Ms. Adverthinker

I talked with Charley Crowson of Today’s THV this morning. Check it out here.

The Interactive portion of the SXSW festival starts tomorrow and I am headed to Austin to partake in the activities.  I will be on Twitter @reeves501 and @stoneward, will be posting here at Ms. Adverthinker and on the Stone Ward Facebook fan page.  I might pop up a few other places, too, but I will direct you to those links when they happen.

For now, I am still in the Little Rock airport, where my flight is delayed.  I am hoping to make it to Austin in time to pick up my badge and registration materials tonight, and get a fresh start in the morning.  It will be a busy five days if I am going to try to stick to a semblance of this schedule.

What is the point of Foursquare?  This social media location game is being billed as the next Twitter.  The application launched last March, and after a year of talk in social media circles, the New York Times has caught on and published an article about it.  This must mean it has finally reached its tipping point.  So, what is it and what is the point?

According to the site, Foursquare “is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things.”  Well, that explains it.  To put it more plainly: Foursquare is a social media application that allows for users to share their current location (businesses, restaurants, services) and offer tips about that location for other users.  For each check-in, a user is given points.  If you are the user that checks in the most at a particular location, you are deemed the “mayor” of that location (a title that can be stolen by the next person who checks in more frequently than you).  Some businesses are even giving “mayor discounts.”  Users can also be granted “badges” for doing interesting things at interesting places.  Yes, this is very vague.  I don’t exactly understand the badges yet, but per the Foursquare site:

“Badges are little rewards you earn for doing checking-into interesting places.  For example, staying out late on a school night or frequenting too many karaoke bars.  We’re constantly adding new badges and would love to hear your suggestions.

“A lot of our badges are tied to venue “tags”.  People use tags to describe the places on foursquare (e.g. jukebox, pool table, fireplace, pizza, etc)  Without giving away too much, here’s a few suggested tags you can add to your favorite places to help unlock badges :  airport, college, douchebag, food truck, frat, gallery, gym, karaoke, movie theater, photobooth, pizza, playground, socialite, sorority, tourist, etc.”

The honor of badges has even spawned an offline business called Nerd Merit Badges (brilliant!) that recently received approval from Foursquare to sell these badges for people to wear on their clothes, backpacks, etc. (there is even a velcro sash for attaching badges your laptop).  I am starting to see how this could be fun.  But, I am a bit of a nerd, too.

Admittedly, I haven’t used Foursquare much.  Yet.  I signed up when I first read about it;, but in the beginning, the cities were limited to only larger markets.  And although I could have still used it in Little Rock, it just felt pointless since no one else was really using it around me yet.  Recently, the service opened up to every city and we started to see some Little Rock users popping up.  So I spent some time checking it out.

The more I poked and prodded Foursquare, it first seemed that in order for Foursquare to be relevant, the user must route their updates through their Twitter feeds - a place where everyone is already hanging out.  But then I realized that the benefit of Foursquare over Twitter is that you can do a location search to find information about the place that you are or want to go.  Wait, isn’t that how we use Yelp, too?  Oh, but Yelp doesn’t have that game aspect and the nerdy-cool badges.  Ok.  So, I need Twitter, Foursquare and Yelp?!

Then, on top of it all, thieves are tapping into Foursquare to learn when we are home and when we are not?  Do we really need all of this?

For those of us who like to share our experiences and let others learn from our experiences: yes, we will use each and every one of these services.  For now.  Until the next iteration comes along and ties it all together and adds a new aspect.  We do this because it fun.  Because we like to help others out.  And because we are nerds.  But that is cool, right?

And that is the point of Foursquare: sharing, having fun, and giving the nerds something else to do.

Foursquare, here I come.

Just a quick thought.  A few days ago, we were all patting Pepsi on the back for being different and for recognizing the power of social media when it was announced that they were abstaining from the Super Bowl advertising orgy this year and instead launching a socially conscious social media campaign.

Today, when the ratings for the Super Bowl were released we find that with 106 million viewers, it was the most watch telecast EVER.  So, was Pepsi smart to sit this one out?

