December 9, 2011

The Great US Paywall

I was recently in Florida for a Vacation and purchased an Amazon Fire device. The device is very similar to the Barnes and Noble Nook I purchased last year but I thought the Amazon content and store would provide a better experience. The first thing I did was sign up for Amazon Prime Trial, with no problems. I purchased some music, no problems and much better prices than iTunes. I also purchased a magazine subscription to 2600, no problems again.

Then I went to get an purchase an app. Suddenly I was unable to purchase any apps. The error message indicated I couldn’t purchase any apps in the my region. My region? What does that mean? I was in Florida, are apps illegal in Florida? After searching for and finding the Amazon customer service contact I sent off an email asking what was going on. Amazon responded that I was unable to purchase apps with a credit card from a Canadian bank and billing address. Basically because I was a Canadian in the US I couldn’t purchase applications for the Kindle Fire. The Kindle was returned the next day.

Apple and iTunes have done something similar for years where you can’t purchase from the US iTunes without a US billing address. The easy solution to this problem is to use the iTunes gift cards exclusively with a fake address ( preferably in a state with no sales tax ). With the launch of iCloud and iTunes Music Match though the company has changed its policy to require a US credit card and matching US billing address to be added to the account.

Donations

Wikileaks recently had problems collecting donations via credit card and Paypal froze its funds, limiting it’s ability to fundraise online. The ban has been so sever the only option to donate is the BitCoins system or to purchase virtual goods.  The BitCoin system has limited support and but may offer the best alternative to avoid the Paywall.

Regretsy has recently encountered problems with Paypal and their donation support. The company seems to allow you to use and collect donations but then freezes the funds. The confusion with the Paypal donation process is outlined in great detail by The Green Geeks.

The Paywall is effectively controlling donations and deciding who can fundraise online.   I’m sure this policy is need for some legitimate cases to prevent terrorist funding etc… but these are US companies that enforcing these policies largely without government direction or oversite.

Like the Great Chinese Firewall, the Paywall is proving to be a fairly effective means to control online purchases. Its surprisingly difficult to make purchases that do not involve your bank, credit card or Paypal.  The best system to get around the Paywall seems to be BitCoin.  The BitCoin system uses encrypted coins can only one person can ‘own’ through cryptology.  BitCoin includes an exchange and a defined Coin generation process.  This process means that once you own a BitCoin it can be transfered or exchange to anyone.  Eventually BitCoin’s must be converted by to real currency, this is where the Paywall may still be effective and few conversion points exist today.

The goal behind these Paywalls seems to be to create online economies of different scales.  For example an iPhone Application that sells for $0.99 in the US might sell for $1.19 in Australia or $1.49 in Europe.  This allows Apple and the application vendors to receive significantly more revenue for the same content from international customer.   The DVD system attempted the same with the DVD region codes a few years ago  but the system was quickly cracked and different pricing regions were never fully exploited.  The digital stores have so far been fairly effective at enforcing these restrictions, largely because they can heavily control the follow of money.

While physically in the US I can purchase just about anything at US retailers using my Canadian credit card and billing address.  As soon as the transaction goes online the Paywall comes into effect and my purchases can be restricted.  A very interesting development given the state of the US economy and the need to consumer spending…

December 8, 2011

I love Canada Post

Over the past few weeks I’ve ordered a number of things online and received shipments for all major shipping companies. My building has conceige that can sign for all packages that don’t require a payment for duty or COD. Its very interesting to see the process each company uses handle deliveries and collect the duty/COD charges:

Purolator

Purolator doesn’t leave a door hanger or and indicator that they’ve visited. Even if there is money owing or its the final shipment. Apparently this is a security feature to prevent someone from paying the duty/handling charges and stealing my shipment. They will attempt to call you if they have a phone number ( often they don’t ) or you have to use your mystic skills and call them when you think your package is due. The only pickup depot for Toronto is actually in Etobicoke. Once your pay any duty or COD charges the package is sent the next day. By far the worst experience…

