitations as its capability, is an absolute pleasure to use. It's the antidote to the sickness of public sharing. It's designed with precise care to enforce an intimate experience between you and the people you care about. It strips away the fear of something not being smart enough for the pleasure of knowing that you shared a moment with the people that matter. It provides a freedom from the public I'd forgotten I wanted, and as such has become the social network I want to use more than any other every single day.

In exchange for the ability to make you famous, Path focuses on making you happy (in fact, their internal motto is something like "design happiness"). When you share something on Path you see the faces of every friend who looks at it, giving you instant viseral feedback. It's easy for people to smile, frown, heart or gasp at your content. Everything is plotted on a timeline of your day, giving you a journalistic feeling. If you connect Nike+ to Path and share your work-outs, when someone smiles at your run on Path, you hear cheers in your headphones like your friends are there with you.

With Path, I no longer worry about credibility because there's no way to earn it. Instead, I focus on sharing personal moments, and the reward is a closer relationship with the people I'm connected to. It feels a lot like what social networking was probably originally meant to be. And it's really enjoyable again, in a way much of my experience with Twitter and Facebook isn't. Thanks Dave Morin, for learning to build great things at Facebook and then turning around and building exactly the opposite but better.

SS+K's Foursquare-powered Birthday

2012-04-16T14:51:00.001-04:00

Today is the (the SS+K's 19th birthday (where I work), and coincidentally it's also Foursquare Day. Some background first: my co-workers and I happen to be somewhat obsessed with Foursquare. We have 18 different micro-locations in our office, and people are constantly battling for mayorship- so much so, that last year we created our own Mayorshup, a Risk-board of sorts for SS+K'ers to battle each other for supreme SS+K office mayor.

So a few weeks ago we had an idea for celebrating SS+K's 19th Birthday and Foursquare Day at once- we'd create the first ever Foursquare-powered birthday card. When someone checks in to any of our office Foursquare locations, they "sign" our card by adding their Foursquare profile picture to our emblem, and adding their username to our card. The card is of course viewable online on our site, and also is being displayed on a giant lcd screen in our cafe.

We've also opened an SS+K Foursquare Labs page to host the many Foursquare hacks + projects we've launched in the last year. This whole thing has been a pet project of mine, so I'm really excited for it to be live. Thanks to everyone (@alvvvvvin @brainpuppy @FirefallPro + more).

12 Lessons on User Experience + Transmedia Storytelling from SXSW 2012

2012-03-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

I had the opportunity to attend SXSWi this year, a mega-conference in Austin which is essentially the mecca for internet geeks. The event packs in over 1,000 panels + talks, hundreds of networking sessions + demonstrations and just as many parties in 5 quick days. It’s completely impossible to do everything you want to do, so you basically have to pick what you want to focus on and allow serendipity to drive the rest. I split my time between fun “brain candy” inspiration type things and educational sessions on two primary topics: User Experience and Transmedia Storytelling. Here are a dozen lessons I learned from entrepreneurs like Path’s Dave Morin and media mavens like New York Times’ David Carr on the topics:

...on user experience and product success

Effective user experience should be designed to convey values + emotions to the user during the experience itself, not just at the outcome. That means thinking about everything from colors, to menus, to page animation and more.
Think about how device types provide different experiences. Path was built as a mobile phone app only to enforce personal content creation and intimacy. Path is more emotional because you can’t do a lot of things you can do on Facebook, etc.
Either it’s good or it isn’t. Be honest with yourself or you’ll end up never achieving great. Demanding “great” before shipping was the different between Path 1.0 failure and Path 2.0 success.
We are in an attention economy. To succeed you need to find new ways to stimulate and provide value continuously, in the face of a generation that is more incapable of paying attention than ever before.
Information design is critical in modern storytelling. The New York Times architects stories so readers with five seconds, thirty seconds or two minutes each have a complete experience, while maintaining the choice to dive deeper.
Popular new media apps Intapaper + Flipboard have fantastically enjoyable reading experiences but no business model for content creation. New York Times and other stalwarts have a business model that ruins user experience. Who will crack the middle ground?