There was a Super Bowl gathering at my abode, and in between cooking, conversation and conviviality around the Saints, we Googled, blogged and surfed the social networks.  Because we work in the business, our web use centered around the Super Bowl advertising.  And while most commercials were disappointing, there were some stood out from the overdone guy humor that was abundant this year.  I am not going to get into my opinion of what advertising was good, bad or ugly - you can find more than enough commentary about that here, here and here.  I want to talk about is the morphing of the event into an online social experience.

Watching the Super Bowl has always been a social event: friends gather, eat, drink, boo and cheer. The advent of social media made our parties grow exponentially over the last couple of years as we interacted with those we knew online in addition to those watching the game with us in person. Last year, 12% of Super Bowl viewers were online during the game, according to Mashable. But this year, rather than having to search out the pertinent discussions on Twitter and Facebook separately, communities have developed around areas of interest, be it sports, food or advertising.  Hashtags are now used more consistently, making search for relevant commentary outside those communities easier, too.  With these community hubs and hashtag prevalence, our online interactions have gone from just the people we know (and the people they know) to introductions to people, content and views we might never have stumbled upon before.  And just when we thought we couldn’t be more connected to the world.

I didn’t want the Super Bowl fun to end last night. In years past, I have only watched the Super Bowl for the commercials, and even then become bored by the second half. Last night was different, it was bigger and it felt like my world expanded just a little bit more.  And that is always a good thing for the curious being that is me.

For fun, here is my favorite commercial of the night.  Although, as it turns out, it has been around for a few months, last night was my first viewing.

Check me out in the Apple App Store - Ms. Adverthinker is now a free app for your iPhone.  Created by MotherApp, a free service that creates apps for your blog, the Ms. Adverthinker app pulls in my blog feed, my YouTube posts and my Twitter feed.  Never go without Ms. Adverthinker again.

A few weeks ago, my colleague and I gave a presentation with our predictions for social media in 2010 (you can see the presentation here).  One of our predictions: increased localization of social media.  Well, this is already happening.  Last week, Twitter announced lists and within several hours there were a handful of “Arkansas” lists.  Now, Twitter has announced that they will soon launch trending topics by city, state and country.  With the new API, users will be able to learn what is happening specifically where they are located.  Very cool.

This week, Twitter released a new feature that allows for the creation of “lists.”  This makes perfect sense: with the rapid growth of Twitter, it is becoming harder to figure out which people to follow. The amount of data out there is getting overwhelming; according to a CNN article:

“Approximately 25 million Tweets are posted every day; more than 5 billion have been created since Twitter’s launch.

“Facebook users are even more prolific in aggregate: Forty-five million updates are posted there daily. In May, the last date for which we have data, YouTube announced that 20 hours of video is uploaded to its servers every minute. That’s more than three years of content being uploaded to YouTube daily.

“As the barriers to media production fall — cameras in virtually every cell phone, video cameras in iPods, text messaging as a publishing platform — this content tsunami is growing ever taller”

Lists allow for those you trust to create a filter of all this data, by category, for you.

And, for those that follow Twitter through desktop apps like Seesmic and Tweetdeck, they are working to integrate list following into their applications (Seesmic actually already has; Tweetdeck is still working on it).

Check out the Stone Ward Staff Twitter list.

Small businesses are finally starting to figure out how to make social media work them.  Take Sprinkles, for example.  They were recently highlighted in this LA Times article for their smart use of Facebook:

“Each day on the website, Sprinkles announces a secret word, such as ‘ganache,’ or ‘bunny,’ or ‘tropical,’ or ‘love,’ and the first 25 or 50 people to show up at any of its five stores and whisper that word get a free cupcake.

“‘On Facebook, we can ask our customers what’s the next location they want,’ Nelson said. ‘What do they think of our next flavor? It’s an amazing way to communicate with our fans.’”

