Think Basis It's Good For Business

Facebook tells the world who you are. Twitter broadcasts to the world what you are doing. Foursquare, the location-based social networking service, allows users to let friends and family know just where they are, with special benefits included.

Foursquare is, at its core, a game. Users check-in at locations where they are, shout a few words to their friends and fight over mayorships, badges and special offers. Unlike Facebook, which took some time to find a true revenue source, and Twitter, which has yet to outline a stable business model, relevance in Foursquare will prove instant value to any local institution.

Foursquare takes word-of-mouth marketing to a whole new level. Receiving a ‘ping’ from a friend checking into 416-Florist.com and shouting, “Just picked up birthday flowers for Susan” will have a far greater affect on you than a bland advertisement on a billboard. As well, advertisers can find great use in Foursquare to collect data on customers checking-in and participating in certain promotions. Soon enough, the hot shots on Madison ave. will be able to pinpoint a message to meet your demands exactly. Although that may seem scary to some, the pros do exceed the cons. Like this story about Miss Shirley’s in Baltimore (via aboutfoursquare.com):

The Sunday brunch line at Miss Shirley’s Café’s two locations in Baltimore often stretches to two hours or more. Since April, they’ve offered to let their foursquare mayor jump to the head of the line.

The competition for that coveted honor has been fierce. According to Ryan Goff of agency MGH, Miss Shirley’s has seen a 427% increase in foursquare checkins since the special launched. They’ve heard several anecdotal reports of people visiting more often just to try to earn the mayorship.

In Toronto, I recently got a friend request from the nationally distributed newspaper, the National Post. I didn’t see any reason to ignore the request and so I accepted, wondering where this paper would be checking into. A little later on in the day, I checked into Hemingway’s Restaurant for a nice lunch with a friend. Only a few seconds after checking-in I received a recommendation from the National Post’s food critic about a particular sandwich. I figured I would give it a shot, and it paid off! The meal was delicious and it was because I put trust in this particular recommendation.  Local businesses can tap into this and gain new customers just by setting up their profile on the city grid. “Special offers nearby” always attract visitors and to be “Trending Right Now” is a sign of immediate success.

Foursquare, and its growing partnerships around the globe, is here to stay. Although there is considerable competition in the market from Gowalla, Foursquare is winning the people over in droves. With connections in Facebook and Twitter, updates may eventually come solely through third-party apps and with Foursquare’s fun and easy to use location-based service, it only makes sense that in time all your tweets will come through the Foursquare platform.

Still don’t get it? Watch the video below. You’ll be hooked after your first checkin.

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Recently, while taking important time out of my day to check up on Facebook, I have found some awkward recommendations appear on the right hand side of my news feed. As part of the Recommended Pages section, the Facebook team has devised an ingenious method of linking Pages that you have previously liked to other persons, places, or things they figure you may also like. Here’s an easy way to look at it: (more…)

In a case of asking a question they weren’t quite ready to have answered, Domino’s Pizza’s new site Pizza Turnaround (which promotes the chain’s new recipe) is getting the wrong type of buzz. After soliciting user feedback and including a stream of tweets under the hashtag #newpizza on their new recipe’s site, Domino’s seemed a bit startled that the general buzz wasn’t as overwhelmingly positive as they might have expected.

One screen capture showcases a variety of less than complimentary reactions to the new pizza, including the gem, “new dominos pizza just tastes like shitty pizza still. just different. too much sauce. always too much sauce.”

As a response, it appears Domino’s is now manually selecting which tweets will be included in the updates.

If you’re only going to print what you want people to say, why bother including a live feed in the first place? Why not just handpick a few testimonials or fake some positive reviews?

Oh, I forgot, that wouldn’t be “engaging in the conversation.”

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I’ve started to develop an allergic reaction to Twitter lately. Not everything about it, just some of the specific types of tweets that seem to be tainting our stream with the unwanted taste of urine and self-importance. Although most of us have been guilty of at least a few of these from time to time, it’s the habitual offenders I’m taking issue with. Overusing these 8 types of tweets is a quick way to get yourself classified in a group you might rather not be a part of.

1. The Validation Seeker

I like to call this the attention whore. It’s usually someone who thrives on having other people inquire about their life so they can tell everyone how great things are while simultaneously receiving that special little “I’m important” feeling. It would be just as easy for them to write the actual news, but doing that would take away from the extra attention they get when someone finally decides to indulge them and ask the question they’ve been desperately waiting for. Plus, it’s a good way for them to test who their “real” friends are, and who actually has a life of their own.

