Geo social mobile apps (Foursquare & Gowalla)

Until not so long ago the only things I 'checked into' on a regular basis were airports and hotels. That's started to change recently with my discovery of location-aware mobile social apps Foursquare and Gowalla which enable me to 'check in' to locations pin-pointed by my phone's GPS, share that location with my friends and earn points/rewards along the way.

It's not a new idea (Dodgeball was experimenting in this area way back in 2000, albeit using SMS) but it's an idea which seems to have suddenly come of age, thanks primarily to advances in the smartphone market, with GPS now coming as standard on most handsets and mobile apps enabling interaction with web services without the need to open a browser.

The other magic ingredient in this new breed of mobile social app is the leveraging of game mechanics to incentivise uses to keep using the app and checking in to new locations. Foursquare awards you points for every check-in (which are then stacked up against your friends' totals on a leaderboard), badges based on the patterns of your check-ins and mayorship for a location's most frequent visitor (with real-life freebies at some venues). Gowalla uses stamps in a virtual passport as its central conceit, with pins instead of badges and items which you can virtually geocache.

Aside from the pursuit of kudos, both apps not only let you know when your mates check-in somewhere (which really comes to life on the iPhone now apps can use push notifications) but also function as a handy guide of neat stuff to do nearby. Whilst this triple-whammy of functionality makes the apps hard to describe in a nutshell (Foursquare describes itself as "50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game"), it potentially gives them the edge over apps which tick only one or two of those boxes (e.g. Google Latitude, Brightkite, Dopplr).

One of the biggest challenges for apps like this is coverage; most of the negative comments about Foursquare in the app store are about the limited number of cities it covers (currently Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh, London, Manchester in the UK), although the ability to check in anywhere is apparently on the way (functionality already provided by Gowalla).

In terms of which app currently has the edge, Gowalla probably squeaks it thanks to its gorgeous UI and iconography although it's a close call and it's unlikely to remain a two-horse race for long as other developers wake up to the potential size of the prize in this area.

What should Zynga do next?

Ok, so it's not too difficult to look at a successful company and describe some of the smart things they've done and why they might be considered significant; much harder to say what they should do next. Here's my attempt to map out four next steps for Zynga:

1.) Enable interactions between games
The logical step on from cross-promotion - hinted at by their dynamic CTAs ("Did you milk the cow? Take a break with a milkshake in Café World!") - Zynga's portfolio of games is just crying out to be joined up at a more molecular level. What better way to increase reach and dwell time than to start create rich interconnections and dependencies between the games, enabling the pigs raised on your FarmVille farm to be dispatched to your Café World café (possibly via your Abattoir City slaughterhouse - you can have that idea for free guys ;-) You wouldn't necessarily need to own all the businesses yourself - your network of friends could form a mini cooperative (or cabal, should you be so inclined) with one venture supplying another (not hard to see how Mafia Wars might fit into this setup).

2.) Prioritise development of mobile apps
Zynga have already made a start with iPhone apps for four of their titles, but if I were them, I'd be inclined to bump mobile app development right to the top of my to do list. They wouldn't need to be Rolls Royce ports of the desktop browser games - pared down versions which enabled you to harvest your crops or take your dish off the stove would be sufficient at this stage. There's obviously huge potential for push notifications announcing calamity (or opportunity) in your game world and Apple allowing free iPhone apps to use in-app payments clearly presents some attractive revenue possibilities.

3.) Fill in the obvious gaps in its portfolio
Accusations of derivative / copycat games are rife in the social gaming space at the moment (Psycho Monkey has sued Zynga, Zynga has sued Playdom as well as a number of other developers) so Zynga would need to tread carefully in filling in some of the holes in its current portfolio. One of the most obvious gaps is pets, which are big business in the social gaming world, as Pet Society, Neopets, My Fishbowl, Animal Paradise and countless others will testify. If I was in charge of the 'what next?' list at Zynga, a pet game would be somewhere near the top...

4.) IPO (or get bought by EA)
Both have been rumoured, with the former probably more likely than the latter. Either way, the next 6 months look like a good time to capitalise on its rapid ascendancy and position as market leader. Who knows what the landscape will look like in another couple of years time?