This is exactly how small businesses (or even businesses in general) should be using the social media channels: (1) not just pushing information out to their fans or followers, but providing them with a benefit for “friending” or following them, (2) engaging them in dialogue and asking for their opinions, and (3) giving them a reason to come back to your page again and again (or keeping them from “hiding” your brand’s updates from their news feeds.

Social media channels allow small businesses, that can’t afford a website or advertising to drive customers to a website, the opportunity to set up their own space in an existing community.  Increasingly, consumers are searching out their favorite brands on Facebook and businesses that are not there are missing the chance to connect with people (and all their friends).

One local small businesses that is using social media well is The House (on Facebook with just over 1300 fans) and @TheHouseBar (on Twitter with 136 followers).  The House uses these channels to update fans/followers on changes to the menu/hours, scheduled events and when they reopened after some remodeling invited just its Facebook fans to check it out the day before the official reopening.  I don’t think that The House even has an official website: on its Facebook page, the Twitter page is listed as its web address and on its Twitter page, the Facebook page is listed as its web address.

I am sure there are several other local small businesses using social media in a smart way; please send me any examples and I will post them.

Thank you, @DanaDB, for the LA Times article link.

Admittedly, I am an iPhone “worshiper,” but this latest news proves its capabilities can benefit brands, too.  In mid-September, Pizza Hut released a kick-ass iPhone app that allowed customers to place orders through the app.  As an added bonus, customers that placed orders through the app received 20% off the total price.  To date, Pizza Hut has generated $1 million in sales through the app (according to Mashable).  I have no idea how much Pizza Hut paid for the development of the app, but they seem to have gotten a return on their investment in both sales and cool points.

In a presentation that we gave on social media last week, someone asked, “what is the biggest mistake companies are making in the space right now?”  Our response: “Not being in it.”  Social media and mobile communications really go hand-in-hand as social media gets more social with constant improvements to mobile devices.  Mobile applications–like those available for the iPhone–are the perfect channel for getting in front of customers.  So many brands are just dipping their toe in social/mobile media, timidly trying it out.  Brands should take a dive in and consider an investment in an iPhone app.  Yes, there are 100,000 apps available in the app store, but many consumer brands aren’t there yet.  Just being there will put you ahead of the competition in this social/mobile space (and don’t forget to put a little promotional support behind it; just putting it there will not guarantee it will be found by your customers).  This is not a complete list, but some things to consider when developing an app for a brand, it should: (1) do something cool that others haven’t done yet (or do it in a different way; improve on what is already out there), (2) provide a clear benefit to the customer, not just benefit the brand (example: Pizza Hut offered 20% off orders placed through iPhone app), (3) be free (example: not like CNN), and (4) give the customer a reason to use the app over and over (hint: constantly update/improve the capabilities).

Check out a demonstration of the Pizza Hut iPhone app here:

What pizza brand doesn’t get it?  Domino’s.  Everyone remembers the embarrassing “food defiling” video post by Domino’s employees.  It took Domino’s several days to respond, they signed up for a Twitter account to deal with the consumer response (note that they didn’t ALREADY have a Twitter account), and produced a stiff teleprompter-read video from their corporate office.  In those same days, Pizza Hut put out an ad for a Twitern.  Pizza Hut definitely gets both the digital and social space.

These are my rambling thoughts on Twitter use lately.  Clearly not well-formed yet, these notes are simply a way to ask you if you are using Twitter similarly or differently.

LOCAL POSTS

While I may not post tweets as frequently as others, I am reading tweets up to 15 hours a day.  I keep Seesmic Desktop active on my computer throughout the day and I frequently reference the Tweetie app on my iPhone when away from my computer.  I have noticed something about my tendencies as I scan the posts: I focus on the local people, but national news.  I follow 187 “people” on Twitter; that is a lot of news and information streaming in throughout the day.  And, while I glance at all of them, when in a hurry I look for the people I “know” and those tend to be locals.  And by “locals,” I mean the average, everyday person that is on Twitter and sharing news and information, not the local news (with the exception of a few, they still haven’t figured out how to make Twitter useful except when it comes to weather updates).