2. The Perpetual Victim

Rarely stemming from legitimate hardship, this style of tweet typically centers on something so trivial that the rest of us probably wouldn’t even give it a second thought. Things like long lines at Starbucks, slow service, or a disappointing meal aren’t nearly the tragedies some people make them out to be. Everyone’s entitled to a bit of complaining now and again, but sometimes you need to nut up a little bit and pick your battles.

3. The Existentialist

There’s a fine line between being thought provoking and being a douchebag that tries too hard. While there’s always a place for a well-quoted song lyric or literary passage, trying to dress these up as a showcase for your depth of thought and incredible insight is questionable at best. Just because you’re quoting Thoreau on a regular basis doesn’t mean you’ve found some deeper meaning that we’re all lacking. You’re not the only one who’s read Walden, and the fact that you’re also on Twitter tells us you couldn’t have found it that inspiring.

4. The Too Cool for School

There’s a huge difference between informing people of what you’re up to and bragging about how awesome you are. We get that we should be envious of your carefree lifestyle and VIP status, but the fact that you’re Tweeting about how you’re shopping for a Ferrari makes us wonder whether you’re not actually sitting at a stoplight in the backseat of your parent’s astro minivan. What’s the deal, are you trying to compensate for something?

5. The Negativismo

Named for the fictional superhero that incapacitates criminals simply by bumming them out, this person thrives on sucking the fun from people on a daily basis. Although slightly less annoying than the people whining about their own (often imagined) hardships, you can still rely on this joyless soul’s tweets to put a damper on even the best of moods. Sure, there are a lot of sad things going on in the world, but sometimes we want to forget all about those things with amusing pop culture references and comical video links. Thanks for keeping us grounded in despair.

6. The Baller

Seemingly breast fed on hip hop, despite growing up in a cozy suburban home, this user is tweeting at you straight from the hood. His updates consist mostly of over-the-top-trying-too-hard-ebonics that are barely discernible to even the most studied linguists. Although there’s nothing wrong with tossing around a bit of slang from time to time, The Baller operates on a completely different plain. Fortunately on Twitter it’s easy enough to ignore this confusingly chest-beating macho gibberish once you’ve pinpointed a repeat offender…now if we could just find a way to keep him from commenting on YouTube.

7. The Self Promoter

Usually someone with the word “guru” in their title, the shameless self promoter sees Twitter as their own personal medium for evangelizing their products and/or services. The updates usually consist of projects they’re working on, projects they plan to be working on, and the occasional update on projects they have recently accomplished. It’s like an RSS feed of minutia about a business you have no interest in learning more about. You can usually spot these people by the auto-DM you receive the moment you’re foolish enough to start following them.

8. The TMI-er

Taking the concept of micro blogging to embarrassing heights, this is the person who doesn’t understand where to draw the line between public and private. Just because you have the ability to tweet something while you’re sitting on the can doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear about your most recent contribution to the Regal Cinemas men’s room. It’s bad enough that there’s plenty of noise on Twitter as is, you don’t need to go around adding your flatulence to the mix.

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Alright, this was going to be a different post entirely, but it looks like I’ll have to just save that for another day. Because, as I was killing time by perusing Digg’s upcoming entertainment section, I spotted this article sitting at the top: Web Designer Battles Hollywood Cookie Cutting

It didn’t sound particularly interesting, but since it had an astounding 389 diggs, and a suspiciously low 0 comments, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to see what was going on.

Upon clicking through I immediately went to see who was digging this submission, because 1) it’s basically just a screenplay pitch, and 2) 389 diggs is an assload for something in upcoming.

Well, by the time I clicked to see who was digging the story, it had jumped up again, and was now sitting at 390. But, as you can see from the screenshot, the people (or person) doing all the digging aren’t exactly the type you’d expect to be browsing around in upcoming looking for interesting stuff.

In fact, the majority of the accounts look a lot like this:

No avatar, just joined, and has dugg a total of one story.

So, I’m left wondering whether this might just be on its way to the record for most diggs without hitting the front page. Since I started writing this, the total has already made its way up to 460, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Also, the submission hasn’t even cracked 10 hours. I’m anxious to see where it’s at after 24 and if it continues to climb.

It’s hard to imagine this could possibly be promoted on the number of diggs alone, but it is definitely one of the more impressive spam attempts I’ve seen in a long time.

UPDATE: The submission appears to have capped out at 510 diggs and has now been officially buried.

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Alright Digg, the honeymoon’s over, so I want to cut right to the chase. When we first met I was pretty much smitten. I loved the way you showed me new and exciting things, and took me to wonderful places I might never have found without you. However, as time went on, you started to grow more distant, and I quickly learned that despite all your talk about community you really didn’t care about my needs at all. You don’t care about anyone but yourself, and to be quite honest, you’re kind of an asshole sometimes.

