Archive for September, 2009
A bit over three years ago I started a spreadsheet tracking all of the ‘social and mobile services’ floating around the marketplace, which I organized into (inevitably nebulous) subcategories: location-based, standard text-to-screen, web-only social utility, photo-specific, ad-serving, etc, etc…
Needless to say, this little project has grown well beyond the bounds of a simple Excel doc over the past few years, and compartmentalization has only become messier. Trend waves ebbed and flowed; Startups were funded, bought, merged, and killed; I watched a little app called Twitter hit puberty and adulthood in the span of a month, promptly explode, and ultimately ‘grow into its nose.’
Beneath the social soup that was steeping under the names of Socializr, Attendi, Eventful, Troovy, Vibely, Planypus, Qwikker, WeHangHere, Trusted Places, PlaceShout, MoBloco, Mobango, Meetro, MingleNow, BunchBall, DodgeBall, FatDoor (and enough others to make my scroll finger weary) emerged a few winners, a sack of losers, and a whole new set of best practices.
So, are we in Mobile/Social/Local Land 2.0 yet?
The way I see it: almost.
I’ve been playing around with FourSquare and (to a lesser extent) GraffitiGeo over the past few days, and it’s clear that those of us knee-deep in this stuff have learned a few things while mucking around in the aftermath of round one:
1. Incentives are critical (prizes, badges, role hierarchies, etc). Users need a reason to keep playing other than ‘it’s hip and new.’
See above- ‘new’ isn’t unique.
2. Give users explicit instructions on what to do, but let them figure out why they’d want to. Twitter’s ‘What are you doing?’ call to action is brilliant in its own coy little way, and while FourSquare’s “Check in/Add a Tip” still needs tweaking, it’s edging closer to that magic formula.
3. Multi-modal unification needs to be clean and easy. (The iPhone experience should be seamless with the web play, and so on…)
4. While social services will always be about ego, they also need to be about fun. Even the most self-absorbed sixteen year-old tires of navel-gazing after a while. Appeal to quirkiness, appeal to whimsy, appeal to the element of surprise. Even if your target audience is 40-something corporate execs, everyone likes to undo the top button. Help them.
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Seen any apps or services that appeal to the conditions above? Leave me a comment so we all can play.
(Pssst… that’s #5: Social services make a big fat ‘splat’ sound when you’re using them alone… which is why GraffitiGeo’s social mob/heatmap angle seems so promising.)
LocaModa CEO Stephen Randall has published a series of four white papers that focus on establishing best practices and building standards for user experience - essentially, demystifying the DOOH industry. Combining years of accumulated empirical research, granular metrics, and industry trends, Stephen’s papers show a thorough understanding of an industry that -while still in its infancy- has quickly developed its own set of intricacies that are both constantly changing and slippery to document.
Because of LocaModa’s unique perspective on combining web, mobile, and DOOH (and recently broadcast TV as well!), these papers give a broad, relational view of the current state of the industry and -more importantly- where it’s headed.
Part I, entitled The Different Capabilities of Interactive Mobile & Social Media on Digital Out Of Home Systems. Not All Systems Are Created Equal can be downloaded as a free pdf. It is currently featured on the Digital Signage Expo site.
We’ll be releasing the next three papers in the series on successive Mondays here on the blog in tandem with release on DailyDOOH.
The series contains:
PART II - Building an Interactive Digital Out of Home Experience. Basic Considerations for Mobile & Social Interactivity on Digital Out of Home Networks
PART III - Overcoming Ghost Town. Leveraging the Network Effect to Enhance the Interactive Experience on Digital Out-of-Home Networks
PART IV - Dealing With F**K and Other User Generated Content Challenges for Digital Out-of-Home Networks
We welcome any and all feedback on this series of white papers, and we hope this will spark healthy conversation that continues to move the industry forward.
If you’re a Twitter or a Facebook user, you’ve likely been stream-walloped by the current health care meme:
To translate the buzz into Wiffiti form, we’ve pulled in the meme text into a devoted screen. Send in your mobile and web comments to propel the conversation beyond Retweetdom.
We just received word yesterday evening that LocaModa has been selected as a finalist in the 2009 digiday: Mobi Awards. We’ve been honored for our work with VH1 on the Great Debate, where we teamed up with Future Friends and Zoom Media & Marketing for a national cross-channel campaign.
See you in NYC for the awards gala!
