Ciaoenrico

My Dog Peed on your Foursquare

Posted on July 8, 2010 by ciaoenrico| 6 Comments

Foursquare is exactly like a dog peeing on the ground to claim territory.

Let me explain…

I was walking our dog Martini the other day. (Her full name is Ms. Martini Kookoo-Bear, Contessa de Guadalupe, in case you really want to know how insane my Girlfriend and I are.)

Anyway, while walking, she saw a wet patch on the ground where another dog had urinated. This instantly got her attention. She went to the puddle on the gravel, sniffed at it, then squatted over it and peed on it herself. To break that out:

1) She went for a walk.
2) She sniffed another dog’s pee on her turf.
3) She marked it herself, in the hopes other dogs would recognize the area as her fiefdom.

Now break out what you do with the Foursquare app:

1) You go to a place.
2) You look the place up to see if anyone’s been there.
3) You check in, in the hopes that you’ll become “Mayor.”

This is part of why Foursquare works for so many people. It isn’t the badges, which few people I know brag about. (Not many people get anything more exotic than the “Crunked” badge anyway.) It certainly isn’t the points, which no one – including Foursquare – knows what they mean.

What people do understand is, “I’m king of the hill, come try to knock me down.” At my own company, there’s a check-in war going on between several employees to become Mayor of the place. Why? I’m not sure – I may be more of a cat person myself.

It does offer a new take on how to get traffic to do something. We know using “free” is always great for getting people to click through, and many sites including Foursquare have already seen the value of including badges, which are cute, but cost nothing to provide and are worth nothing monetarily.

Now we have proof of a new incentive: Territorial pissing ground.

Some businesses have already started giving away coupons or free product to their, “mayors.” Starbucks will give a free coffee a month to them, so it becomes actually worth something to be “mayor” of one of their stores.

Of course, this shuts out all of the other people who check into a Starbuck’s, but so what? For them, the value is in showing how many connected people show up at their stores. They don’t need to reward everyone who checks in, they just need to make sure they keep checking in.

This is something about Foursquare that has amazed me for the longest time: How little they need to do to get people to spend time checking in, without there being any end-user benefit to doing so.

I get Tweeting from a location, or posting pictures of what you’re eating for lunch on Facebook – I really do. You want to share part of your life. If people have a hard time with that, you tell them to go jump in a lake, this is what you want to share.

But it seems Foursquare has tapped into something primal within us: The need to beat our chests and declare an area as, “ours.” And when we get old and weak and stop maintaining our territory, some younger cub will come along, check in a lot, and be the new King of the Wolves.

But when you know it’s the same thing as a Maltipoo urinating on a tree, it sort of takes the fun out of it.

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Posted in Geosocial Media, Social Media, Social Networking

The joy of losing your cell phone

Posted on July 6, 2010 by ciaoenrico| 4 Comments

I forgot my cell phone at work over the Independence Day weekend. I didn’t realize until Saturday, but when I did I got panicy. First because I thought I might have to replace it, but then because no one could get in touch with me.

No phone calls, no texts, no e-mail, no work e-mail, nothing.

It was Sunday before I realized, you know, life is better in a lot of ways when you don’t have your cell phone around.

Sure, there’s a lot of utility to all those apps, and sometimes people really need to get a hold of you. On the other hand, I found I don’t really need any apps to go on about my business – particularly when I’m on a three-day weekend.

As for people not being able to get a hold of me, that’s a real blessing. It isn’t until they can’t call you up you find how nice it is to not have to answer the phone.

I think the reason is all this technology is making me feel too connected. I wonder how many other people feel the same way – that would be a good poll for someone to create. (Which means I probably should.)

How long have you gone without your phone? Without checking into Facebook? Twitter?

I’ve been a fan of the smart phone for a while, keep in mind. It’s like the PDA I had 10 years ago, but I can make calls on it. But I’m thinking I need to cut that tether a bit. Being this connected just doesn’t feel right anymore.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Yahoo! getting rid of historical PPC data

Posted on June 29, 2010 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

If you’ve been running ads on Yahoo! for a while, you might want to look at your historical data. From what I’m seeing, information from before 12/29/09 is no longer available.

Yahoo! is expected to stop serving their own search results at the end of this year. Bing will start supplying search results for them starting in October, in a roll out that will take until the end of Spring, 2011.

