Backpack
Many of us who colaborate on the web find it difficult to keep ideas and projects organized. 37signals has a suite of productivity applications available but for this post I am concentrating on one: Backpack.
Backpack has a newsroom to keep track of activites going on with your team. You can make customized pages with which you can setup notes, todo lists and more. There is a calendar that can centralize everyone’s activities and also be used to schedule meetings. You can also use it to centralize discussions. I can not tell you how many times that I have said to an associate, “Do you have a log from that messenger conversation that we had?” I find the disscussion feature really handy. You can also set reminders that go to either an email address or text a user’s cell phone. Check out the intro video below for more information. There is a free (limited) account available, and different tiers of accounts available all with free trials.
Filtrbox for Monitoring Your Brand on the Web
The internet is big, right? And there are a lot of people on there, huh? So how do you know when one of them says something about you? This has been a problem for businesses for quite awhile. They want to know when somebody is complaining about them, or praising them. Or maybe they are praising their competitors. (if you want to learn more about why you should monitor your brand, read this article from The Online Marketing Blog). So services like Radian6 came along and helped enterprises begin monitoring and filtering out the “noise”. These services are hugely expensive for everyday people, so many (including me), began “rolling their own” using tools like Dappr (for creating RSS feeds), Yahoo! Pipes (for combining and filtering feeds) and NetVibes (a dashboard for displaying all your data). In fact, I had always planned to write about it here, but I have found a better tool. It’s called Filtrbox. It is a Radian6 for regular people. In fact you can create 5 filters (meaning 5 terms/brand names/etc) for free. I have been using Filtrbox for a few month now and have been really happy with it.
Here are some of the main benefits of using it.
- It monitors blogs, social networks, social news, etc for any mention of your brand.
- It tells you the sites “FiltrRank” which boils down to how influential a particular site is.
- You can set the “FiltrRank” so that you don’t have to see unimportant mentions.
- It emails you daily with a listing of your brands mentions.
Filtrbox creates an easy way to see what is being said about your brand/competitors/industry on the internet. End of story. Check it out!
**UPDATE**
Want to see proof of how these services work? Both brand monitoring companies that I mentioned (Radian6 & FiltrBox) have left comments below thanking me for write up, both are now following me on Twitter, and FiltrBox has contacted me personally and offered to send some schwag. How’s that for response? In less than 24 hours, both companies have made contact and are trying to build a brand relationship! The real test will be if any other brand monitoring service that I didn’t mention follows suit.
Name This: The Crowdsourced Naming Agency
“Crowdsourcing” is a huge buzzword in the Web 2.0 environment. It works on the assumption that the wisdom of many is greater than the wisdom of a few. Crowdsourcing has been applied a wide variety of businesses with varying success. T-shirts (Threadless), encyclopedias (Wikipedia), biomedical research and development (InnoCentive), nominal tasks (Amazon Mechanical Turk), etc, etc, etc. There is a new player to add to the list called Name This. Name This is crowdsourcing the name of your company/project/product.
Here’s how it works. Your company pays $99 and writes a brief summary about your business and any other relevant info about the name you are after. For 48 hours the community brainstorms, posts name ideas, and votes on their favorite name. Once the time is up a super secret algorithm determines which names had the most support and chooses the winners. The top 3 namers and their supporters get a pretty sizable chunk of the money and your company gets 3 market supported names along with about 200 other ideas.
The Name This model is not novel or original, but here is why it is interesting. The majority of crowdsourced services require participants to have some sort of skill or expertise. Name This requires none of this to participate. The ability to think creatively helps, but as you’ll see if you go to the site there are a number of participants who have not yet developed that skill. The beauty of Name This is in the simplicity. Name This is the most “mom friendly” crowdsourcing site I have seen and the companies seeking names don’t suffer because of it. Naming a company/project/product can be either the easiest or hardest thing in the world. Sometimes a name just comes to you and its an obvious fit. But sometimes its an arduous struggle. This struggle is greatly eased when a community of people put their heads together to create a great name.
There are some bugs with Name This (no editing/deleting of your own names, name proposal overload, mysterious algorithm), but there is a lot that can be learned from them. Keeping it simple, easily accessible, and valuable (to both namers and companies) goes a long way when creating a crowdsourced community or service.