Now don’t get all defensive and start telling me I’m the asshole. I’m only telling you this because I do care about you deeply and I want us to be happy together. Consider this an intervention of sorts. I’ll be the first to concede I may not be the perfect user all the time, and there are probably a few things I’ve done that you weren’t particularly fond of. For starters, I’ve been cheating on you with reddit for a couple years now. But you know what? It’s because reddit gives me something you don’t: honesty.

So, in the interest of honesty, it only seems fair to tell you where we stand, and point out a few simple ways we could right this sinking ship and regain a healthy respect for one another:

Make Up Your Mind About Shouts

Alright. So you say you want people to be able to promote their stories among friends? Seems reasonable enough. But, then you turn around and seem to devalue a person’s digg if it comes from a shout. How does this make any sense?

So, just level with me. Should I shout my stories or not? Don’t talk out both sides and tell me the variety of people digging a particular submission is important, and then provide a feature designed explicitly to solicit diggs from the same people over and over.

All I can figure from what you’re telling me is that I’m better off just digging as many different stories in “upcoming” as I possibly can so 1) friends will feel obligated to digg my stories back, and 2) my submissions have a better chance of showing up in the recommendations for other digg users.

Eliminate Blind Digging

This brings me to the next point: please eliminate blind digging. Sure sure, you’ve slowed people down a bit, and you can’t just go around digging a story a second like the gold-ol’-days. But, the fact remains you can digg a submission without ever even clicking through to look at the site, and to be fair, I’ve found myself guilty of doing this on more than one occasion. For the most part it’s an innocuous thought process of “sure, who doesn’t love zero punctuation reviews, I’ll digg it now and watch it later.” But, this can be taken to ridiculous extremes and people digging several hundred stories in a day can’t honestly say they even looked closely at the majority of what they were digging.

And yes, Digg, I blame you for this. Sometimes it seems like you’re more caught up trying to be the hip parent / best friend instead of an authority figure. Just grow a pair and decide when enough is enough. Tell us how much is too much and then stick to it. We might be mad at first, but at least we’ll respect you for it.

Show the Number of Buries

Speaking of respect, let’s use the “if you have a problem with me, then say it to my face” mantra as a start and at the very minimum begin publishing the number of buries a particular story has gotten alongside the number of diggs. You do it with the comments, so why treat a bury like some big secret when it comes to the actual stories themselves?

How many people who have had submissions with 200 or more diggs fail to make the front page are left wondering “why didn’t my story go popular, dammit?” At least it would help eliminate the frustration if you could quickly see your picture of a beagle reading the newspaper wasn’t as newsworthy as you’d initially thought.

Allow for Customization

Similarly, it would be nice if I had a little more say when it comes to what I’m greeted with when I come running to you in the middle of the work day for a quick reprieve from productivity. Yes Digg, maybe reddit has spoiled things by letting me be so picky about what I want to see, but I’d appreciate it if you were at least decent enough to respect some basic allergies from time to time. Can’t I at least opt out of the war on Scientology and have a brief respite from reading headlines about the RIAA becoming even more bastardly?

I don’t see how it would hurt things if you gave your friends a chance to choose what interests them the most. You don’t even have to let me choose anything significant, I just want to pretend my say matters. Let me eliminate a category that doesn’t interest me from showing up on the home page when I’m logged in. Let me pick title keywords that I don’t want to see ever again. You can start by providing me a way to filter out anything with the words “best” and “ever” in the title.

Honestly, if someone can write a whole book that lets me choose my own adventure, the least you can do is give me the flexibility to only see upcoming stories with titles in the English language.

Provide Some Transparency

Really, I think all of my complaints boil down to this last criticism. You don’t tell people where they stand. The open letter to Kevin Rose from a few months back actually did a pretty good job of pointing that out. You hide behind an algorithm because it lets you keep us at a distance and you can easily sidestep people’s questions without ever having to let things “start getting real.”

It would be wonderful if there was someone who actually took the time to interact with interested members of the community and treated the users with a little respect. Obviously you’re not going to be able to respond to every email wanting to know why a submission didn’t make it, or what you can do to make the front page more often, but developing some clear standards and then communicating those to the community at large would be a fantastic start.

So, even though I do feel bad for kicking you while you’re down, now seemed like as good a time as any to pull you aside for a little heart to heart. However–and this might just be me being paranoid–I have a sneaking suspicion you aren’t even listening to me. My guess is anything I said was only falling on deaf ears while your eyes darted around the room getting sidetracked by pictures of anteaters and nerdy comics.

Yeah, I know, that stuff is amusing. And you win, I’ll probably keep coming back. But, if you actually took a few minutes to really think about what I said and considered making a couple of changes on your side of the fence, we might be able to rekindle a little bit of that excitement we’ve been missing for a long, long time.

At least think about it. Please…

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