A few months ago I finally decided to try out Foursquare, after getting a few different invitations to the service. I quickly set up an account and checked in at a few different places (the office, JP Licks, Starbucks and others). I also used the tips tab to see what other people enjoyed at certain restaurants. One day I was in a new area and needed to find lunch. I ended up at a local pizza shop that had good reviews on foursquare.
After my trial period with Foursquare, I’ve decided that I only enjoy certain features of the social network. It’s great being able to get tips from people that have been to restaurants already, and I will continue to use this feature going forward. However, I really do not want people to know where I am at all times. Since I’m already using Facebook and Twitter (and anyone that is truly a friend follows my updates on Facebook) there is no need to provide another audience with my whereabouts. Foursquare can get a little too personal, especially if it’s letting strangers (i.e.: online friends and others) know my location, especially if I’m away on vacation. (Yes, location-based networks help thieves).
Having reached this decision, I am now using Foursquare in conjunction with Yelp, as a tool that can help me find location places and check reviews. This is how Foursquare provides value to me.
My question is if other feel the same way. Do you believe that foursquare is a little too personal? And how is it different then Twitter or other open social networks?
Today is the first day of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX. From all corners of the earth musicians, film makers and techies join forces for a week of round the clock events and celebrations.
This year, taking center stage on the tech side are GPS based social networks. If you are an active Twitter user, you have seen these updates in your feed. Perhaps a friend has announced they’ve become the mayor of Starbucks thanks to Foursquare. These social networks are becoming more popular and their hope is to become widely adopted by the end of this week.
Caroline Waxler wrote a piece today for Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech blog in which she explains that two heavy hitters in the location-tagging social network space, Foursquare and Austin based hometown hero Gowalla, are viewing South by Southwest as the perfect venue to show their network’s superiority. On the head-to-head match up she writes:
“This is so closely watched at South by Southwest not because people feel like they’re witnessing magic but more for two reasons: One, everyone loves a good rivalry and two, South By Southwest attendees by definition love to geek out. (It’s affectionately known as “spring break for nerds.”) And, what better way to do that than to compete over who is the top visitor to the various venues associated with it? Foursquare is even giving out temporary tattoos to commemorate those achievements.”
“For start-up hopefuls, capturing the fancy of the attendees is almost as important as checking out the panels and parties. The high concentration of tech savants supplies a rare opportunity for companies to woo the eyes and clicks of early adopters and influential Twitter users and bloggers capable of elevating their sites and services out of obscurity.”
SXSW runs today through Sunday March 21st and in that time frame Foursquare and Gowalla hope that the heavy hitters in tech will not only adopt their social networks into their daily lives, but spread the word to the masses. One location at a time.
Reuters issued their social media policy to employees yesterday, and the one thing that’s attracting the most attention is a policy that news should be broken on Reuters.com, not on Twitter:
As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are ‘retweeting’ (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.
The policy also notes that Reuters employees should have the word “Reuters” in their Twitter user-name and all tweets from that account should be professional, not personal. Facebook and Wikipedia are also briefly discussed, but the breaking news element is quite interesting.
For a while now, reporters have been scrambling to break news first. on Twitter websites, blogs, or anywhere possible. Embargoes are almost entirely a thing of the past (according to TechCrunch they already are the past), and some companies are breaking their own embargoes on Twitter.
So why is Reuters opposed to reporters breaking stories on Twitter?
Quite simply, reporters that have a large, intense Twitter presence are able to turn themselves into a brand, while Reuters and other media outlets want the company to remain the strongest brand. When Bloomberg took over BusinessWeek and sent a significant number of journalists packing, it was the well-known visible people who were laid off. Reuters’ social media policy is meant to keep their reporters reporting factual and reliable news, instead of participating in a second-by-second race to break every last little piece of news.
Today Racepoint Group is launching a new offering – Racepoint Labs – to help companies, communities, causes and countries leverage the power of social media. To mark this launch we sat down with W2 founder Larry Weber, to get his thoughts on what this means for the overall digital marketing landscape.
Any movie buff could tell you that the Academy Awards telecast is scheduled for this Sunday March 7th. They have seen the nominated films, they have watched the awards shows all season, and they are eager to view the most coveted validation of film success – the awarding of the golden man we call Oscar.
What they might not know, is while they are surfing the web for real time updates, photos and behind the scenes videos, E! Entertainment and Google will be teaming up to capitalize on their interest with real-time updates to E’s internet advertising.
Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, “If a celebrity makes a red-carpet appearance wearing outlandish attire or an award winner makes a newsworthy speech, E will alter its Oscars-related ads within minutes. The media company’s goal is to make sure consumers searching for the subject on the Web find their way to E’s online photo galleries, live blogs and fashion-police critiques.”
Suzanne Kolb, president of marketing, news and online for E! Entertainment, says “The live updates to search ads will help position our online coverage at the top of the Google search results for people seeking Academy Awards-related content,” and really, nothing beats landing at the top of the Google results.
Despite their strategic efforts to optimize results during the Oscar telecast, E! is not broadcasting the show, ABC is. Not one to be outdone, ABC is turning to the web to take advantage of real time, web based interaction as well.