Graffitio
GPS on mobile devices has potential to bring in a new aspect to social networking. Since the most consumer oriented smartphone now has GPS built in, many apps have been created with location in mind. One of my favorite however (also one of the simplest), is Graffitio. Graffitio is basically a virtual wall wherever you are. You can write a message on a wall for anyone else with Graffitio to find later when they are in that same area. For now this app is on the iPhone. I haven’t heard of any plans to release it to other platforms at this point.
This type of app is sure to pave the way for many GPS based apps. I think there is a lot of things possible combining GPS with the internet. I recommend that you give this app a try if you have the chance.
TwitbookFeed
Facebook has it’s new look available for preview. Just go to www.new.facebook.com to have a look. It is quite a large redesign. For example the minifeed looks similar to FriendFeed and there are different ‘tabs’ to get you to different parts of the site. A couple weeks ago, those with iPhones got a look at the Facebook app for the iPhone. Nothing too fancy, but if you see the start page for the app, you might think you are on a Twitter client, seeing a list of statuses with an update box.
Is this a turning point for Facebook? We have all been noticing for the past year or so that MySpace has been struggling to keep up with Facebook, bringing any new features that it incorporates directly from the social giant. It seems that MySpace has gone to merely keeping the audience it has. I’m curious if Facebook has reached this point also. What do you think?
Yahoo! Pipes for Fun and Profit!
Have you used Yahoo! Pipes?
“Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web,” Yahoo! said stoically.
It sounds complex but Pipes is actually a really user friendly way to combine and filter information from all types of sources on the internet. Pipes gives you instant access to the data and functionality provided by sites like Flickr, Google Base, and Yahoo! Local & Search. You can also easily input your own data or RSS feeds. Once you have your source data, you can then use any number of modifiers to filter, combine, and analyze your data. It is astonishing how easy it is to do some really powerful things. The simple drag and drop interface is simple as can be. After watching a brief tutorial video you will be on your way. Welcome to the club, Pipe Builder…er…Plumber!
Confused? Don’t know where to start? No problem. There are tons of Pipes that have already been built that are just waiting for you to run them. Have a browse, there are some incredible Pipes. One of the best uses I have found so far is using a series of different Pipes for a quick and easy way to monitor what is being said about me and my brands across the internet. I use Pipes to monitor “Shoshul”, “Inkblot Robot”, and “Justin Thiele”. The Pipes create an RSS feed that is updated each time one of these terms is mentioned, for example, on Digg, MySpace, Twitter, or in blogs. This is a perfect way to keep your finger on the pulse of your brand all across the internet just by watching a couple of RSS feeds. Very productive and very timely.
Here are some good Pipes to get you started monitoring Social Media:
And one to help you find great deals:
How are you using Pipes for fun and/or profit?
Big File Sending
Do you ever want to share a file or two with family, friends, or colleagues? There have always been ways to do this. The most popular way that everyone knows about is to use email attachments. And this works well when the file is just a few megabytes, but for larger files other methods are required. For some FTP would be the ideal solution to all your troubles. I have been using it for years. However FTP is not for everyone. Once you know how to use it, it is pretty simple, but not so many do. What we need here is something as simple as sending a URL and the rest is self explanatory. There are many services that do this:
This service allows uploads of up to 100MB for it’s free service, with an option to upgrade to a premium service. The premium service includes 1GB of storage space for up to 1 year for $10. The site places emphasis on privacy. When you create a drop, you don’t need to enter anything! Just upload the file, and optionally place a password. On both the free and the premium versions, there are many ways to interface with your drop including email, voice mail, fax, an embeddable widget, and of course the web URL.
This one works directly with the email address of the recipient and yourself. There is a free service which allows up to 100MB and also tiered premium services. Premium service will cost quite a bit more than Drop.io, starting from a $9.99 per month account which offers 2GB maximum transfer with a 40GB cap on download bandwidth. Depending on the account you want though, you can spend up to $2999.99 per year, which allows 25 users, Unlimited bandwidth, and 60GB storage space.
The free account with DropSend offers 250MB of online storage, but limits the number of sends per month to 5. The premium accounts here are also tiered and offer no more than 1GB maximum file size, but up to 500GB storage space. The gist of this pricing schedule is that more dollars equals both more sends and more storage capacity. Those dollars amounts range from $5 to $99 monthly. DropSend does offer a desktop component for both PCs and Macs that allows you to upload without visiting the site.