DHL

DHL has decided to partner with Loomis in Canada for local delivery. The DHL number 1-800 number brilliantly says to call Loomis in Canada and then hangs up. Calling Loomis you are immediately told that DHL handles shipment from international destinations and you need to call them. If you’re lucky you can convince the Loomis rep to transfer you to the DHL otherwise its best to call the DHL US number via Skype and get transfered to DHL Canada. Once you pay the Duty or COD charges the DHL can contact the driver wirelessly and tell them to just drop off the package. This often doesn’t work though and the package will not be delivered until the next day. I wasn’t able to figure if my package would be a Loomis or DHL depot in Toronto, probably not aware near downtown.

UPS

UPS borrows from DHL with a single 1-800 that works in Canada and US but seems to transfer you to the US when the Canadian reps are busy. The US reps seem unaware/able to handle US packages. This means you have to keep dialling and hoping that a Canadian rep answers. The single UPS pickup depot is located up by York University, easily an hour trip on Transit or Car to get my package. And again once you pay the Duty/COD charges UPS can notify the drive but the connection process doesn’t seem very reliable and most of the time the package will be delivered the next day.

USPS/Canada Post

By far the best experience so far. If there is no duty due the package is dropped off without issue. If there is duty due then its a short walk to the Post Office, where I can pay the fees and walk home with my package. Canada Post has offices throughout Toronto and by far the easiest solution to deal with. If I were Canada Post I would make a stronger emphasis of their shipping benefits.

So I will be using USPS or Canada Post where ever possible. Its not an option with most online stores though and I would image that cost and easy of shipment these choices.

In my ideal world I’d love to be able to receive email notifications on shipments and pay duty/cod charges online. I’m really surprise that none of these services offer this yet…

November 23, 2011

The problem with Dropbox Teams

I’ve been a long time user of Dropbox and have had the 100GB personal account for several years now. I’ve been very happy with the way the system works and I’ve setup it up on all my computing devices. My wife now shares the account and we use it to save files we want backed up or accessible across multiple devices.

When Ascentum, my employer decide to use Dropbox too initially it was all good and we just shared files between users. Eventually we started running out of space with different users who only had the free account or small paid accounts. I also noticed that my work files were taking up space in my 100GB personal account quota. So we decide to subscribe to Dropbox Teams, which gives us more storage across all users. The system is priced at $750/year for the first 5 users and $125/year for each user after that and includes 1000GB and 200GB per additional user.

There are few problems with Dropbox team though. First many of our employees had Dropbox accounts, often with their personal email address and now we were inviting them to Dropbox team with their business email. The Dropbox app doesn’t provide the ability to switch accounts easily or allow personal and team logins. So we had to either add users with their personal email addresses or un-authenticate their computers and setup dropbox again with their new account. This also means re-inviting the new user to all the shared folders the old user used. And the employee would almost completely loose access to their personal dropbox account.

For employees with paid Dropbox accounts the process was even more difficult. If we added them using their personal account Dropbox would close their personal account and refund their balance to Ascentum. Yes, Ascentum, their employer and not the individual who paid for the account. This means that Ascentum would need to figure out how to re-emburse employees for their Dropbox balance. No email or billing detailing this transfer could be found, making the reconciliation very challenging.

After a few months of using the service a team member left the company and we need to figure out how to transfer the files they share. If they are not the “Owner” of the share folder its fairly trivial to remove the user with no impact. If they are the owner of the share folder it becomes very complicated because they may have shared folders with any of the other employees. There is no universal view of shared folders across the team. And Dropbox provides no ability to transfer shared folder ownership between users. Instead we need to open a support ticket for each folder we discovered and wanted transfer. It appears that removing the user complete will erase shared folders they own.

We’ve also had some weird folder sync issues between users where we can’t seem to give users shared permission. The only solution seems to be to create a new folder and copy the old content into that folder.