Steel reports, “New features this year on the Walt Disney network include tie-ins with microblogging site Twitter, interactive games and a live video stream from the red carpet, where hosts will interview nominees. Through a partnership with social-networking site Facebook, viewers will be able to submit questions live.”
While television spectacles like the NFL’s Super Bowl tend to attract major television advertising dollars, it seems the Oscars advertisers are more interested in the web.
If this trend continues, could we have commercial free awards show broadcasts in our future? A girl can dream.
ExactTarget made fairly big news on Tuesday with their acquisition of CoTweet. The email marketing and one-to-one marketing provider acquired the popular Web-based platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard. To date, CoTweet has teamed with brands such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue, Ford, Pepsi, Sprint and Coca-Cola to effectively manage global Twitter engagement. So what does an email marketer want with a Twitter platform?
What they originally have planned for the service, may shed some light on that. According the their release, CoTweet will operate in San Francisco as a business unit of ExactTarget and will lead the company’s social media product development. CoTweet co-founder and chief executive Jesse Engle will also lead the San Francisco operation and spearhead the creation and expansion of the company’s social media lab.
“What we’re seeing in the market is organizations are moving quickly to try to capture the potential of social, but are discovering that it’s siloed and not integrated effectively with other forms of digital communications,” said Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and chief executive officer. “By combining the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet, we can provide businesses a complete solution to tie together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement online.”
An end-to-end marketing tool, which includes social media functionality could be huge, but initially I would have some fears with an email marketing company (synonymous in some consumers’ eyes with spam), imploring similar tactics with social media. Do they really understand the back and forth engagement between consumers and brands that makes Twitter what it is? It doesn’t sound like Jesse Engle of CoTweet has that fear.
“We see a huge opportunity to build on ExactTarget’s incredible business and customer relationships to help companies drive more measurable value from social media,” said Engle. “As part of ExactTarget, we’ll have the global resources to cement our early lead, rapidly expand our platform and develop the next generation of social media communication tools.”
Perhaps then, they do understand the difference in the social media channel. If it allows for CoTweet to build on their services and offer more real-time measurement and CRM functionality then I’m all for it. If they can apply email measurement and CRM to social, and even mobile, ExactTarget could turn the acquisition into a future leadership position in the holistic Web marketing space.
PitchEngine, the social media release platform, announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with Technorati and MyMediaInfo to develop components for its soon to be released, Pitch™ Platform.
We didn’t have the chance to catch-up with PitchEngine’s CEO Jason Kintzler today, but according to the PitchEngine release, The Pitch Platform (due to be released in beta over the next few weeks) will offer a new kind of “social media relations”. Instead of sending press releases to email addresses, the platform will create a new channel for conversations and sharing content with real people (journalists and consumers).
Technorati will assist in creating the Technorati List (fueled by PitchEngine), which is designed to help organizations and bloggers simplify and expand blogger outreach. MyMediaInfo will assist on the traditional media end with access to 400,000 media members.
With the Pitch Platform, media will be able to follow and filter only the content that matters to them. If they see something they like, they’ll be able to interact privately, one-to-one with the Pitch creator. Media can also pitch story needs to brands and organizations from within the same categories of interest making Pitch a genuine media relations tool.
But do we really need another channel? With more channels than ever before to connect with journalists and brands, will journalists want to open a new channel (even if it is a filter)? We’ve seen the evidence that they’re already using social media for similar purposes. A study released in January found 65 percent of journalists are using social networking sites and 52 percent are using micro-blogging sites like Twitter as part of their news gathering. Add on calls and instant messaging, and that’s a lot of channels to keep track of.
Any new channel will have to offer a lot to get journalists to abandon any of the aforementioned channels. Hopefully we can give you a better idea if this does all that, when we trial the beta offering later this month.
Not only are consumers spending more time than ever before on social networks, they’re also using social networks as a one-stop-shop for news and information. The latest study released by Pew Research Center today found that 75 percent of online news consumers get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites.
However, online news consumption isn’t completely taking over offline (mainly TV and radio) consumption. Instead, consumers are combining both offline and online sources to digest news. In fact, 59 percent of the 2,259 U.S. adults (18+) surveyed, noted they use both sources. Meanwhile, only two percent noted they only use online sources for news and 38 percent of those surveyed still use offline sources as their main news provider each day.
Pew goes onto note that today’s multi-platform news environment is becoming portable, personalized and participatory:
33 percent of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones
28 percent of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them
37 percent of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter
Looking closer at Facebook as a news hub, it will become increasingly important for brands to ensure that their messages and announcements penetrate the social network. This could be through their Facebook fan pages, personal posts, aggregation buttons on corporate blogs or even journalist posts. In addition, news stories with brand and message inclusion should also be scored on if they make “most emailed” lists, are posted to an outlet’s Facebook page (i.e. the New York Times posting a story) or if a reporter personally posts a story to their page (example illustrated above).
