Open The Dialogue

Although social media savvy brands are beginning to warm up to the idea of location based services, some brands remain skeptical of the benefits. This week London-based fashionistas who belong to Foursquare will have a chance to experience the marketing possibilities behind location based services.

Shoe giant Jimmy Choo is using Foursquare to organize a treasure hunt in real-time around London. With this contest, Foursquare followers can see where one pair of Jimmy Choo trainers check in. Once they’ve checked-in, campaign followers can show up at the trendy venue in hopes of catching the pair of shoes before they flee to their next, equally chic location. Once caught, winners are able to choose their size and style.

It’s interesting that this campaign is effectively using additional social media platforms such as a contest-specific Twitter handle (@CatchaChoo)  and Facebook fan page dedicated to the contest. Both accounts are updated in real-time along with Foursquare check-ins.

If this were a national or international contest, the accounts would be overwhelmed with interested parties. However, because of the London specific location, all accounts – including Foursquare – have less than 1,000 fans, followers and friends creating an intimate feel to this contest.

This contest is interesting to the social media industry for reasons other than shoes. Location based services and geo-tagging are already starting to be used by brands such as Time Out New York and the Financial Times but this is the first contest of its kind and while some may look at it as a cheeky marketing ploy, it also seems to be an effective brand building tool and a glimpse into the future of social media.

Online Retailer’s Customer’s Credit Card Information Available on Google

Identity theft is a huge concern with the increased usage of computers for online banking and buying. It’s been found out that shoppers at the popular online retailer Blippy are at risk of having their credit card information shown live in Google searches.

Facebook Announces New Plan at f8

Facebook has launched a whole plan that integrates the web with the social networking site. Dialogue Media’s Alex Payne explains.

Foursquare Creates Business Page

Foursquare has created a space for businesses to engage their customers with specials. This also allows businesses to track the performance of the venue.

This week at Facebook’s f8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the future of Facebook and how it interacts with the web. These new products combined with tweaks Facebook made before the conference kicked off will be critical not only in how we work with Facebook, they may change the way that we view the entire Internet.

Initial f8 Announcements

Facebook began their week of announcements long before Zuckerberg took the stage.  During the week they announced:

• Facebook Switches Fans with Likes.
  • While everyone knew this change was coming to your fan pages, the switch prompted some to question why it was a necessary change. Additionally the change clearly shows you which friends like the page, a feature that was not found in the original design.
• Community Pages allow Facebookers to share knowledge on topics.
  • Connecting to everything you care about is aimed at linking your interests and profile to more people on Facebook. Now instead of just enjoying cooking, you can link that interest to a community page.
• Facebook Shutters Facebook Lite
  • Facebook Lite was meant to be a smarter, faster way for power users to engage with Facebook.  In the end, Facebook used the Lite design to make the Stream more efficient.

Minor Announcements

Before getting into the meat and potatoes of Facebook’s next big thing, Zuckerberg shared some small changes that could have an immediate effect on how we interact with Facebook on a daily basis.

• One Step Permissions: instead of multiple permission screens, Facebook is changing its privacy logins to the simple click of one button.
• Expanding the Cache: Originally developers could only store information for 24 hours, causing people to have to log in everyday.  That protocol has been removed and now developers can store information until you sign back out.
• Universal Credits: Currently buying things through Facebook apps requires a credit card entry for each app. Facebook is working toward a Facebook currency that will allow users to store information in only one place.

Of course these aren’t the only changes that Facebook is currently engaged in building.  Instead these are changes that are already being rolled out to the system. Compared to the future changes of Facebook, these might as well be considered minor tweaks.

Most of us working for the media have taken note to the recent activities in the social media space in the last one year. Twitter grew more than 1500% in mid-2009, Facebook has almost caught up with Google in web traffic, while the once-popular social network Bebo is on the verge of shutting down. In the meanwhile, marketers and agencies have been coping to keep up with this fickle, evolving industry. The power of communication has landed in the hands of the consumer, and instead of a traditional business to consumer marketing model, we are now faced with consumer to consumer conversations, pondering what are the best ways to insert our brand in those conversations. In this shifting ecosystem, roles for agencies has changed and the question has surfaced – who will handle the social media marketing for a brand? Is the traditional advertising agency, the digital shop or the PR agency?