...on social’s role in transmedia storytelling

Your social ecosystem isn’t separate from your other platforms, it’s part of one cohesive story that your brand is telling. Understand how your social hubs can be access points to that larger story.
Social enables your audience to expand your potential farther than you can on your own. ESPN Top 10 is now more diverse because fans help identify great sports moments in smaller markets and less popular sports.
Marketing opportunities are more engaging when all touch-points are planned as one. MTV develops 360° programs by planning broadcast, web mobile and social for partners all at once, as illustrated by this year’s Verizon + VMA’s sponsorship.
Know your purpose across your ecosystem. ESPN knows it can’t always be the one to broadcast every sporting event, but it can be the one to host and drive the conversation for them all. Other brands become curators to help illustrate their point of view.
Don’t lose sight of meaningful actions in the face of social KPI’s. Causes was fantastic at building audiences empowering “armchair activism”, but it hasn’t yet figured out how to move participants up the ladder.
The goal of a mashup is to enable people to see something that already exists in a different way. Similarly, understanding creative ways to tell stories beyond just straightforward narrative will make your content more compelling.

The truth is most of what you take away from SXSWi can’t be captured in a number of bullet points. Spending the majority of a week focused entirely on trying out new mobile products (I had four different ambient awareness iPhone apps running simultaneously on my phone), meeting new people and feeding thought-provoking concepts into your head is something we should all do at least once a year, if not more. That alone is a lesson in itself.

* This blog post was written as part of my research for a larger project at SS+K. That completed project will be published on Slideshare soon.

Implications of the Facebook Timeline for Brands Launch

2012-03-05T09:29:00.001-05:00

Last week I was lucky to get to attend the Facebook fMC Conference, Facebook's first major event dedicated to their marketing + advertising platform (my photos here). In a single day, Facebook announced a slew of major changes that will completely re-write how brands behave on the platform. Much has been written already about the many functional differences that brands need to prepare for by March 31st, so I focused on analyzing the high level implications of Facebook's new direction for brands. This was issued by SS+K to our clients; if you don't mind a long read, let browse through and let me know what you think.

Implications of the Facebook Timeline for Brands Launch

View more documents from Kevin Skobac

#Kevs30th Birthday Social Media Style

2012-03-04T23:54:00.002-05:00

In true geek fashion I established #Kevs30th for social media fun, and captured the whole thing on Storify

Saying Goodbye To Things You Love

2012-01-24T10:22:00.001-05:00

One of the challenges of being a web early adopter is the likelihood that a lot of services you fall in love with will ultimately disappear. New start-ups are launching exciting digital products for us to fawn over every day, and many of us web obsessed rush to try them as soon as possible. The ones we like we invest a ton of time in, way before there's any chance of knowing if anyone else will be interested enough to join along and help propel the start-up to become a viable company.

On a good day we become obsessed with the start-up, preach about it to everyone we know, and then take some credit for it's success as it builds towards greatness. But often times the start-ups we love don't make it. Not enough people end up seeing the value in the product and the product shuts down, or the company's ambitions of their own success get usurped by a high priced suitor that strips it down for parts. Either way the outcome is the same: the product we love disappears from us.

This last week I've had to say goodbye to a number of products I've really enjoyed over the last few years, all for different reasons. News aggregator Summify was acquired and neutered by Twitter. Online photo editor Picnik was shuttered by its owner Google. And Plancast CEO Mark Hendrickson announced he will be giving up on the pursuit of his two year old social event sharing product after it failed to gain enough traction on the web.

While saying goodbye to Summify and Picnik is tough, both are in a popular space and have strong competitors that will serve as worthy replacements. Plancast, however, is by far and away the best social event sharing site I've ever come across. It's attractive, incredibly easy to use, and has powerful integration built in to other event platforms like Meetup, EventBrite and Facebook that helps make event sharing effortless. Whereas the old stalwart event planning site Upcoming.com was painful to populate, Plancast is a pleasure to use and explore. It's one of the products I can't really understand why enough people found compelling enough to use, and one that I'll really miss when it's gone.

