Schmooze with your buddies from around the world on .Friends

You and your friends from all over the world walk into a bar on New Year's Eve. The music is great, the bartender is friendly, and you and all your friends are dressed up in your favorite outfits. Your friend from London decides to pick a different song from the jukebox, your friend from Brazil decides to listen to the band instead, while the buddy you just met from Istanbul decides to play a cool YouTube video on the wall of the bar. You head out to the dance floor, whip out some amazing dance moves that are straight-out of a movie, and then the cute guy or girl you've been checking out comes over and buys you a drink. Before long you’re chatting it up like you've known each other forever, so you decide to have a video chat to get to know each other better.

The best part of all of this is that you never have to leave your living room.

The great virtual night out I just described is possible with .Friends (Dot Friends), a brand new app on Facebook that launched last week. The whole point of the app is to have fun, party with your friends and to meet new ones as well. You go into a virtual world, pick a hot spot from the world-map, and then live it up while chatting with your friends and meeting new ones.

I'm a heavy Facebook user so I know what an amazing platform it is for connecting with people. But Facebook is missing the unique element of personal interaction that is so important. That's where .Friends comes in. It lets you create a virtual "you" and provides a bunch of cool places where you can party and hang out. .Friends provides a new way and a new venue to interact with people and lets you get together with people from all over the world and hang-out as if you were all in the same spot.

This should sound familiar to tech watchers since a similar app has been making waves recently and raised a "bit" of money as well. But where I think .Friends really shines is in its stunning visuals which make the app a lot more fun to use. Not only that, but you have a ton of options in terms of how you can look in the .Friends world. There's a huge selection of hair styles, clothes and accessories to create a perfect look. After all, how can you meet people in a virtual world if the virtual 'you' doesn't represent who you are and your own individual style?

It's east to get started with the app. You can either follow the tutorial when you enter the app or just click on the .Friends logo on the top left. This will open a pull down menu that will enable you to navigate through the world, see the different venues around the globe, change your clothes and more. When you're in a location and you see someone interesting, you can click on them and then you’ll get a menu of options such as writing them a private chat or buying them a drink. Be careful though, people notice when you buy the cheapest drink on the menu. .Friends also lets you start-up a video chat with someone right from the app making it a convenient and fun way to meet people face-to-face.

While all of this already makes .Friends addictively fun, I think one of the coolest features is still to come. The team at .Friends is putting the finishing touches on a feature that lets you build your own location in the .Friends world. So if you've always dreamed of opening up your own bar or club and turning into a world-leading entertainer, you can do it all on .Friends.

Facebook and other social networks are transforming the way we communicate and stay in touch with our friends, making it easier than ever to maintain relationships that span the globe. .Friends - and other social tools that duplicate real-world scenarios - are going to extend the range of interactions we have on the web, add new depth to our online experiences, and strengthen our relationships with friends on social networks.

Disclosure: Blonde 2.0 handles .Friends' social media activity.

Turn on a New York based filter when you use Mobli.

We started working with Mobli about a month ago. When I met CEO Moshiko Hogeg for the first time, I was captivated by his passion and vision for Mobli and the concept behind this company, which is not just a mobile application but a whole visual social media platform that enables people to share moments of their lives from around the world.

Think of Mobli as a visual engine that lets you do a 360 around the world and see who’s doing what, where and when. People could be sitting in a café in Paris, watching a show in London, eating at a restaurant in New York, and Mobli brings all these visuals together to enable us all to see what a beautiful world we live in.

I used to be an Instagram freak, sharing photos on my iPhone. However, the minute I started using Mobli, I realized it let me do a whole lot more than I could on Instagram.

One feature that I particularly like in Mobli is the location based filters. When I am in New York, I have access to the New York based filter, when I am Silicon Valley I have access to the Silicon Valley based filter. This week as I attend TechCrunch Disrupt, I will have a special TechCrunch Disrupt filter, as you can see in the picture below. These filters can be time based or permanent. As a marketeer, I cannot help but think of all the branding opportunities that this opens for brands. Think about it – filters for resorts, filters for concerts, filters for sports events … the possibilities are endless.

Mobli was smart enough to understand that the reason that people share content, was to receive feedback from others.  People are looking for someone to tell them that they can relate to what they share and that they’ve been there too. I wrote about it here in this blog post from 2007. I’ve noticed that on Mobli much more than on any other photo sharing applications that I’ve used, I get a lot more feedback and support from the community.

You can see below the love that the Mobli community has for one another:

Not only does the Mobli community show support for one another but they also show their love for Mobli. See this video for example.