Having said all that, they do seem to be doing ok without my advice... ;-)

6 reasons why Zynga is truly game-changing

Chances are you haven't heard of Zynga. However, if you're a Facebook user (and 19 million UK Internet users reportedly now are) then you may well have played one of their games and have subliminally registered their 'powered by Zynga' logo (a silhouette of the founder's bulldog). With 45 million daily active users (yes, daily!) across their portfolio of games and an estimated $150 million in revenue this year, they have rapidly become a very big fish, not just in gaming, but in the online world more generally.

This astonishing rate of growth is best exemplified by their Facebook app Farmville, a real-time farm simulation game which launched in June 2009 and now boasts over 50 million monthly active users, making it the most popular game on Facebook.

So, what's their special sauce, magic ingredient? Here's six reasons why Zynga is truly game-changing:

1.) Smart leveraging of your social graph (it's only fun with friends!)
One of the big draws for Facebook app developers is the ability to leverage users' social graphs, not only to enable social play, but to encourage the viral spread of the application. Most early apps which attempted to exploit this tended to be crude 'you're it' type games (e.g. Zombies) which achieved a lot of installs but didn't offer the user any real depth of gameplay and soon became regarded by many as tantamount to spam. What Zynga have done (although there's undoubtedly still some residual app invite fatigue for them to overcome) is to make games which offer more depth than the one-trick pony 'you're it' games and provide a more nuanced reward mechanic, with genuine ongoing incentivisation for users to expand their 'neighbourhood' of friends via gifts (cannily limited to one-per-day-per-friend), offers of help/employment, and rewards based on acts of citizenship). In fact, those interactions are so key to the game mechanic, that it's really only fun with friends, as Alice recently bemoaned.

2.) Stickiness through Tamagotchi-style plate-spinning
Part of the reason Zynga's daily reach is so high is that it's games are invariably 'high-maintenance'; in order to maintain your hard-won status and progress, you must return on at least a daily basis (and are invariably rewarded for doing so more often). This model might prove frustrating on a more traditional gaming platform, where you have to find time to fire up the console and load the game, but works perfectly on Facebook where frequent repeat visits are already the order of the day, largely driven by communication tasks (messaging, status updates etc.) There's both carrot and stick in this equation as neglecting your Zynga game will result in dead crops, spoilt food and unhappy customers just as surely as regular visits will send your revenue and status skyward.

3.) Persuading users to make micropayments
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Zynga is the amount of revenue it is now generating. Building a sizeable web audience is one thing; successfully monetising it is quite another (hello Twitter!) People's willingness to part with real-life cash for virtual goods has been well established by immersive 3D environments like Second Life and WoW, but it's testament to the engagement that Zynga's casual games engender, that once users virtual currency runs out, a sizable number of them are willing to dip into their pockets to keep progressing.

4.) Exploiting the endowment effect
Another genius element of Zynga's game design is the way in which they exploit some very basic aspects of human psychology, in particular the endowment effect. Whereas many game worlds are populated with alien objects for you to navigate or obliterate, with the main protagonist your only point of identification, Zynga's games tend to give you immediate ownership of a domain in which you very quickly start to take civil pride. You care how your room/cafe/farm/theme park is perceived because it's very definitely yours (a point reinforced by the status boasts / screengrabs you are encouraged to publish to your wall and your friends' homepages).

5.) Easily repurposable game-engine
One of the best things about Zynga's recipe for success is how repeatable it is. The basic game engine for CafeWorld is identical to the one powering FarmVille, YoVille and Roller Coaster Kingdom. The ability to apply this model to new domains, and in so doing, reach new audiences (as well as extended reach/time spent with existing audiences) is a game developers dream.

6.) Effective cross-promotion / upselling of its other games
With 17 Facebook games now in its portfolio, Zynga does an extremely good job of upselling its other titles from within the individual games. In addition to a carousel running underneath each game promoting their big ticket releases, dynamic CTAs are also inserted above the Flash app (e.g. in Farmville: "Did you milk the cow? Take a break with a milkshake in Café World!")

It's worth saying that Zynga aren't the only company pushing the envelope in online social gaming at the moment (check out Playfish), they just happen to be doing it bloody well.