The good news about being a web early adopter, though, is that for every start-up heartbreak there's a new start-up to take it's place. I wake up every day now excited to play with Path, I'm testing out Buffer to power my social publishing, and I've just signed up for News.Me to replace the hole that Summify will be leaving in my day. And I can't wait to preach to you about all of them.

Excited About Quarterly Co, a Subscription Service for Wonderful Things

2012-01-04T08:58:00.002-05:00

One of the new web services I'm super excited about heading into the new year is Quarterly Co, a "subscription service for wonderful things". Basically you subscribe to a person of your choice, and that person sends you an actual package in the mail every quarter with an interesting object(s) of their choice.

Of course these aren't random people with nothing to lose; the curators that Quarterly has brought on board are all tastemakers of some sort that make finding interesting things the basis of their reputation. People like Josh Rubin from Coolhunting, Tina Roth Eisenberg from Swissmiss Studio, or the famous Maria Popova of Brainpickings. I've chosen Alexis Madrigal, tech writer at The Atlantic.

So every 3 months you can expect to get something interesting in the mail that reflects their taste, perspective and interest. It's a brief moment in time to turn away from the rapid information stream on Twitter (partially populated by these same people) and enjoy a tangible thing hand selected by someone you admire. It remains to be seen whether any of us feels the object we receive is worth the $25 per quarter, but I imagine the surprise gift and the ensuing conversation will leave me very content.

Let me know if you've subscribed to anyone in the comments below, and stay tuned in March for an update on what I get in the mail.

Welcome CharitySub, "Simple Collective Giving"

2012-01-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

At midnight last night a few of my friends launched CharitySub, a website to power simple collective giving. Their focus is on ease, impact and understanding. You "subscribe" by committing to donate $5 each month to charity (or an extra $1 if you're willing to be a benefactor of the site- which I highly encourage). Then each month they choose a cause and send simple but rich information in the form of key facts and documentary videos 3 different charities you could support that are working for that cause. You can digest as much or as little information as you want, and then simply select which of the three charities will get your $5 dollars that month.

It's as simple as that. As the community of charitable donors grows, so will the site. You can expect to see visualizations of your contributions to causes, how many people you recruit to the community, how your money is being used to help the charities and more. CharitySub's mix of story telling, gamification and goodwill should be a powerful motivator for people to sign up as part of their 2012 New Year's resolutions.

CharitySub's first cause is childhood obesity, an issue I know is important to many people I know. Your first $5 could go towards one of 3 great charities that are helping to end this cause. I'm really proud of Alexis, Amy, Brian & Jim for launching a great resource, and I look forward to being a part of it.

NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX ... Facebook? [My Ad Age Article]

2011-12-29T18:28:00.000-05:00

I had the following article published on Ad Age last week. I'm publishing it here for the few people who read my blog only, and to have a record for the future [direct link].

NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX ... Facebook?
The Real Opportunity For Content Is Web Series, Which Can Benefit From Facebook's Engagement

By: Kevin Skobac
Published: December 21, 2011

As Facebook continues to grow its user base worldwide, entertainment companies are increasingly trying to find ways to use the platform as a new form of TV channel with unprecedented reach. Both major TV networks and Hollywood film studios have previously allowed people to watch their content via their Facebook pages, including paid video trials such as Warner Brothers renting its "Dark Knight" film from its ultra-successful "Batman" franchise for Facebook credits.

Unfortunately, for WB and others, no early tests of traditional companies pushing their content on Facebook have registered any real success. Audiences simply don't seem interested in watching long-form, lean-back content wrapped in a Facebook environment (though augmenting traditional TV with a second-screen social context is another discussion).

But new Web-only entertainment creators can succeed where big media failed. Here's why: they're producing video content that differs significantly from the classic TV model. First, each "episode" is typically much shorter, commanding less of a singularly focused, lean-back experience. Second, outside of the normal broadcast schedule, users aren't trained to "tune in" or remember when the next episode will be ready for viewing. Facebook can help content creators meet these challenges in ways that would drive more interest, engagement and repeat viewership.