Mobli has come to a realization that other photo sharing applications have missed. I don’t necessarily need to be friends with you to have the same interests as you. We may both love animals and yet not follow one another in the social sense that we know today. Mobli enables you to watch specific channels that interest you and has channels that include cars, animals, nature, or even more topical subjects such as the US Open. Once you upload a picture to Mobli, you are able to select which category you want to upload it to, and obviously the more categories you add it to, the more exposure your picture gets and the more feedback you’ll receive. This is why you’re able to get a lot more exposure on Mobli than on other photo sharing platforms.

There are also some really cool additional features. "Around me" lets you see photos shared by people who are around you so if you are missing out on a concert that is nearby, you will be able to see pictures of it immediately and hop on over. Also, make sure you check out the web remote feature that enables you to scroll through photos on your computer via your smartphone device. This is a great feature for  pranks.

In conclusion and even though I am somewhat biased, I believe that Mobli is the most comprehensive visual social media platform to date and truly enables me to “see the world through other people’s eyes.”

Part 1 of 4: Gary Vaynerchuk on how brands must adjust to the new world of social media.

Ihad the pleasure of meeting up with Gary Vaynerchuk recently when he was in Israel. Here’s his (almost) full speech at the event McCann Erickson held in Tel Aviv.

I am always amazed at how blunt and real Gary can be. Gary told the audience that they were doing all the wrong things in marketing their brands; that they were marketing in 2011 as if it was 2005; that no one watches commercials on TV any more because they all fast-forward with TiVo, and even those who don’t fast-forward are usually too busy looking at another screen (mobile) or even two other screens (Web and mobile) or even three other screens (Web, mobile and iPad). That no one looks at banners anymore and few look at billboards for that matter. Everyone is busy looking at their mobile, or their laptop, or their iPad. This is not the future. This is now.

The talk was insightful, brilliant and captivating. In an ADD world where it is immeasurably hard to catch people’s full attention (as I had demonstrated above), Gary was/is always up to the task. He is probably one of the only people in the world who can keep me captivated for a whole hour without checking my iPhone.

I split the speech into four different parts because of YouTube limitations. They're all worth watching. Enjoy!

• Part 1: Gary Vaynerchuk Speech (embedded above)
• Part 2: Gary Vaynerchuk Speech
• Part 3: Gary Vaynerchuk Speech
• Part 4: Gary Vaynerchuk Speech

This article originally appeared on Blonde 2.0.

At the beginning of the month I was asked to speak on a panel that discussed social media, social networks and “what’s coming up next.” In research for this discussion, I came up with a few insights on what I foresee coming up next in the world of social media.

Here are my top 10 prognostications:

1The physical and digital worlds will be more highly connected than ever before — already today we are able to run in the park and track our progress online while sharing it with our friends or track our weight loss, or even our ovulation (well, some of us, that is) with iPhone apps that connect to our Facebook and Twitter profiles and enable us to keep track of our progress as well as share the data with our friends. Robert Scoble had a brilliant presentation on this topic at the last TNW Conference in Amsterdam. You can see it here.

2Facebook, Twitter and other major social networks will become increasingly what Fred Wilson termed “social dashboards.”.In essence, Facebook and Twitter are social channels on which other companies can grow and develop their own technologies and businesses. Both Facebook and Twitter have created economies far larger than many nations. Take, for example, companies like Stocktwits, Tweetdeck and Zynga (among others) that have made huge profits piggybacking on these two platforms.

3Until now, brands have been very concerned with bringing as many people as possible to their pages. Consumer brands can now finally reap the fruits and build social commerce stores where Facebook users (all 600 million of them) can purchase products on their favorite social network without needing to go to any destination site. Facebook will become one of the major channels of future online shopping.

4Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are currently collecting information about each and every one of us: our likes and dislikes, our interests and activities. Soon in an age of Web 3.0, an age of Semantic Web, we will no longer need to search for information on the Web as information will find us based on all this data that companies are collecting. The right information will be served to the right people at the right time, saving us all a lot of time, effort and energy.

5Mobile technology will become more dominant and near field communication (NFC technology) will be developed further enabling it to offer us special promotions, coupons and tips based on our geographical location and the interest graph we discussed in insight #3.

6Human relationships will no longer be as physically dependent and we will befriend and hang out with people from all over the world and all walks of life, all ethnicities and all beliefs, creating a worldwide melting pot.

7We will no longer be passive media consumers. Media will interact with us in dynamic ways on all platforms. Just like gamers playing World of Warcraft today, we will all become a part of a virtual world unknown to us yet where we will all be avatars in the game of life.

