By Molly Galler
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.”
Why all the fuss over this one conference? Jenna Wortham of the New York Times wrote on today’s Bits blog:
“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.
March 12th, 2010
By Kyle Austin
The Facebook vanity URL gold rush is almost upon us with folks across the world setting their iPhone’s for 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday. Well, actually, that’s for most of us.
While Facebook is promoting that everyone will be able to choose a custom URL for their Facebook account at the same time – to easily direct friends, family, colleagues and business contacts to their Facebook profile – they’re giving URL’s away in advance to media and analysts that cover the company.
Unlike a demo in advance of a public announcement, there isn’t really anything for journalists to try out here, so Facebook is really just throwing influencers a bone. In return, they get to improve the relationship and can bet on more coverage around their already-hyped announcement. Caroline McCarthy at Cnet has her new Facebook URL set to go live www.facebook.com/carolinemccarthy (although she didn’t have much say in what it was), and of course Michael Arrington does as well. While it seems like a sweet PR throw-in, statements from Arrington like this, don’t exactly endear themselves to the 200 million plus people that are still waiting in line:
“I feel sort of bad about posting this, since Facebook is actually doing us a favor. But I also think it’s kind of BS that Facebook is giving some people, employees included, first shot at the names. My guilt only extends so far, though. You suckers wait in line. I’m grabbing my name in advance.”
Many of those people still waiting in line are marketers operating brand pages on Facebook (for who, this announcement is a bigger deal). Consumers have been able to personalize their URL’s for LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other sites for some time. While Facebook may be important to them as well, it doesn’t have the marketing implications for them that it carries for brands.
I wrote back in March how valuable the new Facebook fan pages would be for marketers. However, the big thing missing at the time was easily identifiable URL’s. Sure, Microsoft had one and Vitaminwater used their vanity URL incredibly effectively with their TV campaign during March Madness, but these companies had existing business relationships with Facebook (investors & ad buyers). Even a company the size of Cisco, which apparently didn’t have that relationship with Facebook, didn’t have a custom URL for their fan page.
That all changes tomorrow at 12:01 a.m. ET, assuming you have more than 1,000 fans following your page (and did so before May 31). From Facebook:
“Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time. This limitation is temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.”
So while the Facebook fan page managers for Cisco, Salesforce.com and Mint.com can create a vanity URL at 12:01 a.m. ET tomorrow, other brands will have to wait until June 28th. It does seem fair in most senses. Those that have taken advantage of pages for their marketing since March and have a grown a real following are being rewarded in advance.
However – on the other hand – some brands that have been very active, but may not have huge followings (b-b brands rather than b-c brands) are being penalized. Those that are being forced to wait can protect their company against brand infringement by filling out this form, which Facebook is providing.
The companies making the move to an identifiable URL tomorrow with the masses will find it much easier to market their destination within Facebook, which will likely lead to more companies using the interactive experience as their de-facto corporate Website.
June 12th, 2009