Push notification systems
Typically, Web-only video series are discovered via recommendations through press or friends, but then suffer steep drop-off in eyeballs for the 2nd episode. This occurs typically via both standalone Web sites as well as YouTube. Hundreds of millions of people, on the other hand, return to Facebook every day. Video series can take advantage of news feed posts, event invites, and top-bar notifications to inform viewers every time a new episode or piece of content is released. In this manner, shows will be able to command much more repeat tune-in than typical Web fare. Shows can also easily fill in the time between episodes with goodies like extra footage and cast interviews in the same tuned delivery system that new episodes flow through to keep viewers interested during down time.

Personalization capabilities
Facebook has an immense amount of user data accessible through its APIs that have been leveraged in interesting ways within content. Advertisers and musicians have already been pushing the boundaries of personalized experiences in exciting ways (see: "The Wilderness Downtown" or "Take This Lollipop"), but original content producers have, for the most part, not taken advantage of the opportunity until recently. AOL's new Facebook-only show "AIM High" launched with a unique feature that allows viewers to login with Facebook Connect to view a more personalized version of each episode. After connecting, viewers may notice their own faces on posters in the school setting, or even find themselves running for high school class president directly within the plot of the show. While these personalized elements are superficial so far, it's easy to imagine future shows with much deeper integration. For example, a show could find a way to turn the viewer's friends into the suspects of a mystery, driving much more engagement and viewer loyalty.

Parallel conversation streams
Newer short-form content series like "AIM High" also seem to benefit more from integrated comments than long-form content can. With episodes no longer than 5-10 minutes, the plot of "AIM High" is always in flux, leaving room for speculation and discussion. The comment box isn't just a place to voice love or hate for the show, rather it becomes a real-time discussion of what's taking place and what could happen next. Facebook's commenting system also allows discussion to take place both on the show page and within people's news feeds, providing more seamless conversation both when viewers are watching the show and afterwards. 3rd party apps like GetGlue and IntoNow are starting to provide this parallel conversation stream via a second screen, but no companies in this space have yet been able to tie the discussion as close to the content as a Facebook-viewing platform can.

As all content consumption becomes hyper-connected and on-demand, even the major TV networks are quickly noticing the need to evolve in order to meet consumer wants. It may not be as easy for them as it is for digital pure-plays like YouTube, Hulu and Yahoo! (all of which announced a full slate of Web-only shows during this year's television up-front), but they have to be as vigilant in breaking through. Everyone is experimenting with the most effective way to attract and keep audiences for this new form of content. Facebook, with its unmatched notification system, personalization capabilities and conversation tools, could be just the solution everyone is looking for.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kevin Skobac is senior digital strategist at SS+K, an integrated marketing and communications agency specializing in creative social engagement.

Continuing Education

2011-12-04T15:25:00.001-05:00

One of my goals for 2011 was to put more effort into continuing my education. After graduating and transitioning to the work force it gets a lot harder to feel like you're learning and getting to grow mentally in directions beyond what your job dictates. However, living in New York City, I am lucky that there are a lot of ways to take classes and attend lectures for relatively minimal money. Here are 5 local ways I "get back in the classroom" (and one bonus on-line resource):

Ignite Sessions

http://www.ignitenyc.org

Ignite is a unique event where you learn a little bit about a lot of things through a rapid-fire series of short lectures. Speakers can apply to present on anything, and typically the collection of chosen lectures varies widely from technology, to the arts to society. Each speaker is given 5 minutes to present a coordinated talk along with 20 slides that turn on their own every 15 seconds. The structured nature of the event keeps the audience entertained whether the topic is NASA research, samurai swords, or anything else. Events are usually around $10. You can view all of the past Ignite NYC talks here: http://www.youtube.com/user/IgniteNYC#g/u

Creative Mornings

http://creativemornings.com

Creative Mornings are "a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types". Each monthly event is usually about :30 minute breakfast, :30 minute lecture and :30 minute Q+A discussion session. Past speakers have been writers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and more. They take place on Friday mornings from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and have been sponsored, so attendance is free (and sign-up fills up fast). You can view all of the past Creative Mornings lectures here:

http://vimeo.com/creativemornings/videos

General Assembly

http://generalassemb.ly

By day, General Assembly is a co-working space where teams of people can rent desk space and share collective office resources. By night, General Assembly is a an educational campus that hosts classes to help teach new technology, business and marketing skills. Classes usually cost around $25 per hour and are taught by employees from small start-up companies to Google employees. This year I took classes on Gamification, API Programming and Website Wireframing. Unfortunately, the classes have been a bit hit or miss because they're sometimes taught by smart people who aren't good teachers. However, I'm optimistic and will continue to try more.