Details of what marketers are supposed to do to roll over their accounts haven’t been released, but it appears obvious that the information you may have been keeping on your account status in Yahoo! won’t be available.

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Posted in Interactive Marketing, Search

Why I cheat at Foursquare

Posted on June 17, 2010 by ciaoenrico| 2 Comments

Foursquare is a mix of social media technology, mobile technology and GPS technology, resulting in a service that is broken and difficult. It is the best example I’ve ever seen of making lemons out of lemonade.

Special note: This all may be true of the other social check in service Gowalla, but I haven’t used it since I have an Android phone. So a lot of this complaining may not be particular to Foursquare – it’s just the only one I have access to in order to complain about it.

Examples of Foursquare's meaningless baubles - er, badges.

Foursquare cheating is a major problem for… well, people who like to use Foursquare. What’s Foursquare? The latest social media fad, which allows you to “check in” to locations through your mobile phone, so people can know where you’re having lunch or getting gas – because that’s seriously important stuff to know.

And what’s cheating in this sense? It’s doing any number of things to elevate your non-existant Foursquare status. See, there are points and mayorships on Foursquare that you get by using the site – the points are meaningless, and everyone’s still trying to figure out why they issue them.

The mayorships are more about bragging rights, though some of the more ambitions businesses give prizes or specials to their mayors as a carrot on a stick to get more people coming in.

Which is smart – if you have that many dummies going to a business just so their phone can tell them “good job,” by all means get those suckers to come in!

So you can gain points and mayorships by checking into places you aren’t at, checking into places multiple times, or doing any number of other things that misrepresent where you are. I actually came up with a couple on my own, which I think are, frankly, ingenious.

You see, I have a problem with Foursquare as a concept. First, I’m not all that wild about letting complete strangers know I am not at home right now, so please feel free to come on over and rob me. Some Foursquare maniacs actually check into their home address using Foursquare, so they can become the “Mayor” of their own homes.

I often think about going over to these people’s places, parking on the street and “checking in” to their homes. What a thrill it would be for them to realize I’d become their mayor when they weren’t paying attention!

The second problem I have with Foursquare is the technology is ass. Not just Foursquare’s, but my phone’s. Foursquare uses my GPS location to determine if I am really where I say I am. As a result, when I try to legitimately check into my local Target store, Foursquare tells me I am actually 500 meters away. I’m standing in the middle of the store, and my own phone is telling me otherwise.

There are many times I’d like to send a picture to Foursquare and say, “No! Really! I’m right here! Check me in you bastards!”

Finally, there are a number of people who go crazy when you cheat on Foursquare – a service they do not pay for, that they have no stake in.

Bottom line: Foursquare is a buggy service with inherent security flaws, used by whining bastards who, ostensibly, want to socialize with me so I can see their fake accomplishments.

I know what you’re saying: “Where can I sign up!?!”

Therefore, I fully intend to keep cheating at Foursquare, not because I’m in it to earn bragging rights or a false sense of accomplishment. That’s what the actual users of Foursquare use it for.

Instead, I will continue to do this because it is the best way to show my discontent. I will not shrug my shoulders and say, “oh well” when their server is busy, or they get inflexible about my GPS location. I will not not cheat just so other users don’t have their day ruined.

If and when this service ever works correctly, I’ll play along. Until then, the gloves are off.

And if I get kicked off of the site, so be it – I’ll take that as a response in itself: “Sorry, but it’s just easier for us to get rid of you than to improve the way our site works.”

Whatever – I’ve still got Brightkite, which has the virtue of consistently working.

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Posted in Social Media

iPad Database Hack: Who says no one writes anything for Apple?

Posted on June 11, 2010 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

A couple of years ago, in a staff meeting, our IT guy was telling us how many attacks from outside our servers fend off each day. Then the co-owner of the company – an Apple fanboy – asked,

“How many attacks are made on Apples?”

“A lot less,” the IT guy said.

“Ha!” bellowed my boss. I’d actually half expected him to, “Squeee!”

“Yeah, but no one writes anything for Apple,” I pointed out. “If more than nine people owned one of those things, I’m sure it would be worth the time of hackers to try an attack on them.”

The IT guy, who is eternally tired and didn’t really care either way, shrugging admitted I was right.