And lastly the Dropbox client features an option to sync over the LAN. This feature seems to enable on Wifi too and without bandwidth limitations can quickly consume most of the WiFi bandwidth. We found this feature to be particularly problematic with employees that recently return to the office and receive a bunch of Dropbox updates immediately from the other LAN clients.

November 23, 2011

New Site and Domain

After a long delay I’ve finally updated my blog and website. In the process I’ve also moved to ColinSmillie.com to ensure I have greater reach outside of Canada. The design is based on a WP Timeline theme, which I’ve modified to move away a little from the Facebook Timeline which it copied. Let me know what you think and if it you notice any issues with the new site.

February 23, 2011

Democamp Toronto 28

Photo via David Crow

Last night was Democamp 28 at Ryerson University.  It was my first time attending a Democamp there and the venue was a theater format with the crowd very separate from the presenter.  This is great for viewing the presentation but it made for a less interactive Democamp.  As a result there was very little heckling or crowd interaction…

 

The evening opened with a presentation by Mark Ruddock, which seemed to be a bit of a rehash of his StartupWeekend presentation last year.  You can get the idea here if you do a search/replace of “VC” with “Startup” from his presentation here.  The most insightful content was during the QA afterward, that’s really where you got the impression that Mark has a lot of experience developing startups.   I particularly liked hearing how he grew Viigo using co-branded partnerships.

After a short pause the first demo was Kipu, which I think I first saw about a year ago.  Kipu provides the ability to track time in an interface very similar to Google Calendar.   Activities are very well tracked and totaled with nice colour codes.  I couldn’t help feel that this product should really be a feature of a product like Freshbooks.  Freshbooks already has a basic time tracking capability which can be directly connected with invoicing.

Rocketr was the next demo which provides the ability to aggregate short notes together among group members.   It felt a lot like Google Wave with a much simpler interface and Twitter integration.  The iPhone app looked interesting but I couldn’t see a firm advantage over just using Twitter with hash tags.

Attachments.me provides the ability to organize all your email attachments and as a long time Gmail user I think it addresses a definite need.  I’m often searching through my Gmail looking for a particular file attachment and I think email has been the default archive for many users ( YPG and its 150MB mailbox limit aside ).  I do think they will have serious scalability issues and ultimately this product should really be a feature of your mail client.  Gmail or even Outlook would be well served by providing a better attachment view.

Green Owl Mobile seems to provide mobile traffic reporting but the demo was a little disjointed.  I couldn’t see a definite advantage over Google Maps with the Traffic analysis feature.  When asked the only answer offered was that the Green Owl Mobile provides the ability for users to call-in traffic conditions via voicemail.  This seems largely irrelevant with aggregated traffic information coming from the speed of people traveling with cellular phones.

Trendspottr provides the ability to search and detect trends across Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.  This seemed to be an expanded version of the Twitter “Now Trending” functionality across multiple services.   Seems like an interesting idea and by aggregating content from multiple sites they should be in a good position to catch trends quickly.

TubeMote was the last demo and maybe the most confusing.  From what I understood it provides the ability to view synchronized videos from Youtube across multiple sources.  You can control what is played and hence the “remote” aspect of the product.  Videos can then be embedded inside websites,or viewed on mobile devices and kept in sync while multiple people watch.  I’m not certain the utility of this as I think the advantage of digital media for most users is the ability to watch on demand on your own time.

Overall a pretty good line-up of demos and apparently there were 22 applicants to demo this time.  Its awesome to see so much activity in the start up scene.  David Crow has issued the challenge for the next Democamp to feature all female presenters/founders.   The other common theme was that most companies are hiring and very few developers are looking for work.  If your thinking about learning to code it seems like a great time…

December 12, 2010

Good Product Management RIM’s Saviour?

Mike Mace has an excellent analysis of the challenges that RIM is facing.  My favourite quote is:

“The fault lies not in our ties, but in our selves. In my opinion, RIM’s real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it’ll drift into in a situation where it can’t afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It’s very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it.”

Anyone interested in Product Management should read the whole article here.