TEDxBrooklyn

http://tedxbrooklyn.com

TEDx is an offshoot of the popular global TED conference, though on a local level. The organizers of TEDxBrooklyn put together an annual all-day event mixing talks from local business leaders and artists with curated videos of the global TED conference. This year's event was held at Brooklyn Bowl, and the topic was "redefining better". Highlights included motivational speaker Jullien Gordon, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, Gotham Greens founder Viraj Puri and several music & art performances. The event cost $100 for the full day, including lunch. The event wasn't perfect, but I expect that the quality will improve each year as the founders gain more experience.

140 Characters Conference
http://140conf.com

140 is actually a series of conferences throughout the year that covers a number of topics. This year I attended the tentpole #140conf , a 2-day event discussing how social media effects business and people, and #140edu , a 1-day event discussing how social media can improve education. The first event was a series of short :10 - :15 minute presentations and panel discussions, and was very interesting in the same way that Ignite typically is. The edu event was a more classic format, with fewer + longer presentations, and wasn't nearly as interesting. I would make my decisions to attend future events based on the format and the costs- which varied from $1.40 to $140 per event (discounts to frequent attendees).

Next year, in addition to attending conferences and classes, I'm also committing to taking some online courses. One site I'm really excited about is Codecademy. The site is basically a collection of "gamified" courses on web programming. Courses are broken down into small incremental assignments, and motivation is driven by badges and level completions. Codecademy seems like an powerful, free, way to learn new subjects, one I'm very excited to spend more time with. I'll update everyone soon on how it goes.

So what are the ways you learn? And what are your other 2012 goals?

Facebook Fights Back At Google, Twitter and Tumblr With Four New Features

2011-09-14T21:18:00.000-04:00

Facebook made 4 platform changes this week that aggressively compete with some of the most popular functionality on Twitter, Google+ and Tumblr:

Smart Friends Lists
Facebook will now start creating intelligent friend lists for users to help facilitate sharing and filtering based on likely interests + need states. Facebook is starting everyone off with Work, School, Family and City lists, but the intelligence will start recommending people to you as you create your own custom lists as well. This is a major attempt by Facebook to show that they can do lists better than Google, who launched Circles as the main attraction of Google+.

Subscribe to a Person
Until now, Facebook relationships were always a mutual connection between two users. However, users now have the option to allow others to "subscribe" to them, without actually "friending" them. This new asynchronous dynamic gives personalities the ability to broadcast public information to anyone who's interested while still preserving their personal relationships. This means public figures no longer need to manage profiles AND pages for themselves (though pages are still the solution for brands and products that will build more robust content). Allowing asynchronous relationships is a major departure from Facebook's policy to date, and is a direct attack on Twitter.

Facebook to Twitter sync
Though Facebook pages have had the option of syndicating their content out to Twitter for a while, soon users will also be able to link their Facebook accounts to their Twitter accounts. Facebook is hoping that its users will have less reason to hop over to Twitter, while at the same time send more traffic from Twitter into Facebook.

View Page Post Shares
Starting today when you view a post on a Facebook page you will be able to see how many "shares" it has, in addition to 'likes' and 'comments'. When you click the "shares" button you will see a list of people who shared that post to their own page, and any public comments on their re-post. This isn't a major feature, but it makes sharing feel much more like Tumblr's popular "reblog" feature.

All of these changes will likely be appreciated by Facebook users, and will likely help stem much of the criticism Facebook's gotten as of late. It will be interesting to see how Google, Twitter and Tumblr respond to Facebook's new functionality.

An update on Google+ for Brands

2011-08-30T12:36:00.000-04:00

Below is a draft of an updated POV on Google+ I've drafted for the perspective of brand marketing opportunities. Thoughts, suggestions or critiques are welcome.