Twitter play: Lyric for the day

Four weeks ago I set up a new Twitter account called Lyric for the day and started posting snatches of song lyrics on an (almost) daily basis. I then tweeted it's existence on my main Twitter account, encouraging fellow tweeters to guess the track and artist by replying to @lyricfortheday. 28 lyrics later and the account has 37 followers and a burgeoning sense of competitiveness, as well as some indie snobbery. There's only one rule (no Googling!). Below is the high score table (one point for the first correct answer) and the answers to date (only three of which went unguessed). Come play! :)

Lyric for the day hall of fame:
R4isStatic (4)
aarons (3)
LouiseBrown (3)
onpause (3)
willhowells (3)
chunkylover (2)
dogwinters (1)
helenroper (1)
ms_jackson (1)
rooreynolds (1)
slim_cop (1)
SplintUK (1)
tbgkerry (1)

Answers to date:
1. Sympathy For The Devil - The Rolling Stones (onpause)
2. Abattoir Blues - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (aarons)
3. Babies - Pulp (rooreynolds)
4. Our Mutual Friend - The Divine Comedy
5. Sit Down - James (willhowells)
6. O Maria - Beck
7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand (willhowells)
8. When The Sun Goes Down - Arctic Monkeys (R4isStatic)
9. Faith - George Michael (slim_cop)
10. Mexican Wine - Fountains of Wayne (helenroper)
11. Mrs Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel (R4isStatic)
12. Playground Love - AIR (chunkylover)
13. Singing In My Sleep - Semisonic (R4isStatic)
14. Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) - Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
15. Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen (SplintUK)
16. Me In Honey - R.E.M. (chunkylover)
17. Cabron - Red Hot Chili Peppers (R4isStatic)
18. Mile End - Pulp (aarons)
19. The Bends - Radiohead (aarons)
20. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol (dogwinters)
21. Where Is My Mind - The Pixies (onpause)
22. Don't Speak - No Doubt (LouiseBrown)
23. First of the Gang to Die - Morrissey (willhowells)
24. Tiny Dancer - Elton John (onpause)
25. Mysterious Ways - U2 (ms_jackson)
26. Shakermaker - Oasis (tbgkerry)
27. Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols (LouiseBrown)
28. Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches (LouiseBrown)

The word on the web: 7 keyword trending tools

Unquestionably one of the most powerful ways in which products and services get promoted, word-of-mouth is not only notoriously difficult to generate; it's also very hard to measure. Pre-digital, finding out how 'talked about' your brand was meant arming yourself (or, more likely, a costly market research agency) with a pencil and clip-board and trying to find a representative sample to quiz, either by phone, mail or face-to-face. The arrival of email made contacting a large number of potential respondents much cheaper, quicker and easier but still relies on self-selecting individuals and only captures claimed, rather than actual, behaviours.

And then Google happened. For the first time, a small but significant slice of the world's interactions were being indexed and made searchable. The first tools to mine this data were somewhat limited in scope; Google Zeitgeist (launched in 2001) presented a small selection of top ten lists and charts of popular search queries, which tantalised the stats geeks amongst us with what could be discerned if open access to the database was granted. We had to wait five years, but in May 2006, Google did exactly that when it took the wraps off Google Trends, which enables users to chart trends for the search terms of their choosing.

Whilst knowing what keywords people are searching for is useful (and an important success measure in its own right), it doesn't necessarily directly correlate to how much your brand is being talked about. Fortunately, a new breed of products is emerging which focus on tracking keyword usage on blogs and in other community spaces. Icerocket's Trend Tool, Trendpedia, Technorati charts and Nielsen's BlogPulse Trend Search all attempt to trend word usage in the blogosphere, whilst the recently launched Facebook Lexicon collates keyword data from people's Facebook Walls and Twist charts keyword recurrence on Twitter.

The potential applications of these keyword trending tools are already myriad and my suspicion is that they are just the tip of the iceberg. Obvious next steps include mashing up the existing data sources to provide both aggregate and comparative trends across the various forums/services (e.g. Facebook users talk more about X than Y, whereas Twitterers talk more about Y then X) and beginning to contextualise the mentions to make more qualitative assessments (e.g. X % of keyword mentions were in a positive context, Y % were negative).