Posting constant Twitter updates is personally revealing.  As a result, you can feel like you “know” people you have no chance of meeting.  However, on a local level, there is a chance of actually meeting the people that you feel like you “know” from their Twitter updates.  Does this possibility make their posts more interesting and engaging?

FREQUENCY OF POSTS

The people and organizations that posts strings of tweets one after the other definitely get overlooked by me.  When they do this, I feel like they are crowding the space and trying to take it over.  That is not what social media is all about; social media is about sharing information in two-way communications.  It is putting something out there and looking for a response.  It is not a newscast.

LINKS

I am clicking through on embedded Twitter links more frequently; I am not sure if this is because more people are using them or if people are getting smarter about how to write their tweets in a way that intrigue people enough to click through.  If I click through on an embedded link in a tweet, I would consider that tweet successful: the message was effectively “teased” in the 140-character limit of Twitter.  However, if I am disappointed by what I find, the chances of me clicking through on link from that user again are slim.  The content that doesn’t disappoint can be anything from photos and articles to long-form video; it doesn’t matter what is there, as long as it was relevant to that tweet and ultimately interesting, it works.

Check out this video with some impressive social media usage statistics.

Social media sites are addicting.  These sites allow us to peer into the lives of our friends without getting too involved.  (Although sometimes it is like watching a soap opera and we begin to feel like we are part of our friends lives, without actually being part of their lives.)  But the nature of social sites is to create conversation.  So the problem with social media voyeurism is that we are expected to share back.  We create community when we share.  We learn about each other and keep in touch in ways that were never feasible in the past.  I love to learn new and interesting things from my friends.  I love to see how they spent the weekend or what their dog is doing.  Social media expands my small university into a giant one and is usually a complete joy.  I share a lot online: if I want you to know what I am doing, you will know - through Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr.  And maybe a little Flickr, Posterous and Loopt every now and then. Do I share too much?  I don’t know, maybe sometimes I do.

Social media can also be a burden; and this week I am feeling overwhelmed by my social media connectivity.  Yes, I preach about the value connectivity and social media.  Yes, my phones are practically connected to me and my computer is within reach 18 hours a day, on average.  While I keep up with messages, I don’t always respond immediately, or at all.  The reasons for this inaction vary.  Sometimes I don’t feel like talking.  Sometimes I don’t have anything to say.  And, yes, sometimes I am with real people and feel like it might be rude to be glued to my device in their physical presence.

Then there are those times when you just want to unplug.  It is hard to have “alone time” with the influx of social media.   When I need “alone time,” social media becomes a burden.  If you send me a text, email or chat conversation and I don’t respond, then just let it go and give me some space.  If I haven’t posted in a while, then maybe I am feeling overexposed.  Don’t attempt to make me feel guilty about my silence.  Being quiet says a lot.

Hmm. According to new research from Harvard Business, more women (55%) are on Twitter than men (45%).  But, men have more followers, by 15%.  “Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This ‘follower split’ suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships.”  And, not only are men more likely to follow men, but women are 25% more likely to follow a man.

According to the study, this man-following has nothing to do with how much he tweets: men and women tweet at the same rate.  What is up with this?  Possible hypotheses (based on nothing but my intuition):

• The format for Twitter (short bursts of information) is more conducive to the male style of communication, whereas women tend to want to be more verbose and explanatory?
• The subjects women tweet about may not be as diverse as those that men tweet?
• Women tend to tweet about their personal lives, men tend to tweet about business?
• Women have higher “follow” standards because their time is valuable and content is their currency?
• Is there something wrong with Harvard Business’s methodology for determining who is male and who is female on Twitter?  (“To get this figure, we cross-referenced users’ ‘real names’ against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names.”)

I would like to hear what others think about this “follower split” on Twitter.  More women are online.  Women have more influence on purchase decisions.  Women are more likely to research before making any decision.  People trust “people like me” for advice.  All of these factors would indicate that women would be following other women in droves on Twitter.  Thoughts?