My boss scowled at me. Not because I’d contradicted him in a meeting – though I’m sure that was part of it – but because I’d dared point out a flaw in the perfect image of the company that Jobs built. To an Apple devote, pointing out anything negative – even as minor as that – is like suggesting Jesus Christ may have gotten laid once to a Christian. It’s just not said.

That was then, when the Evangelical Apple user had to cry, piss and moan to get their friends to try out a MacBook. Now everyone has an iPod, a lot of people have iPhones, and a few people have iPads. (And there’s still some MacBooks in there) All told, this accounts for 8% market share of domestic computers, and a 34% growth from this time last year.

Which means they’re growing fast – and about to face the problems PC companies have had for some time, problems they may have felt immune to: Namely, the attention of hackers.

Like most people who heard about the database hack of iPad users this week, I laughed.

I laughed because for once, the arrogance of the average Apple user was assaulted in a very public way. Keep in mind that iPads and Apple computers themselves were never hacked into in this story – because, as always, no one writes anything for an Apple, not even good malware.

In this case, AT&T was the victim. Hackers got in through by figuring out the a number pattern in ICC-IDs, which, when passed to the AT&T website, would send back the corresponding e-mail address.

Both Apple and AT&T were quick to point out how little data was lost, and how quickly the error was fixed. Of course, this isn’t the point.

The point is that AT&T does not guard the data of Apple users terribly well. What’s more, the publicity around this case has made them a prime target for more breaches, as they have shown they aren’t good at predicting what people will try on them.

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Posted in Interactive Marketing, Public Relations

A Better Way to do Customer Reviews Online

Posted on June 9, 2010 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

Online customer reviews have become the way everyone decides what to buy it seems. When we do anything from buy a camcorder to rent an apartment, we always check the reviews. If that blender has a lot of complaints, we move on. If a lot of people say they love that restaurant, we give it a try ourselves.

The problem comes in when there are only three reviews, and they all say, “Wow this thing is great! Really! Wow wow wow!” When you see a review that good, you feel pretty sure it was left by the owner.

Or the review from the person who drones on for three paragraphs about how awful his experience was. (I say, “his” because only we guys waste time trying to get vengeance by leaving bad reviews.)

So here’s my idea

A review system needs to be built that counts how many reviews individuals leave, and the general tone of those reviews. Then based on those reviews, the reviewer is given something akin to a Google Adscore – next to their name, you see a gauge of their trust level.

Since most review sections only show the last three to five people who visited the site and left reviews, that group has the most say about the product. If there was a score for reviewers, the most trusted ones could be placed on top. Perhaps you could balance the reviews against the age of the review, so they’re still always changing. If a restaurant gets a lot of bad reviews, then shapes up and starts doing a great job, they should be allowed to show off the new, positive reviews, right?

Why would anyone sign up for a review system where they might be bashed? A review system like this would eventually catch on because of it’s trust level, just as Google became the de facto search engine because of the quality of it’s search results. Over time, businesses would be hurt by not being listed.

Look at Amazon: They’re a huge marketplace that manufacturers need to have their products listed on. Still, people can leave horrendous reviews of their products if they want to. You take the good, you take the bad.

A site like Facebook could pull this off, seeing as how they’re already trying to be everywhere online all at once. Yelp would be a more logical choice, though, since they’ve built their business on intelligent reviews. Google has the trust factor to get people to install the comment widget that would be necessary. (And that would doubtlessly help the business’ website do better in search. Google products ALWAYS seem to help sites in search.)

Whoever uses this idea, I just want credit for having thought it up. That, and a pile of money.

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Posted in Facebook, Online Tools, Social Media

Tagged customer reviews online, Facebook, google, natural search, yelp

Realistic Brand Monitoring

Posted on June 2, 2010 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

It’s been a year since I started this little blog. I was blogging for my former employer’s two company blogs when the ax there fell. What I’ve never gone into here was why I left the agency. Seeing as how it is relevant to work you may be doing for your own business, I think it’s high time I did.

I’ll be keeping out the names of companies not so much to protect them as myself – if people who made bad decisions get called out I’m not that concerned. If I get sued, however, I’ll be more than a little concerned.

We had a client who did on line learning, and they wanted a brand monitoring report. This is a competitive analysis looking at how a company is viewed in the media – news, video, social, etc. It’s the sort of thing that’s terribly useful once you bottom line what all of these mentions mean.

