How Mobli can take virtual experiences to a new level

As we all know, there’s a huge amount of data on the internet– the biggest challenge is sorting it all and finding what’s relevant for you. This is such a big challenge that there’s a whole branch of the tech industry, called Big Data, that is dedicated to finding, sorting, and doing something with all this information.

If you’re wondering how big “big data” is, Microsoft’s R&D center in Israel is focusing on finding new ways to use it.

I’ve written in the past about mobile service Mobli, but today I want to focus on a different aspect of the product and what it means for the future of social media. So what does discovery and big data have to do with Mobli? The coolest feature about Mobli is not how you take the photo or edit it but how you find and discover content on the app, and on the flip side how you get your content to the people who are most interested in it.

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Tired of getting the same old flowers every Valentine’s Day? Sick of paying an arm and a leg for that bouquet of roses? This year a few companies offered some unique and innovative ideas to help consumers give something different to their loved one this year.

In the age of the internet, social media and mobile applications, the possibilities for such campaigns are endless. Let’s take a look a few of the coolest Valentine’s Day campaigns from this year:

Strauss

1Using QR (Quick Response) Codes as a tool for consumers has taken the world by storm. By the simple swipe of a smartphone a person could receive a coupon, save a company’s information or find out more about a product. On Valentine’s Day, Elite Café locations all around Israel hung up posters that read, “Ever wondered what to get for Valentine’s Day?” and included a very large QR code. Unknowing passersby curiously swiped the QR code with their smartphones, only to find out that they had won a romantic box of chocolate for them or their loved ones.

The reactions alone are enough to make you smile.  Can you feel Strauss’s love?

Starbucks

2Starbucks also capitalized on the new marketing opportunities that smarphones offer.  On this Valentine’s Day, Starbucks customers were able to utilize a special app that allowed them to create personalized eCards for their Valentine. When the recipient hovered his or her smartphone over their Valentine’s Day themed coffee cup, the flower image on the cup would flutter away and the chosen text would appear.

Nothing says I love you like a hot cup of coffee, right?

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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