I thought the most interesting aspect of the article was the focus on the Product Management as the solution.  Specific Mike’s 2 recommendations:

“To keep a platform viable, you need to focus on two tasks: Keep the customer base loyal, and add adjacent product categories.”

Very simple advice and focus that many Product Managers forget and Mike follows it up with more strategies for each.

Overall one of the best articles I’ve seen on RIM and excellent reminder of the importance of Product Management.

December 6, 2010

Skype Reliability?

For over 2 days my skype account was offline and I was unable to login.  I could reset my password with the password recovery system ( and did multiple times ) but every time I kept getting an error that I couldn’t login.  No details were provided or contact for additional assistance.  Eventually I tried contacting Skype and was told my account was suspended pending verification.  The only verification they would accept was digits from my credit card which was on file, which I believe was setup when I created my Skype account 7 years ago.  I had no idea what card was used or even which bank it was from but I sent them a series of number I’ve used over the past few years.  Eventually I received this response today:

Hello Colin,

Thank you for your reply.

We understand your concern regarding your Skype account. We know the importance of getting this resolved the soonest time possible and we are more than willing to help you.

Upon checking our records, your account has been flagged for verification. Please be reminded that we do this verification process to maintain online security for all our customers and protect everyone from fraud which also indicated that you had carried out actions which are not allowed under Skype’s Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately we are unable to explain the specific reason for restricting your account.

However, we have now lifted the restriction, so you should be able to sign in again. Please note that if our systems detect further problems with your account then you will be unable to use your account again.

We hope this has clarified your issue. Should you need any further assistance or have additional questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,

Jolly
Skype Customer Service

I’m not really sure what triggered this request for verification or if did actually verify successfully. Suddenly after 3 days of suspension my account is now active again.

I use Skype alot for business and now as my 2nd phone line at home. I even pay a Skype subscription with unlimited calling in Canada & the US. With Bell or Rogers in Canada there are terms of service guarantees but its very clear that when using Skype your really are mercy…

December 5, 2010

The New New Facebook Profile

Here we go again… Facebook has changed the profile page again and decided to roll it out on 60 minutes tonight.  The profile will be rolled out slowly to users but you can get it immediately by going here.

The changes are mostly minor with Facbeook but the most note-able visual change being the replacement of Facebook Tabs with a small menu on the Left Nav.  The menu includes all the pre-defined Facebook components including Wall, Info, Photos, Notes and Posts.  There is no option to add other menu items or areas.

A “jumble” of personal information is now included at the top of the below the user name, its not overly well formatted and the order seems to be clear.   The jumble seems to default to current job & employer, most recent education, current location, relationship status and partner,  home down, birthday.  I’ve also seen the Jumble show language(s) spoken so it might be related to the most recent changes to your profile.

The top of the profile now includes a 5 photo banner with your most recent tagged photos.  Photos can easily be removed/hidden from this banner section.

The Facebook profile data has also been updated to allow users to interests and activities from pre-defined Facebook Pages.  For example selecting “Rowing” or “Swimming” defaults to Facebook Page for these activities.  One small change is that you can select “with who” for many sports and activities.  This adds a nice social component to these pages but its not clear how to user these community pages effectively.

The other major change is the addition of spoken language to your Facebook profile.  As someone who speaks a little French and even less Japanese it fun to enable these as languages and notice how my Facebook advertising experience changed almost immediately.  You can even see a “Japanese ad” on my profile snap shot.

The new profile clearly has some interesting new features but its also very focused on getting users to self-select their own interests with the hope that this will provide better advertising targeting.  These advertising units are controlled exclusively by Facebook.  There is NO ability for third-party Facebook applications or Facebook Pages to create with a user’s profile pages.  Gone are Profile Boxes, Boxes Tab and Application Tabs.

December 3, 2010

New Facebook Promotion Rules

Facebook Contest PromotionPromotions on Facebook have been a little controversial over the past few years with Facebook requesting a minimum ad buy to approve the promotion and imposing  restrictive rules.   In many cases this has just served to encourage promotions without Facebook approval but always with the risk of removal or early termination.  Facebook has changed all this week with new Facebook Promotion guidelines that remove the minimum ad buy and define clear rules for all promotions.