8As the Web is overloaded with more information, the content that we are exposed to will become more and more customized to our needs as companies will give large sums of money to companies like Facebook and Google, making sure that the information we are exposed to is highly targeted to our interests. Rather than experiencing information overload, we will actually experience the opposite effect.

9Companies will understand better how to measure the ROI of social media and realize that social media is not about the number of people brands have in their communities but rather the amount of engagement that they see on their page and the overall online sentiment they faced this month as opposed to the last. See Gary Vaynerchuk’s response to how companies should measure the ROI of social media in the video link above.

10Services will become increasingly crowdsourced. Whether it be the way that we get from point A to point B (Waze), the way that we find answers to our questions (Quora), the manner in which we test our Websites (uTest), the way that we get things done (Fiverr) or the way that we share information (Wikipedia).

All of these insights are of course complete speculations based on my years in the world of social media and after following trends occurring all over the digital space.

Do you agree with these speculations? Is anything missing? What do you think is coming up next in social media?

This post was originally posted on The Next Web on June 14.

BeeTV, the app that turns everyday TV watching into a social experience and lets users share their favorite TV moments with friends and others in real time, has just recently announced the launch of their new free iPad application, now available in the iTunes store. You can use BeeTV on your iPad or on the Web on BeeTV's site. iPhone and Android devices are planned soon.

It's no coincidence that the most watched television event in history — this year's Super Bowl with over 162 million viewers — was also the most tweeted event ever: 4,000 tweets per second when the game ended. TV moments are meant to be shared. And it doesn't matter if it's the "Big Brother" finale, the latest episode of "CSI" or a hilarious moment from "The Hangover," we all know that it's just not the same when you're watching TV alone. With BeeTV you can share your favorite TV moments with friends and others in real time, as the action unfolds, so that even when you're by yourself you're not watching alone. (Disclosure: BeeTV is a client.)

BeeTV connects your TV viewing experience through tablets, the web (and soon iO/S and Android mobile phones), social networks, fan sites, information — in fact, to just about everyone and anything that is related to TV shows and content. With BeeTV, you can experience TV the way it was meant to be: together.

BeeTV enables you to:

1) See what your friends are watching right now, including your Twitter and Facebook friends.

2) Find new friends who like the same TV shows and movies that you do.

3) See what TV shows are popular and trending in your area, join in the conversations and see what are the favorite shows of your friends and others.

4) Check out VIP tweets and Facebook posts from the shows' stars.

5) Get personalized TV recommendations based on the TV shows you like to watch.

With BeeTV, unlike other social TV applications out there, you can go beyond the check-in and chat, message, post & interact with others who are watching the same TV shows as you.

Yaniv Solnik, BeeTV's CEO, says: "Watching TV is supposed to be fun. And with BeeTV, now you're able to enjoy the TV shows and movies you love with friends even when you're not together. BeeTV creates a real opportunity to interact with friends and others about what you're currently watching, making the TV viewing experience more fun, social and personalized than ever before."

I don't know about you, but I love TV. And with the recent acquisition of IntoNow by Yahoo, I imagine I am not the only one they saw as a target audience. Yes, I know, the cool kids will tell ya, "I don't own a TV," though I have a feeling they all then go back home and secretly turn on the tube.

For more detailed info, check out the video interview Yaniv recently did with my buddy Robert Scoble.

Today a year ago, Facebook introduced its Like button. Such a simple yet genius idea enabling Facebook to learn what every user's interests are. In one year, more than 2.5 websites have integrated Facebook's like button on their websites, giving Facebook the ability to not only gather information about its users on its own site but also gather information about them from all over the Internet. In this manner, Facebook had conquered the Web.

People's behavior with the Like button is quite interesting to study and might not necessarily always be accurate, though, for a "like" can be given not because someone was actually interested in something but rather as a token of appreciation, or worse, peer pressure. Despite the fact that the like algorithm might be faulty in certain situations, overall the like algorithm seems to be working well, serving you information through your news feed that you have previously claimed to liking.

Some have complained about not having a dislike button as well, but I believe there is a reason for why the dislike button is not created. It's because, after all, Facebook is a social community and in order to survive there needs to be positivity in the air. Negative energy can only lead to negative content which in turn would harm such a network.

The Like button also serves another purpose, though. Why is it that people share information with others? To get feedback. Humans thrive on feedback. By liking someone's content, you are giving him affirmation that you liked and approved of the content he shared. How many times have you shown off with the number of likes you got on a status you posted? The more likes you get, the more accepted you feel in the group. It's really high school all over again, a popularity contest. And this feedback of liking someone's sharings also creates a more cohesive network.