L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Panel Recap & Notes
Last night I attended the L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Panel. L.i.S.A. is a 4 city panel discussing how businesses and consumers use social networks and where the opportunity lies to connect. I have been to a few of these types of event and panels and increasingly I am realizing that there is no secret to social marketing. The users need to “invite” your brand into their circle. Gaining that acceptance boils down to 3 major aspects:
- Content - provide content that your customers are interested in and is relevant to your business
- Authenticity - being transparent, trustworthy, and credible
- Help users socially connect with you and the community. Make it easy for them to use your service.
If you are not into the whole brevity thing. I have compiled my notes from the event below. I hope you can find a useful bit in there.
L.i.S.A. 08 (Lessons in Social Advertising) Portland, OR May 28, 2008
Moderated by: Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media
Panel:
John Furrier Furrier.org former CEO of PodTech
Michael Berkley - CEO of SplashCast
Dave Allen - Director, Insights & Digital Media of Nemo Design - formerly the bassist of Gang of Four
Hashem Bajwa - Director Digital Planning at Goodby, Silverstein & Partner
What is social advertising?
Enlists consumers to help tell your story
Building ambassadors to evangelize
Brands being invited in by consumers
Being accepted by the conversation
Web 1.0 was about website, self service, Web 2.0 is all about relationships
How do people communicate - peers, groups, context to the person
Interesting way: Using the “old media” model alongside social media - YouTube presidential debates
Wrong way: Budwieser spent millions to build Bud.tv, but the almost all of the ad views are on YouTube
Creating content for social media in your down time - HungryMan a production company has produced videos in their off time to post on YouTube that have been extremely popular
Do banner ads on Facebook constitute social advertising or is it old media model?
Clickthrough’s on MySpace and Facebook are extremely low
Would argue that this is still the “old media” view. A banner ad is a push ad. It is not social.
Just spamming your ad on a banner doesn’t work, you must be invited in. Consumer: “I want to be associated with this brand” & “I want to talk about this brand with my friends”
Companies need to understand and adjust for the “real time” environment we are in. How can you use this to add value to the user.
How is social marketing different from product placement?
Product placement is not authentic
Right way: Red Bull - gets popular athletes to organically promote & endorse
Endorsement in the community by a major player and influencer
Endorsement is one of the most cutting edge techniques right now
How does a brand get invited or be accepted?
Brands have fans that want to be associated with them
Start out with the consumer in mind
Example: people on Facebook care about recycling - HP focuses on recycling. Where is the connection
What do the customers think and care about
The metrics to measure social advertising are terrible. We can measure everything, but we don’t know WHAT to measure
Find your value and figure out how to apply it to social media. Understand your niche do something remarkable and the marketing and social media takes care of itself. You need to figure out what you want to do and accomplish.
How do you measure distributed content?
Are you gaining brand ambassadors
Track influencers (super distributors) - how many of their friends saw it and added it to their page
No one is more authentic than a friend
Build commerce into the distribution model
Brands must get invited into a social network that already exists. They can’t develop their own network, because it will automatically be viewed as an advertisement and inauthentic. The users won’t come.
Always put out content!
Content about your value proposition
People come from search - they find you on their own
Get in front of the eyes that are looking for you. Don’t try to make people look for you.
“The content is the ad”
Whoever creates the best user value win
AUTHENTICITY must be a core value
User experience is also key. What does my target audience look like? Jacob Nielsen is a usability guru.
The internet is an opt-in network. Aided (search engines) and unaided (offline marketing) awareness.
Single user on a small site can be a carrier to a bigger site and spread a message / opinion
Let the users do what they want to do. Stay out of there way. Let them talk to each other and try to measure it.
Be part of the experiments or at least talk with the people who are. Tap into the people who are doing interesting stuff.
Recommended Books
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz
Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Social Commenting Systems
There are a number of new social commenting systems becoming available. These services are in kind of a weird space. After all, every blog already has a built in commenting system. How do you benefit from using one of these services and “outsourcing” your comment system? Traditionally commenting has been a pretty one way experience. The comments are reactionary to the post. Built in commenting systems don’t allow much community interaction. It is difficult to reply directly to another commenter and continually monitor the ongoing conversation. Disqus, Intense Debate, coComment, and SezWho are all trying to change this. There are some benefits to using one of these systems: better comment threading to enhance and simplify discussion, ability to use avatars and video comments, a voting system for commenters to build their reputation, and the ability to easily follow commenters across multiple sites. The biggest benefits I see, are to the commenters themselves. A system like this helps commenters “own” the content they create. Often times, the comments on a blog are more interesting than the post itself. Built in commenting systems do little to reward commenters for the content. These commenting systems make it much easier for commenters to build their personal brands through reputation, gain followers, and aggregate their comments from all over the web onto a centralized service.