Among their competitors were two state universities. Now, it almost goes without saying that two major universities are going to have a LOT of media mentions. But since we were looking at them as direct competitors, it didn’t (and doesn’t) make sense to look at all of their press mentions – it only makes sense to look at how their product is mentioned. In this case, that would mean how their on line learning courses were covered and mentioned.

The client had wanted to hear all of the press mentions of these two Universities, but as I said, I felt this was unnecessary information and suggested we inform the client of that.

Let’s say you have a coffee shop. You’ll want to know how people write about your competitors like Starbuck’s, Coffee Plantation, and Seattle’s Best. You’ll also want to know how they react to McDonald’s, now that they sell various coffee drinks too. But having the additional information about how people are writing about the McRib Sandwich, The Ronald McDonald House charity, and the opening of 100 new stores in China (which isn’t in your market anyway) does not relate to your product. Sure, people who become more familiar with McDonald’s may then go in and buy one of their coffees. But looking at the company as a whole, and from that trying to glean what people think of their coffee, is quite a stretch and defeats the purpose of doing the analysis in the first place.

If you look at a competitor with as large a brand identity as McDonald’s to see how you compare to them, you will loose. What’s important is how your product compares to theirs if they sell the same one.

Instead, a week later, I was in an office with two of my three managers (God help me, I had THREE managers!) informing me that my services would no longer be required.

It’s one of the major drawbacks of working for an ad agency, that what the client wants is rarely what they need, and that you don’t really tell them this if their checks are all clearing. Since then I’ve gone to work at a stable company with a clear, strong on line objective. More importantly, they understand the difference between what a competitor does, and what a competitor does that effects us.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

Tagged brand monitoring

7 Reasons Microsoft should release a Cloud version of Office

Posted on May 27, 2010 by ciaoenrico| 2 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft Office 2010 will be web based. Yeay!

However, they are still going to be charging money for this. Boo!

Microsoft could get a lot of people using Bing if they simply made a cloud version of Office. Sound like a bad fiscal decission? It’s not! Here’s why:

1) Not everyone needs everything that comes with the full version of office anyway. A simple version of Word and Excel would be enough to make most people happy. If they don’t like it, they can buy the full version.

2) PowerPoint is useless to the average user. However, you could retool it so people can create presentations out of their photos, videos, music, narration, and share it on Microsoft Video. If it’s easy to use, a lot more people would create, and you’d have a wealth of fresh, new, common use content on your other platform. (As well as giving people something else to share with your new Hotmail.)

3) You could add more to the sale version of Office, to make it more enticing. Certainly a Microsoft Money for Small Business on Office would help to get more people using both. If people need a heftier version of Office for college or a small business, then they’ll pay for it. Everyone else who just needs to write a quick letter can do it on their site.

4) If you can build dominance with a free version of Office, you can take an important shot at Google Docs, which more and more people are using who don’t want to pay for the full version of Office. The problem with Docs is it doesn’t have the tools and usability people are already used to with Office. The best way to compete with Google is to offer people what they already know.

5) Google Docs kills office on price, sharing and online storage of documents. Obviously, a competing could version would take care of the price advantage. Including sharing and online storage would be simple to add, and level the playing field against Google.

6) Why would Microsoft care to compete with Google Docs? Because it keeps some people using Google Search. If Office was widely available as a component of Bing, don’t you think there would be a LOT more people using that?

Microsoft would make their money back – in advertising. Google has no problem paying the bills each month because they have hoards of traffic. If Bing sacrificed the small percentage of income they get from households that just need a copy of word, and exchanged it for the ad revenue they’d get from all those people using their site, they’d make all that cash back. Seriously.

7) Finally, if Microsoft doesn’t, Google will own the market on free desktop publishing with Docs. It’s been growing slowly, but as more and more people balk at the idea of paying for Office when they can get the simple jobs done with Docs, more will. Office can jump into the fight any time – but the longer they wait, the more people will just get used to using Docs, and they’ll lose the advantage they have now of being the most familiar program.

That’s all of the reasons I can think of in one sitting – but I’m sure there’s more. I doubt Steve Ballmer will read this, but if you are Steve, seriously – you’ve got an Ace in the hole, and you need to play it.

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Posted in Advertising, Email, Interactive Marketing, Internet Technology, Search

Tagged bing, cloud computing, google docs, microsoft office, microsoft search