The main focus of the guideline seems to be around focusing promotional activities on Facebook Applications and not core Facebook functionality.   In order to enter or qualify for a Facebook Promotion an application should be used either on the Canvas Page or a Facebook Page tab.   It’s prohibited for Facebook Promotions to use status updates, commenting on a wall or photo uploads as a method for entering the promotion.  This is very similar to the Facebook Policy against incentivized action for Facebook Applications.  The goal of both theses policies is to prevent companies from encouraging users to spam their friends.

Under the new rules promotions that involve photos will need to handle photo upload and management in a Facebook Application.  In most cases this is how most promotions handled photos anyways.  For example the Pepsi WorldCup Application “Paint Your Facebook”, copied your Facebook picture into a external application and applied your team colours.  The photo was then available for the user to download and manually upload a new Facebook picture.

The other major impact of the new rules are Quiz type contests where a Facebook Page will pose a Quiz Question on their wall and get user’s to response with the correct answer in the comments.  Under the new rules users should be directed with a link to a Facebook Application where they can respond.

While the new rules are disruptive, Facebook Promotions are still a great way to develop a long term engagement with users. After a user “Likes” a Facebook Page it allows the Page owner to maintain a relationship with that user. Posts and photos can appear in the user’s newsfeed and the Page can issue updates to the user. Facebook Promotions are still a key component to a Facebook Marketing campaign.

In the past most Facebook Applications involved considerable development. That’s no longer the case with several premade applications being offered, especially for Facebook Promotions. I’ll be providing a review of pre-built Facebook Promotion applications shortly.   Please send me any feedback you have on contest/promotion applications you’ve used.

October 15, 2010

The Legality of Groupon?

Groupon has really taken off in Canada.  I think mainly because many popular restaurants have been available as Groupons and that has driven alot of adoption.   One of my favourite restaurants, Utopia Cafe sold almost 1500 Groupons during their promotion.  Today’s Groupon is for the very popular Table 17 Restaurant

If you’re not familar with the concept basically a Groupon is presented for a limited time period, usually 24 hours and a certain number of people have to buy the Groupon for the deal the activate.  In most cases the Groupon offers a 50% discount when you purchase immediately.  Most Groupon’s don’t have alot of restrictions on when they can be used but do have an expiry date.  Groupon also encourages additional Groupons to be purchased as Gifts.  This presents an interesting legal aspect, especially in Ontario, where Gift Cards and Certificates are regulated.

In 2007,  the Consumer Protection Act was amended to ban expiry dates and most fees on gift cards purchased after that date to ensure consumers get their full value, regardless of when they use them. The enhanced consumer protection measures now in force include:

  1. Prohibiting expiry dates on gift cards and certificates
  2. Restricting fees charged for gift cards to a) customizing a gift card, or b) replacing a lost or stolen gift card;
  3. Requiring the clear and prominent disclosure of any terms and conditions relating to a gift card (e.g., any limits to redeeming a card).

Should this protection apply to Groupons?  Are they a gift card or certificate?

October 15, 2010

Facebook Developer Garage Toronto – Oct 21, 2010

It’s been a while since the last Facebook Developer Garage Toronto. Come meet with fellow developers, marketers and agencies, members of the Facebook community in Toronto.   Formerly we called these Facebook Camps and its a great free event for Developers and Marketers.  The evening is free to attend and we have a great line up so far:
Agenda:
6:00 – Doors open – Social/Mingle/Get a seat
6:30 – Introduction
6:35 – Facebook Canada – TBD
7:00 – Iskandar Najmuddin – Syncapse
7:15 – Colin Smillie – Open Graph/Group API
7:30 – Oz Soloman – Social Graph Studios
7:45 – Eli Singer – Entrinsic
8:00 – Daniel Patricio – Orange Rhino Media
8:15 – Social / Mobile Integration – Vortex Mobile
8:30 – Social & Drinks at Pogue Mahone