Below is a sample chart for each of the services I've mentioned, illustrating some of the interesting possibilities for this data in different market sectors.

Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends



BlogPulse Trend Search
http://www.blogpulse.com/trend



Technorati charts
http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/01/77.html



Icerocket Trend Tool
http://trend.icerocket.com



Trendpedia
http://www.trendpedia.com



Facebook Lexicon
http://www.facebook.com/lexicon



Twist
http://twist.flaptor.com

Social media as popularity contest

The results of Mike Butcher's 'who will be BBC FM&T king' poll on TechCrunch UK got me thinking about the extent to which popularity dominates behaviours around social media online, for, as Jemima Kiss intimates on the Guardian's digital content blog, the final list is more of a reflection of the relative online profile/popularity of people publicly associated with BBC Future Media, than an assessment of their suitability for the job in question. Which is fine and probably what you'd expect from a poll on a tech blog such as TechCrunch.

What's interesting to me though is how this overt popularity contest is an example of a much wider trend within online social media. Let's start with Facebook, where the number of 'friends' you have is not without consequence. As Robert Scoble pointed out at the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, this is partially due to the fact that the quality of your experience on social media sites is, up to a point, determined by how many 'friends' you have (i.e. no friends and it's not a whole lot of fun).

However, at least for some users, the number of 'friends' they have has acquired a far greater importance as a signifier of their status or popularity. When Facebook was first taking off in the UK, I remember seeing a number of status updates (perhaps a telling phrase?) trumpeting the passing of a major friend milestone or bemoaning their inadequate friend count (although researchers were predictably swift to ascertain that "while people perceive someone who has a high number of friends as popular, attractive and self-confident, people who accumulate 'too many' friends (about 800 or more) are seen as insecure" (see Guardian article).

Of course, it's not just about raw numbers. The roll out of Facebook's developer platform enabled third-party developers to tap into the long-tail of people's popularity neuroses. It's no accident that amongst the most popular Facebook apps are Top Friends, Compare Me, Circle of Friends, Friends for Sale, Hotness and Best Friends. Compare Me is a particularly fine example, sending you regular email updates to inform you that you've just jumped two places in the sexiness rankings but dropped one against funniness or appending a list of your four most kissable friends...

Whilst the drive for popularity might be most obviously manifest in thoroughbred social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, it is also present, albeit less conspicuously, in sites where social objects (e.g. videos, photos, bookmarks) are nominally the focus. Similarly, the prominence given to 'number of followers' (interesting terminology again) in Twitter is instructive, as is the existence of services such as TwitDir and Andrew Baron's recent (abortive) attempt to auction his Twitter account (with followers, naturally).

Whilst on one level, social media's obsession with popularity is just a mirroring of the basic human dynamics at work in any playground or office, there's something about the measurability of online popularity which is particularly seductive. Whilst the social pecking order of a real-world group may be well understood, it is rarely made explicit, unlike online communities where public rankings are a stock in trade. The same harsh assessments of people's desirability have been silently taking place in bars and nightclubs for years but without the results then being posted up on the wall, as they are with online stalwart Hot or Not and its legion of imitators.

The trend certainly looks set to continue, not only because it taps into a very basic but powerful element of human psychology (ego!) but also because it adds a competitive and potentially addictive element to sites which consequently increases their stickiness and grows advertising revenue. Everyone's a winner! (except, that is, for the losers...) (Ok, I'm just bitter I didn't appear on the TechCrunch list ;-)

Photo: Shahid Sarker. Used under licence

Lily Allen take-away widget

Building on the success of Seven Ages of Rock's embeddable video and adhering to number five of the BBC's Fifteen Web Principles ("Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site"), I'm pleased to note the launch of the below take-away widget in support of Lily Allen's forthcoming BBC THREE show. The widget offers a choice of video, a form to register your interest in getting involved and an opportunity to vote on which of two bands get their UK TV debut on the show each week. The widget is also available as a Facebook app (natch).