Now that Google+ is nearly two months old, I wanted to provide an update on how Google’s ambitious new social project is doing, what new features + functionality have been added to the product since launch, and how these new elements impact the outlook for brands. Despite entering a competitive landscape, Google+ has received intense attention from Google users, media and brands. In just a few shorts weeks over 25 million people have been estimated to have tried out the network. Google has met the enthusiasm with a barrage of developments that hint to the potential of Google+ moving forward.

A more powerful +1 button for publishers
When initially launched, Google’s +1 button for publishers had an ambiguous purpose. Consumers clicking the button could potentially improve a site’s search ranking, but there was no direct connection to Google+. Now when users click the +1 button they will not only affect the page-rank of the site, but will also have the opportunity to share the web-page directly to their Google+ stream. Google+ users will also see which of their friends have clicked a +1 button right next to the button on sites. The behavior will be very similar to clicking the Facebook ‘like’ button, both in it’s on-site representation and by displaying a photo and descriptive text snippet in a user’s feed. This will give users much more reason to click +1 buttons on content around the web.

Considering both the SEO and social amplification power of the new +1 button, all brands and publishers should be preparing to include +1 buttons on their sites prominently. There are a few steps website managers need to take to maximize the benefit:

Update the +1 button code on their sites to display the in-line social graph info

Include the proper HTML mark-up on your web-pages to specify which pictures and copy are auto-generated when users share to Google+ from the +1 button on your site

Extended reach through massive Gmail community
When Google+ launched many people were surprised to find that it had no connection to Gmail. Now, however, Google has taken the first steps towards integrating with the popular email client by integrating Google+ updates into the new Gmail people widget. When looking at an email in Gmail, your contacts most recent public Google+ post will be visible in the sidebar along with their other profile information. This extends the reach of Google+ status updates way beyond the Google+ user-base out to the millions of people who use Gmail daily, making Google+ content sharing much more attractive to brands.

A more social YouTube experience with Google+ Hangouts
From the beginning, Google+ users have been able to load YouTube videos inside Hangouts (group video chats). Additionally, now when watching a video on YouTube users are invited to launch the video inside a Google+ Hangout to share the viewing experience with up to 10 friends. Like the Gmail integration, this exposure on one of Google’s most popular properties will help boost awareness of Google+. This is also a potentially valuable Call-To-Action for brands to promote on their YouTube channels: not just to watch a brand spot, but to invite friends to watch, enjoy and discuss along with one another.

Increased time spent inside Google+ through games
Google+’s biggest advancement so far may be the launch of Google+ Games. The games platform is very similar to Facebook’s, focusing on casual social games like Bejeweled that challenge friends to beat each other’s high scores and more. Google noticeably kept games alerts from infiltrating the regular Google+ feed; rather it’s information streams are kept on a separate feed users see when playing games. While less integrated, games will still ensure that users spend more time inside Google+ and return to the network more often. They could also be a potential way for brands to offer engaging experiences to users, once the developer platform is opened to all.

But official brand accounts are still missing (for the most part)
The most notable development about Google+ so far, though, may be that Google still hasn’t made any announcements about how brands will exist on the network. Google has actually gone out of their way to remove brand pages that pop up, or work with brands to transition their pages to a representative employee. So far the only hint that brand pages are coming soon, besides Google’s continuous promise, has been the launch of the Ford Motor Company test account. Ford notes that the profile is an early test of Google+ business accounts, and is experimenting with a number of Google+ features like Hangouts. Despite the early access Ford doesn’t appear to have any special features or functionality on their page yet. However, many additions like Google Analytics and advertising integration are expected to come, and may already exist on the back-end. Google will presumably also look at adding other features like brand directories, enterprise level moderation tools, integration with Google Places and more.

One last new Google+ feature that could be related to Google’s plans for businesses is the addition of “verified name” tags. Though the certification process is unclear, Google has begun tagging profiles of some celebrities (such as actress Alyssa Milano) and media personalities with a “verified name” designation. This certification could be used in the future to make sure users know which brand profiles are official, for trust and privacy purposes.