**There is no guest list for this event – first come first served, doors will close when the venue is at capacity**

October 10, 2010

Campaigning with Social Media

I’ve been watching the Mayoral campaign in Toronto with a lot interest this year, mainly because I wanted to see how the candidates used Social Media. In the Obama campaign in 2008 Social Media is often credited with having a great impact.  With my own limited involvement watching the campaign from Canada I was impressed with how much the campaign engaged everyone.  I registered for the Obama campaign, it recognized I was Canadian and asked me if I could contact American’s that I knew that were on the fence.  Brillant…

Now in Toronto I really haven’t seen anything that engaging.  I’m not going to try to compare campaign platforms or policies, I haven’t decided who I’m going vote for myself.  All of the candidates have the Social Media basics, they all have Websites, E-Mail lists, Twitter and Facebook accounts.  These alone are not that value, its really the content of these campaigns and I think right now the best messaging seems to be coming from Rob Ford campaign.  In my opinion he’s doing the best job of engaging citizens, mainly because he’s not marketing to them. He’s just talking to them.

I joined his mailing list ( I joined all candidates lists and Facebook Pages ) and its very simple and engaging updates. The first email I got contained a survey to collect my opinion on the a variety of issues.  He’s the only candidate who I’ve received a survey from.  Yesterday it was the advanced polls are now open and I could avoid the rush by voting now. Very simple and concise, there has been no cheezy spin, or over the top creative like about mobsters, or crazy promises. I got invited to a Town Hall Call and he was genuinely answering questions from a large group of people.

In all the debates I’ve seen of him he’s pitching the same message, always on topic.  Most of the other candidates either don’t present a plan or seem to change the plan to each group they’re talking too.  I haven’t seen anyone who’s connecting well with Citizens.

October 9, 2010

Why is Point of Sale getting harder?

Like most Canadians my credit card was recently replaced with a Chip Card.  Now my Visa requires a PIN to be entered when the transaction is processed.  This creates some very frustration experiences:

1/ No Remote Machine

Many restaurants only have Visa terminals in one location in the restaurant.  This means that I have to walk with the server to where the terminal is located to process to transaction.  Not the best experience for date night…

2/ Signature Too, Please

Some vendors seem to require a signature, even after I just went through the insert card and PIN dance.  I’m not really why but I think its a legacy issue.

3/ Transfering…

Many of the remote terminals transfer data over a very slow connection, this means I’m waiting while the terminal tells me also sorts of informative stuff like  DNS Established, TCP Enabled, Negotiation Established, Transfering… Transfering… and more Transfering… and finally approved.

4/ Strange Exemptions

Some vendors don’t seem to require my PIN at all, they can just swip and give me a receipt with no signature.  I’m not really sure the pattern here but McDonalds never asks for my PIN and Subway always asks for my PIN at roughly the same value so it must be vendor related.

The one good thing that the chip cards seem to have solved is whole card upside down or right side up issue that most swipe terminals struggled with…

October 7, 2010

The Problem with Facebook Groups…

Yesterday Facebook launched an upgrade to the Facebook Group functionality, the details of the new features are available here.   I think the more interesting thing is what is missing, the mainly one being the ability for groups to choose their own relationship and communication style.  There is still no good way to maintain a group communication system that scales.

Facebook Groups continue to degrade as users join them and the group owners essentially loose the ability to communicate with the group.  This is an excellent idea to control Facebook Group spam but it doesn’t allow users to engagement in popular groups and ideas that will quickly grow beyond the Facebook Group limits.  In way Facebook Groups should be renamed Small Facebook Groups because the functionality really favours smaller groups.  The Facebook Chat is great feature to chat with a small group but doesn’t scale well to larger groups.

In the end I think most groups are probably better served by something like Google Groups which allows a common mail listing and some basic HTML pages.