I believe that the Like button is one of Facebook's greatest inventions and one that would make sure Facebook stays the conqueror of the Web for a while.

In today's age, it's not enough for a brand to just have a Facebook business page. A brand needs to nurture its Facebook community and keep it excited and alive. A Facebook community needs to feel loved. Here are 5 ways to keep your community excited, happy and growing:

1) Run a creative contest. Think of a competition that would appeal to your community, that would mobilize them to get active with your brand. For example, on our HP page we celebrated HP's partnership with Warner Bros. and product placement in the movie "Sex and the City 2I" by running a competition on our Facebook page where we asked people to show us the Carrie Bradshaw in them. We asked individuals to write Carrie's column in the most creative manner possible. The entrant who would make us laugh, cry and feel the Carrie Bradshaw within would win a trip to NYC to visit all of Carrie's hangout places.

When doing a contest, make sure to give an adequate prize and make sure your contest is run via a Facebook application — it's against Facebook's rules to run a contest on the page itself.

2) Mix things up with offline events for the community. Get your community to be more cohesive by inviting members to offline events. For example, we invited folks from our Facebook page to the "Sex and the City 2" movie premiere:

3) Special privileges for community members. Give your community members special privileges that others don't have. Like a discount on products, first sneak peaks, free accessories. People love getting perks, and it reminds them why they liked your brand in the first place.

4) Use Facebook Questions. Facebook recently launched Facebook Questions. Activate the community by asking them interesting questions. Mashable wrote a good post with all kinds of tips for how brands can maximize this feature on Facebook.

5) Consistently upload interesting and relevant content. Engage with the community by uploading content that is valuable and appealing to your community members. If you're running a cosmetics page, write a note about your top 10 facial cosmetics. If you're running a restaurant page, give a special recipe for the holiday coming up. Provide your community members with value for being a part of your community.

With so many brands vying for our attention on Facebook, companies need to be very smart about the way they manage their social presence. A deserted or spammy community can really hurt a brand's reputation whereas a flourishing and live community can really raise a brand's positive awareness. Make sure to always keep up with the latest Facebook features, provide value and keep things on the move if you want to be the latter.

There is little doubt that brands today have realized the critical value of social media in developing powerful brand awareness. So now the burning question is how do we effectively engage the people we wish to connect with in a way that creates real, tangible and effective results for the brand.

uTest specializes in software testing services through its community of 30,000+ professional testers from 165 countries around the globe. Companies - from garage startups to Fortune 500 software giants - have used uTest's services to test their web, mobile and desktop applications.

In the last few months, Blonde 2.0 (part of the Socialmedia.biz network) has worked with uTest to create a social presence for the company, nurturing current clients as well as reaching out to potential new clients,while developing a central hub for their community of testers.

We began by working on bringing testers closer together through social media channels. By doing this, testers could connect with one another from around the globe; chat; share notes and join in the uTest community experience. In addition, it created the perfect opportunity for uTest to recruit new and raw talent, enhance brand awareness and create a virtual meeting point for other companies to learn about uTest's services.

uTest had already developed a solid online presence with a powerful website; a nice Twitter profile; blogs with pertinent posts relating to software testing and mobile app testing as well as forums to which community members could subscribe. uTest had already built the foundation for a Facebook page and called on the Blonde 2.0 team to find creative ways to increase its brand awareness while encouraging interactivity with the audience.

Everyone went in with expectations of gradual growth as is common with most brands that initially hit the Facebook sphere. Growth on a Facebook page is usually gradual and requires patience to achieve significant results. The build-up of fans can be a challenge. The fruits of our creative brainstorming and collaboration brought to life our "Bug of the Month" competition idea.

We’ve all encountered bugs and error messages while using software apps or visiting a website. To celebrate the joys and pains of this experience we asked members to share the funniest, craziest or scariest bugs they could find during our "Bug of the Month" contest. Members were asked to capture these technological freaks of nature with a screenshot or video and then to share it on the uTest Facebook page along with a caption of which site/app they were using and what they were trying to do when the bug “bit” them.

And then the clincher ... members were asked to tell friends, family and colleagues to help out, as the screenshot with the most likes would win the grand prize of a stylish iPod Touch.

The results of our efforts were overwhelming. Members kicked their campaigns into high gear and "likes" for the bugs were spreading like wildfire. The campaigning was fierce and far-reaching and often it felt like our bug hunters were running for office, pleading to all for votes.