Full terms and conditions

Also noteworthy is the way in which the programme's production process is being opened up to the public via a deliberately work-in-progress website (described by Lily on her MySpace blog as "a bit crap at the moment, but we'll be updating it more and more everyday, and it's going to be amazing soon"), a Production Blog (written by the team at Princess Productions) and a YouTube group (inviting users to upload stuff that will make Lily laugh).

It's going to be interesting to see how all of this new activity dovetails with Lily's existing online presences such as her official EMI site and her MySpace profile (473,000 friends and 10.7 million profile views at the time of writing...)

Related posts:
Why Seven Ages of Rock rocks
Interesting times for the BBC online
2007: the year of the widget?

Analysing my Facebook friends photo grid

They say a picture paints a thousand words and if my Facebook friends photo grid is anything to go by, they may just be right. Below is a screencap of the aforementioned grid (something of a Facebook easter egg, which you can view by selecting '---' from the Friend List dropdown) and a round-up of some recurring motifs, which give a (potentially worrying) insight into the psychology of some of my nearest and dearest:

14 hats
8 pairs of shades
7 babies
4 guns
3 glasses of wine
3 pints of beer
3 false moustaches
2 weddings
2 donkeys
1 dog
1 cat
1 monkey
1 canada goose
1 baboon
1 real moustache
1 suit of armour
1 Beth Ditto's arse

Hmm...

Top 10 best Facebook applications

You've got to hand it to Facebook. The rollout of Facebook Platform was a masterstroke, not only getting them kudos with developers but also making their site sticky as hell, with a seemingly constant supply of new applications to tempt you away from your work. Whilst many of the apps won't stay installed on your profile for long, there are a few diamonds in the rough. Below is a round-up of ten of the best.

BandTracker - automatically pulls in the artists from the Favourite Music section of your profile and alerts you when they're playing your city. Also creates decent aggregation pages around each band, pulling in videos from YouTube and lists from Last.fm.

Eating - A neat little app from restaurant review site menuism, enabling you to share your dining experiences and discover new eateries. Slightly let down by a North American bias (no, I don't want to travel to London, Ontario for my evening meal...)

Flixster - nice integration of the movie site of the same name (reviewed here) which pulls in your existing ratings (something iLike would do well to get sorted), shows what your friends have been watching and provides access to the fiendishly addictive Never-Ending Movie Quiz.

Friend Stats - creates a page of lists and charts visualising aggregate data on your facebook chums. So, now I know that the majority of my friends are liberal graduates who like music and drinking, watching Lost, listening to Muse and reading John Steinbeck...

Interview - like The Guardian Weekend magazine Q&A feature (only with a slightly smaller readership), Interview asks you a stream of user-submitted questions which you can then add to your profile, letting everyone know how witty and erudite you are.

iRead - expose your bookshelf to your friends, detailing what you've read, what you're reading now and what's next on your list. You can find books by author, title or ISBN or import your Amazon wishlist. Once added, you can rate, review or recommend each title and find others who have read it.

myTV - share your favourite YouTube videos with your friends without leaving the comfort of Facebook. A slick interface and the option to import your favourites from YouTube are the icing on the cake.

TV Shows - release your inner Nick Horby and rank your favourite TV shows. There's 15,760 titles in the database, delivering fairly decent recommendations based on your list. The app also includes TV news and listings for the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.

Where I've Been - colour code a map of the world according to where you've lived, visited and want to visit. Turns out I'm not that well travelled after all...

wis.dm - encourages users to ask and answer yes/no questions on any conceivable topic. Strangely addictive although liable to quickly give away your moral and political leanings.

The long tail of social networking

In case you hadn't noticed, social networking's gone got niche. Whereas the first wave of social networking sites (e.g. Classmates, SixDegrees, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin) were relatively broad churches, with demographic emphasis the main differentiator, some of the latest kids on the social networking block are more niche than a Wim Wenders movie.

The unspoken rule of the first generation of social networking sites was to keep the focus general enough to facilitate a rapid growth in membership. However, the inclusive social networking model has become increasingly less viable for start-ups as the marketplace has become more crowded and dominated by a handful of big hitters (e.g. MySpace, orkut, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo).