April 7, 2010

iPad Day Two Thoughts, Apps…

Ok, been using the iPad a lot to consume content.  The Apple closedness does kind of get in the way of watching videos but hasn’t really been an issue for anything else.   There are a few really great apps for it:

Media

There are several media apps available but most don’t work well in Canada.  Pandora and the ABC app for example don’t allow content to be viewed in Canada, this is a deal breaker for me.  I haven’t tried Netflix yet but iTunes still seems to be the winner here ( no surprise ) with access to the best content.  Not sure the impact of the Canadian iTunes store but I suspect it will be pretty empty initially…

Games

The best game I’ve found is Civilizations.  I loved this game as I was growing up and the iPad version is awesome.  Dragging your armies around is a really great interface and it just feels natural.  The other fun app is the Colour Aquarium application, which is a free app and kind fun to play with a bit..

Twitter

I haven’t found the perfect app yet.  The two I tried are both free.  Twitdeck, which is a good first revision of the app for iPad but doesn’t work too well for reading posts.   I wasn’t able to click on links inside of the Tweet for example but the Tweet creation process is really smooth.  Twitter is kinda the reverse as a great app for reading your Twitter stream.   Very smart process to read and click on links etc..  The Tweet creation process isn’t great though.   For example there is no ability to add photos.  Hoping for another free option before I investigate the paid clients…

News

There are several apps that claim to be free but after download require a subscription fee to access any content.  The WSJ app is a good example of this with NO FREE content.  I uninstall and low rate all of these, Apple really needs to develop a process to indicate “Subscription Required” in the App store.  The 2 completely free apps that I did like were the USA Today and BBC Apps, both provide good content in a great format.

April 6, 2010

iPad Day One…

Apple iPad

I got my iPad today and I spent a few hours using it now. My initial impression is that is a great 2nd device to consume media. The screen is beautiful and watching video on it is awesome. The input is ok but will never really replace a laptop and is probably by design. I think Apple has designed the device to be a media consumption platform and not a content creation platform. For creation the Mac Book Pro or even my iPhone are better platforms.

I’ve downloaded a few iPad specific applications now and I’ll write some more on this shortly. If your an app developer and would like your an iPad app reviewed send me the details on your app in the comments below.

December 7, 2009

Four Square and being Social Mobile…

I was reading Sebastien Provencher’s guest post this morning on the LeWeb’s blog about foursquare and comparing it to Twitter.  I agree with Seb that fourSquare is not the next Twitter but I do think its a bit of a game changer in what its doing with in Social Mobile space.

foursquare gives users incentives to ‘check-in’ to different locations on their mobile phone.  It uses the phone’s GPS location to provide a list of local and popular locations for the user to check-in or the user can quickly create a new location profile.   The user can earn badges for each location they visit and it becomes a bit of a game to earn new badges and compare you points with your friends.  The user who visits an individual location the most earns a ‘mayor’ badge for that location.

I think the game changing aspect of foursquare is what its changing for user behaviour.   As users check into new locations they can instantly see other popular locations that are near them.    Right now that list is free from advertising and just based on the location and popularity of the locations.  Kinda like search engines were in 2000, where there race was on finding content and less on advertising/monetizing like search engines today.  Right now the user group engaged in foursquare is still quite small but its growing and ff this user behaviour continues it should develop into an excellent user intercept opportunity.

Advertisers could target users in their proximity with real-time offers.    This is already happening on the Twitter today and its only going to get more powerful with the social mobile connection.  Populating and controlling the list of ‘check-in’ locations will be increasingly important and profitable.  As will advertising that can connect with this location information in a meaningful form.

It will be interesting to see if foursquare can maintain a unique position here or if the other social networks will just duplicate its functionality and bring it internally.  Right now if feels like foursquare is more like an app on Facebook or Twitter than a social network on its own.  I would expect that Facebook and Twitter will continue to provide the identity data for the social mobile experience but the player with the local advertising is still an unknown.