Personally, Twitter has been a great crowd-sourcing tool for myself each morning that often beats the morning paper in terms of multiple sources, stories and varying points of view. However, I’ve found myself going to Facebook for the same type of crowd-sourcing recently. With the combination of friends’ updates and news posts from both friends, colleagues, news outlets and clients it becomes a more personal experience. I also find that with more information posted (no character limit), I spend less time clicking through to stories (not necessarily a good thing for media companies).
And that personal experience isn’t only key for myself. Despite all of the online activity, Pew notes that the typical online news consumer routinely uses just a handful of news sites. Most likely because the news and information is overwhelming and consumers opt for sites that they are comfortable with and engage within themselves.
Jon Meacham Appearing on Charlie Rose, upon the launch of the “new” Newsweek (Last May)
Newsweek’s “intellectually satisfying” new layout may not be working out as planned. Keith Kelley of the New York Post reports today that the Washington Post Company (owners of Newsweek) somewhat hid within their Q4 earnings that Newsweek lost $28.1 million in 2009. Newsweek CEO Tom Ascheim tells Kelly that they expected losses in 2009 and even in 2010 with their lower circulation, but expect to break even by 2011.
We reported last May on the transformation of Newsweek; from a venerable weekly into an Economist-like read for the intellectual elite. As part of the transformation, Ascheim and Meacham laid the groundwork for trimming down its circulation from 3.1 million to 1.2 million. As of January, Newsweek had cut its circulation down to 1.5 million. The circulation cut, which was done to focus on its “core readership,” also laid groundwork for trimming its staffing costs. Newsweek has offered severance to 44 staffers over the last year.
Despite trimming and cover stories such as “The Case for Killing Granny,” “Is Your Baby Racist?” and “Obama is Wrong,” Newsweek struggled with its transition throughout the media meltdown of 2009 (no different than most magazines). According to information from the Magazine Publishers of America the magazine witnessed a 25.9% drop in 2009 ad pages and a $105 million loss in revenue with its print business. Yes, you can blame the gradual circulation change and redesign, but what business could stay in the green with a 30 percent loss in money coming in – no matter how many people you lay off.
Things may turnaround for Newsweek as we continue to come out of the economic tumult (Ascheim notes Q4 was their best), but does the Washington Post Company have the stomach to wait until 2011 to break even? And perhaps more importantly what is their online strategy to offset these losses? Is there a paywall in the future?
“Fox News, Fair and Balanced.” Some say, it’s the most biased slogan in all of news. Others would argue that Fox News isthe most believable.
No matter what side of the fence you’re on, it’s tough to argue with the fact that there are more sources than ever before in the age of cable news and digital media, with varying shades of slant sprinkled throughout them.
In fact, a study last year by the PEW Research Center found that nearly 74% of Americans believe news organizations tend to favor one side of story and 60% believe news organizations are politically biased.
One new multi-media startup aiming to address these issues, along with the need for cost-effectively produced web and mobile video content, is Missouri-based Newsy.com. Newsy.com is a online video news site that monitors, analyzes and presents multi-sourced (or unbiased) news in video form for multiple platforms. The service is positioned as a video analyzer, not a video aggregator (such as VideoSift or Dabble.com), which means it employs an editorial staff to assist with the analyzing, sourcing, producing and repackaging rather than simply aggregating the video content.
“Look at the health care issue right now and there are likely 15,000 pieces of news coverage in all forms,” Newsy.com’s Founder and President Jim Spencer noted to me last week. “We sift through all the pieces of coverage and present one multi-sourced video.”
Missouri would seem like a funny home for a video startup to most, but Spencer, a J-school graduate from the University of Missouri, found just what he was looking for in returning to Columbia. A natural partnership with the J-School lowers staff and production costs, while offering two courses to students: An online audience development class, and a global converged news class taught by Newsy.com Vice President of Editorial Pam Maples, who was previously the managing editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Another cost saver is Newsy.com’s proprietary technology that manually records and captures content. This allows the company’s 22 full and part-time employees, and assisting students, to sift through hours of media in an efficient way. All of this, in addition to the overall production prices being lower in Missouri than San Francisco or New York allows Newsy.com to analyze, produce and distribute news at a discount of as much as 40 percent on the dollar. Or as Spencer notes, “We can now compete with Mumbai.”
The notion of being “smarter and faster” provides several revenue stream options for Spencer, who is a veteran of new media offerings. Formerly the VP of Content and Answers at Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) and the GM of News and Information Programming at AOL, Spencer believes Newsy.com can drive revenue in a variety of ways outside of traditional on-site advertising. Namely, content licensing, branded news casts and revenue shares through syndication.
These revenue streams also apply to mobile video, which Spencer sees as a big opportunity. “There is a demand for short video news analysis on mobile devices,” he noted. The iPhone and its support of high quality video is certainly a driver of that. Last June, YouTube reported a 400% jump in video uploads driven by the release of the iPhone 3G and there’s an equal demand for consuming video on mobile devices. In fact, Newsy.com’s video news app for the iPhone reached number five on the list of free apps in the News category within the iTunes App Store last October (ahead of TIME, Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post apps).
Spencer, who plans to launch a similar video playing app for Android this week sees this growth as validation of Newsy.com’s platform agnostic approach. “It’s an affirmation of our multi-sourced, multi-platform approach. We’re ahead of this trend.”