I would, however, like to see these four services rally around an open standard. The ultimate goal is to have the comments for all blogs to be centralized to one service. Having four services would be better than thousands of built in ones, but not quite ideal. Some merging or standard would definitely be better for the web community.
I really think that if you respect your blog’s community, you owe it to them to use one of these services. We are now using Disqus for our commenting (incredibly easy to install). See below for my sample comment. Let us know what you think.
Overview of Location Based Social Networking and Brightkite Review
Sharing your location with your friends in real time might be the next big trend on the internet. Kirk touched on this a bit in our niche marketing article. There are scores of new websites cropping up to make it easier to let your friends know where you are, meet up with people in your area, or find out information about your location (not too mention show you location relevant ads). I came across a great video of Tom Coates from Yahoo! talking about Fire Eagle and the location based landscape. Fire Eagle is a web app that is designed to serve you content based on your location. The “consumer facing” features of Fire Eagle are actually pretty sparse. The really interesting things about Fire Eagle, however, are the APIs that they provide. Essentially they are working as a “location broker”, meaning they provide a backend location service for other web apps to tap into and use however they can imagine. In the video below Tom Coates talks about the plethora of location based sites out there and the potential in location based computing. The video is almost 18 minutes long, so I will post links to the websites below if you don’t want to watch the entire thing, though I do highly recommend it.
Services to update your location and current location based uses:
Navizon - Peer to peer phone app that updates your location every 10 minutes
Loki - Free location based search and navigation tool bar that also updates your location every 10 minutes
Zonetag - Geotag your photos from your mobile phone
Firebot - A Twitter based app. You Direct Message @Firebot your location and it updates Fire Eagle
Brightkite - Uses “check in” locations to update your location and connect you with your friends
Rummble - Helps you discover people or places that you would like based on your location
Plazes - Helps you create events and activities in the “Real World” at specific times and places
Spot - GPS Satellite Messenger Unit for Journalists, Backpackers, Travelers to show progress, check in with friends & family, and get assistance
Wikinear - Shows you Wikipedia articles near your location (this feature is also now available through Google Maps)
Lightpole - Helps you find restaurants and bars near you as well as reviews
Outside.in - Determines the location that blog posts and news articles refer to, and serves you them when you are near
Metosphere - A service that attempts to overlay meta data on the physical world. And introduces something called “GeoBlogs”
Fireball - Plots your friends’ locations on a Yahoo! Map
Fire Widgets - Widgets from Fire Eagle that give you weather and geotagged photos for wherever you are
Moveable Type - Introduced a plugin that displays your location on a map on your blog
So which of these apps will be the next big thing? Which are here to stay and which will just fade away? One thing is for sure, a great idea doesn’t necessarily make a great app. Implementation is just as (or more) important.
Brightkite has been getting a lot of hype lately. I have had a chance to sit down with this service a bit. Their proposition is that you can track your friends’ locations in real time and meet up with people around you. Long story short, it uses “check in” points. Meaning you periodically tell Brightkite the address of where you are. If you don’t know the address, you can do a search by company name (Starbucks, for example). This is pretty easily done via laptop from their site. However, the real opportunity for a service like this is in using your mobile phone. Unfortunately, Brightkite is less than convenient from your phone. The process is way to manual. You send a Text Message with your address. If you don’t know your address, send the name of a company. They then send a message back with a list of company locations for you to choose from (not an easy task to choose from a list of Starbucks in a downtown metropolitan city). At this point it is hard to see the full benefits of all your effort, because of the relatively small user base (it is still in beta, afterall). The process is too much effort and not enough reward. The implementation of Brightkite is just not simple enough yet. I don’t want to track down my address so I can tell it to Brightkite. It feels like I am doing the work for them! Updating your location needs to be more automated, using GPS or Wifi Triangulation. It needs to be as simple as 1 or 2 clicks to update and post your location. Minimize the amount of work I need to do in order to use Brightkite, then I will whole heartedly jump on board!
If you want to try out Brightkite for yourself, we have some invites. Post a comment below or find us on Twitter.