Let's have a look at some of the numbers: At the start of the competition, the page had approximately 1,140 members. After 20 days and 36 posted bugs later, more than 4,800 likes and new members joined the uTest page - thanks to the creative and exciting dynamic of the competition. The contest was intense and after a very tight finish, the winner of the competition garnered 1,844 likes and went home with the iPod Touch. So overwhelming was the response, that the uTest team decided to add a second prize (iPod Nano) for the second most “likes” (with a total of 1,413) as well as a Judge's Choice Award (the honorable title, coupled with a iPod Shuffle) that went to the most creative and unusual bug. The competition was not only a success for those who won but also a win for the entire uTest community. Members shared on the page how much they enjoyed the competition. Michael John A Gonzaga posted on the page: "We're happy because the fun and excitement is always there, win or lose. Thank you uTest."

As brands turn to social media for better ways to engage with their audience, there is no question that uTest is leading the way in building a loyal and active fan base. Who knew BUGS could have created this much excitement on the Web?

The uTest contest was a success because it was simple to explain, easy to participate in and strongly tied to the brand’s messaging. A social media “lesson learned” from this campaign is the importance of knowing where your audience lives. The uTest audience - testers, potential testers, developers and web and mobile app junkies - really connected with the campaign because it spoke to them and the world they revel in. In turn uTest was able to increase its brand awareness in a way that was both engaging and meaningful as the contest got its participants to do what they love to do.

The uTest competition clearly shows that with a strategic approach to social media engagement, a brand can achieve phenomenal results in a short period of time - it's just got to bug you enough to get there.

Photo by tantek on Flickr

Since I have become addicted to Foursquare, the location check-in service, I set out to find the best tips to get to the top of Foursquare’s leaderboard while playing fair.

Here are the top 5 tips I discovered:

1If you want to become mayor, check in to places that you know that you’ll be able to check in to frequently, as many times as possible. Didn’t find your place on Foursquare already? Add it. Don’t forget and don’t neglect -- someone else may steal your mayorship from you.

2Foursquare resets its leaderboard on Sunday nights. To maximize your weekly tallies, make sure you start early in the week.

3Check in to new places -- every time you do so, these grant you 5 extra points, and these can add up quickly.

4Get familiar with how to unlock your special badges and work on unlocking them. Here are two great badges lists: TonyFelice.WordPress.com and TheKruser.com.

5Don’t cheat. For the sake of the community, don’t check in to places if you’re not really there. This only hurts the whole user experience on Foursquare.

Hey, Foursquare, here's an idea for you

One feature I feel is missing in Foursquare: Once I check in to a place, I want the app to scan all my contacts and tell me the 5-10 users who are closest to my proximity at any given time. This will enable users to maximize the potential of meeting people in their network more frequently and make for a more cohesive user base.

And finally, here’s a good, short Foursquare tutorial for you:

How To Unlock Your World With Foursquare on Howcast

Related

• Foursquare Focuses on Privacy on Eve of Expected Facebook Location Launch (Mashable)

Image from Bite Daily.

 
How do you measure the ROI of social media? This is a question that we are often asked by companies that want to enter the social media realm but are afraid or unsure of how to prove its success to their superiors. Want to show your bosses that social media works? Below is a great video from Erik Qualman (@equalman) at Socialnomics that showcases several social media ROI success stories.

Here are the top 10 facts you should remember from this video:

1) Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.

2) Wetpaint/Altimeter found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit. (See Ranking the Top 100 Global Brands -- PDF.)

3) Lenovo has experienced a 20% reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers.

4) Burger King invested  less than $50,000 in their Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application and received an estimated return of over $400,000 in press/media value. They received 32 million impressions as a result of this campaign.

5) Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube.

6) Dell has already made $3 million in sales via twitter (I’ve heard this number has already increased to $6.5 million).

7) Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.

8 ) 37% of generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the US. 25% of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media. They are the only US auto company that didn’t take a government loan.

9) Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media: 68% of their sales came via Twitter and 85% of their new customers.

10) Software company Genius.com reports 24% of social media leads convert to sales opportunities.

Here's the video:

As Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of CP&B says: “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…. The old media paradigm was “pay to play.” Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to “play to play.”

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social  media by an average of 40% because:

1) It’s low-cost marketing

2) Getting traction

3) We have to do it

If you don’t do it, you can be certain that your competitors will.

“Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine” -- Morgan Johnston, JetBlue Airways

“Our head of social media is the customer” -- McDonald's

The time for social media is now.

Repubished from Blonde 2.0.