Though Google+ is boasting some big usage numbers so far, it’s important to remember that we are still in the very early days for the fledgling network. As Google continues integrating Google+ into its other properties and release new functionality I expect both Google+ and the other products to benefit from cross-promotion and powerful social functionality. It’s also important to note, however, that the competition is not standing still. Facebook just recently announced new privacy features that replicate Google+ circle functionality, and Twitter is quickly making photo sharing a bigger part of its web product. Social media is evolving faster than ever right now, and brands need to continue to pay attention closely to developments to identify the best ways to provide value and engage with their audiences.

How Foursquare is Growing Up

2011-08-24T09:49:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of development for two of my favorite social platforms, Twitter and Foursquare. Both have launched or announced several features that I believe are a significant step up for the services. At their origins, and despite their expansive 3rd party developer community, both Twitter and Foursquare felt like singularly focused products that could own only a certain portion of my attention and effort. As they continue to evolve, however, it is becoming clear how they each could continue to provide more value, generate more interest and connect people on a deeper level than before. In this post I will cover Foursquare's recent developments, and in another I'll dive deeper into Twitter.

Foursquare
The biggest critique of Foursquare when I tried to convince friends to use it was that they had no interest in letting people know where they are and having any serendipitous meetings. I could understand that, but always felt it was a shortsighted look at the value of location data. Now foursquare is building on-top of its check-in platform in in a number of interesting ways:

Activity tray
While in itself not all that interesting, Foursquare's activity tray has paved the way for a deeper social experience within the app. Now when a friend comments on a check-in, interacts with a tip you've left somewhere, or checks in to the same place as you Foursquare alerts you in a drop-down tray in the app. In addition, Foursquare is starting to provide interesting notifications such as a "matchmaker" like functionality, where Foursquare alerts you that a friend has added a "to-do" at a location you've been meaning to try as well, and suggests you go together.

In-line photos
To generate more conversation Foursquare turned to the most popular aspect of any social network- photos. You've been able to snap a picture at a check-in for a while, but now your friends photos show up in the main newsfeed along with the check-in info. This makes the newsfeed view a lot more interesting to browse and incentivizes people to take more photos.

Lists
Though this is only a site feature for now, users and brands can create rich categorical lists of places they recommend. Foursquare will even recommend list topics for you based on your check-in history, suggest places to add to those lists, and provide community pictures to go along with the list. Friends can collaborate on lists together, too. Lists are a great way to filter your check-ins into actual top recommendations for friends, put together itineraries, and more (pro tip: see my lists of Top NYC Pizza Places and Top NYC Coffee Spots and leave me suggestions).

Partner recommendations
Foursquare launched the Explore tab a few months ago to make place recommendations for you based on your check-in history. Now the Explore tab includes nearby, relevant recommendations for you from partners such as Groupon, Living Social and more. Leveraging Foursquare's interest graph to improve a 3rd party experience is a powerful opportunity. This feature shows the potential value in recording 2,000 life check-ins over the last few years.

Event check-ins
Now when you check-in to a movie, concert or sports game you can actually go one level deeper and check-in to the actual piece of content, such as a film. Foursquare has partnered with media properties for these libraries, and the integration includes filling the new micro-locations with reviews and stats to help people make decisions on their activities. This puts Foursquare in direct competition with another one of my favorite apps, GetGlue.

All of these features combined have turned Foursquare from a singular experience into a robust social platform that users can spend time interacting with friends through, regardless of whether they can actually meet them in person. In my own experience since these features I'm definitely seeing friends engage with Foursquare content much more- including adding more photos, commenting on more check-ins, and looking at lists. I'm also finding that the Explore tab is becoming more interesting as it starts to recommend me places to go and corresponding deals that I can buy from 3rd party sites.

In addition to being great for users, many of these features are excellent for brands. Photos and lists in particular make brand offerings richer and more compelling, advancing the way brands can create value despite the incongruity of them not being a traditional Foursquare users. As a marketer, I'm excited to think about new ways to use Foursquare to create interesting engagement programs.

So what do you think- has Foursquare's new features increased your use of the platform? Have any of them in particular stood out? What else are you looking for Foursquare to bring to the table?