December 3, 2009

Marketing with Facebook Search

For most marketing search engine marketing is a common marketing technique and entire business united have been established to focus on search.   The most popular tool being Google and in a distant second the Microsoft Bing/live tools.   Facebook search on the other hand is a much different beast and much more difficult to market against.   In order to optimize we need to understand the Facebook Search function.

The key component to understand with Facebook search is the interaction relationship.  This means that content that the user has interacted with in the past will appear first and may appear in the auto-complete if they have Fan, Joined or Bookmarked the content.

Facebook search then will  display search results based on your friends involvement with content.  This means that individuals, groups, pages, or applications which your friends have interacted with appear at the top.  The next considertation is your network(s) and content types with more people from your network will be assigned priority.  Facebook has indicated they will removing networks but this logic is likely to be replace with geographic filters.

The next concept to understand is that Facebook assigns a priorty to different content types, assuming you have equal friend interactions or no friend interactions.  The priority is generally:

  1. Individual user profiles
  2. Facebook Pages
  3. Facebook Groups
  4. Facebook Applications
  5. Facebook Events
  6. Friend Facebook Posts
  7. Everyone’s Facebook Posts

After these internal Facebook content types Web Search results will be presented from the Microsoft Bing search results.

The other major different between Facebook and other search tools is the keyword matching.  The matching seems to be much more strict that other tools and partial keyword matching is very poor.

Across all content types the depth of search seems to limited to the content title.    This is probably the most important tool for Facebook search marketing.  Creating an effective title can increase your placement in search.  Without partial keyword matching a long title will be difficult to match with user keyword and keyword stuff has limited impact because the title on most content sources is limited.

The other important consideration, especially when combined with paid advertising is to get maximum coverage across networks ( geographic, schools and employers ) and across as many friend clusters as possible.   Facebook allows for a number of geographic targeting options and good distribution here can help with Facebook search results.

December 1, 2009

Facebook Page Performance Metrics

Facebook Page Performance Stats

Since Facebook launched Facebook Pages in 2007 alot clients have asked how their page is
performing.

Sysomos provides tools for measuring and comparing brand performance among across social media and yesterday released a report on Facebook Pages here:

http://www.sysomos.com/insidefacebook/

The report includes the Top 5 pages in each of the Facebook Page categories and includes a comparison between the different categories in terms of overall number of Facebook Fans.  The main advantage that a Facebook offers is the ability to communicate with your “Fan” based using the Facebook Page wall and update channel.   Facebook Pages can also be used with Facebook Applications to provide additional functionality and the basis for more interactive campaigns.

One of the more interesting aspects of the report is the owner generated content and fan generated content.   I believe the ratio between these is a great indicator of the level of interaction your achieving with your Fan base.  It also shows the impact of mass in social media with larger pages ( over 1 Million Fans ) having a much greater Owner to Fan content ratio.

November 30, 2009

Ebay and Black Friday

Ebay has released a very cool map/video of Black Friday transactions on their website, you can see it here:

http://www.ebayholiday.com/black-friday

If your not familar with Black Friday, its a mainly US phenomia where retailers enter into the “Black” for the year with the beginning of the Christmas holiday shopping. Most retailers offer significant discounts to get people shopping, and it seems that this trend matchs well with Ebay Transactions online.

Of particular interest is the number of Transactions that appear on the East Coast. Ebay original started as on the West Coast but it would appear to be much more widely penetrated across the East Coast of the US or prehaps East Coast retailers are more aggressive with their Black Friday sales/discounts…

Note: This post can also be found on refreshclassifieds.com

November 8, 2009

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-08

  • hmmm, considering Movember… Its a great cause but I don’t think I could deal with Stache… #
  • Do kids not smash pumpkins anymore? I haven’t seen a single smashed pumpkin all day… Just saying, wasn’t tempted to smash any myself… #
  • At the Toronto Innovation Showcase in City Hall Council Chambers, its the calm before the storm… #opendatato #
  • I don’t know the future of government but I’m not convinced that its happening right now in council chambers #