Traditional ad agencies are not competing for this business. Most Americans still watch TV and the need for TV advertising will continue. The real competition remains between the digital agencies and the PR shops. During the recession, marketing dollars were reduced and companies scaled back on building fancy websites and expensive online media buys, affecting digital ad agencies’ business.  Social media marketing factors accountability, measurement, monitoring, impacting the Share of Voice – disciplines that online public relations excels in and have been doing so for a while. Brands are realizing that. In industry movements – Starbucks assigned most of it’s social media to their PR agency – Edelman. PR agencies are also welcoming those changes by staffing. To keep up with their client’s creative demands, Edelman’s Digital team bought David Armano on board, a creative advertising veteran, who created large scale web builds for ad agencies such as Digitas and Agency.com. We are going to start seeing these changes more frequently. And specific PR industry hires from the advertising field, brands rewarding their social media businesses to PR agencies are just the beginning of this change that has started to shake things up.

Coming from an digital advertising background myself (in fact – Publicis Modem and Agency.com, as Mr. Armano), I’m nervous that business model is losing to its PR counterparts. If brands need to focus on creating and measuring conversations and effectively execute social media programs – that is not the traditional advertising process. Sure, agencies for decades have been creating mind blowing creative campaigns, building brands, turning commercial jingles into household tunes – but while are approaching a Generation Y era, powered with Web 2.0 and iPhones and GPS mobile applications like Foursquare, the need for communication channels focuses on audience engagement and activation. Finding and recruiting influencers and making them brand evangelists are the true form of viral marketing. Being a digital marketer, everyday I encounter questions from our clients asking newer ideas on reaching their audience in unique and innovative ways, using social media. And in all honesty, I think a PR angle is far better equipped to answer that question than the standard advertising rationale. Communication and interaction will win over one-way messaging in today’s social media strategy.

It’s been a week since I acquired the hyped up iPad, so I thought it would be appropriate to review my new gadget.

I was surprised by the weight of the iPad, though I didn’t really have an expectation as to its weight. It could be cumbersome if you’re standing up on a train or bus because of the weight and size (just about the weight and size of a hardcover book).

The screen is also hard to keep clean, especially if you play Bejeweled, which is a must-have for an iPad user. Using an eye glasses cloth cleans up any smudges quickly.

When I started to consider purchasing the iPad, it was hard to imagine whether or not I would want one that runs off a 3G network (which means waiting even longer to acquire the latest from Apple), or just the WiFi machine. In retrospect, I think it makes sense to purchase the 3G iPad if you can afford to fork over some extra cash and come to terms with paying extra for the service each additional month. However, if you forgo a laptop and the internet in your home, it would make sense.

Another thing I didn’t particularly care for about the iPad is that you have to purchase a lot of applications for it to be comparable to an iPhone. Yes, it does have the feel of an iPhone, so one could claim it is a glorified iPhone. It doesn’t come with a clock/timer or a calculator, the stock application, or the weather application. If you want these, you can purchase them – and despite many rumors I’ve been asked about, not every app for the iPad costs $10 or $40 or some other ridiculous amount.

Besides these grievances, which I am happy to work around, I personally think the iPad is awesome.

The battery life is fantastic, promising you 10 hours of fun – that’s far more than my laptop and phone can last, combined.

The iBooks application is great, and reading on the iPad is definitely enjoyable. The machine comes pre-loaded with Winnie The Pooh, so you can really get a sense of what it looks like for books to have graphics. If you have kids, it could be the perfect piece of technology to bring on vacation and have a bedtime story literally at your fingertips.

My favorite application is the ABC Player. As an iPhone user, I dreamt of the day that ABC would have a video player application for the phone. I enjoy having the ability to watch my favorite shows from ABC on demand online. This application takes it to a whole new level. The graphics are perfectly clear, and there is no network interruption that I frequently experience on line. The video quality in general on the iPad is pretty stellar.

Another fantastic application is Tweet Deck. It brings interaction to a new level – if you own an iPad you should download this application immediately. If you do not own an iPad, you should go buy one and then download the application immediately.

The App store has a lot to offer anyone, allowing you to really tailor your iPad to use it however you want to. You can use it to work, and conduct slideshows, and edit documents, and use your email. You can use it as a reader with the added benefit of the Internet, iPod, and tweeting. You can use it to watch videos or to occupy the kids during a long car ride. Or you can use it for all of the above.

The videos and descriptions really don’t do the iPad justice – I would recommend heading over to your closest Apple store and playing with one. They’re pretty unbelievable.