This has paved the way for a new wave of social networking sites focused on niche areas of interest or identity. Don't believe me? Check out the hastily cobbled together A-Z list below which runs the gamut from Activism to Wine via Training shoes (strictly speaking it's an A-W, as I haven't yet found a social network dedicated to xylophones, the Yakuza or Zoroastrianism).

The narrow focus of a site like SneakerPlay may put a comparatively low ceiling on its potential membership, but it also increases its attractiveness both to users with that particular interest and to advertisers who are keen to hit their target demographic with greater precision (Nike currently has a banner ad for its AF1 Playoffs running on every page on SneakerPlay).

The recently relaunched Ning is the logical next step in the specialisation of social networking, as it enables you to create your own social network. With over 30,000 Ning networks already created, this opens up the possibility of a significant long tail of social networking although many of the networks are either still being set up or only have one member (the founder).

Whilst I suspect the current long tail of social networks doesn't begin the stack up against MySpace's 150 million odd user accounts, I doubt that will still be true in a year or two as niche social networking matures and more generic social networks start to see a decline in traffic.

A-Z of niche social networks

Activism: Care2, TakingITGlobal
Art & Design: Amateur Illustrator, Stuart, Teapotters
Auctions: biddingBuddies
Books: LibraryThing, Shelfari, Tagabook
Cars: CarDomain, CarSpace, Carster, Motortopia
Clubbing: AfterTheClub, DontStayIn
Comics: ComicSpace, Hypercomics
Cooking: BakeSpace, Group Recipes, Open Source Food
Cycling: BikeSpace.net, velospace
DIY: Curbly
Ethnicity: BlackPlanet, Koolanoo, Quespasa, WorldLounge
Fashion: ShareYourLook, Shoutfit, Trendmill
Fitness: ontri, PlayLocal, Traineo, We Endure
Film: Flixster, Yamji
Football: Joga
Gambling: Gaambol, Gottabet
Health: DailyStrength, OrganizedWisdom, RealMentalHealth
Hunting: TheHuntZone.com
Intelligence: intellectConnect
Motherhood: ConnectingMoms, MommyBuzz, MothersClick
Music: Hip-Hop.net, Linked Musicians, MakeOutClub, MusicHawk
Neighbourhood: ((echo))MyPlace, My Neighbourhoods
Outdoor activities: MyOutdoors.net, Outdoorzy.com, thoos
Parenting: GotKidsNetwork, Minti
Pets: Animal Buds, Catster, Dogster, Fuzzster, HAMSTERster, Petster
Photography: The Black Stripe
Politics: essembly, HOTSOUP.com, My.BarackObama.com
Religion: MuslimSpace, MyChurch, OakTreeIdea, ShoutLife, Xianz
Rugby: RuggerSpace.com
Smoking: Smoking Passions
Sports: FanPage, FanNation, FanSpot, Takkle, SportsMates, Ultrafan
Trainers: CriticalSole, Sneakerplay
Travel: TravBuddy, Travellerspoint, TripConnect, TripUp, WAYN
Video games: Gamervision, The Great Games Experiment
Wine: Bottletalk, Cork'd, Vinorati

Ziki: social networking lite

Interesting promotional model from new(ish) social networking site Ziki, which is offering the first 10,000 people who sign up (they've had 7,960 so far) $10 of free sponsorship on Google, Yahoo and MSN so when someone searches for your name, a link to your Ziki profile is displayed in the paid-for results. In addition to basic personal info (age, location etc.) and a photo, you can also state your reasons for having a Ziki profile from a set list (e.g. networking, job opportunities, friendship, dating) and input tags/keywords which describe your areas of knowledge/interest (which then operate as a navigational tool to find like-minded people). Once you've verified your registration you can also start adding links and feeds to reflect your wider web presence.

It's an interesting example of 'lite' social networking, where your profile is more of an aggregation page (à la claimID , Profilactic and Suprglu) than a MySpace-style content repository. As a result it's more likely to appeal to older, more web-savvy users than your average social networking site.

The free search engines links (presumably a precursor to a paid-for service) provide a nice incentive to sign up and will particularly appeal to those with common names (Google returns 180,000 matches for "Dan Taylor"), although may be of less value to high profile bloggers and the geek elite whose names already appear top of most web searches.