Jan

24

Human aggregators of the web

Filed Under Culture, Social Media, Web | Comments 

“We are all human aggregators now,” says Nick Bilton from the New York Times. While I’m sure he was simply trying to make his point stand out, it’s important for heavy social media users to keep in mind that our behavior is not the norm. There is, however, definitely a gradual increase in the amount of effort people are putting into information sharing. The latest research from Forrester and Altimeter Group confirms this.

Forrester claims that 24% of us are now creators, 33% of us are conversationalists, and 20% of us are collectors. If you add those up, you reach about 75% of the web crowd who have fully adopted social technology. This can be summed up as “most of us”, but it’s certainly not all of us. To compare, a couple years ago conversationalists weren’t even recognized on the social ladder while creators were at 13% and collectors at 15%.

Altimeter Group’s latest findings also suggest about 60% of us are sharing information to “support others” and “demonstrate knowledge”.

This got me thinking about why I collect and share the most interesting things I come across (online through Facebook/Twitter/IM/Blog and offline through word-of-mouth).

These 3 reasons are also why I enjoy the serendipitous nature of social networks most and have a great level of respect for others who are great aggregators, curators, and conversationalists. It’s also the reason why sites like Digg and Buzzfeed along with Twitter will continue to be relevant and evolve at helping us filter the web.

Update: A good excerpt from @ivanovitch’s post titled “Getting Past Viral” over at Big Spaceship’s Think blog:

People share things for their own reasons, not ours. When consumers tell friends about a brand, they’re not trying to help the brand; they’re trying to help their friends. At the same time, they’re also making a statement about themselves and the recipient: “I want you to understand that I found this interesting, and believe you will too.” When we want consumers to share things, we need to focus on understanding and supporting their motives, rather than pretending consumers can be convinced to do something for our benefit.

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Dec

29

App Store to reach 1 billion apps?

Filed Under Apple, Mobile | Comments 

How will the app store differ when it reaches 300,000 or say an unrealistic 1 biiiillion apps vs. the current 100,000? Will we see a large increase in the average number of apps being used per iPhone/iTouch? I don’t think so.

For every new app I download and plan to keep, I usually delete one I’m not using. Let’s call this the LIGO method of app management or Latest In, Garbage Out. The average usage difference between the apps I use daily (5-10) and the remaining apps (50+) is huge. I’m guessing that’s true for most people and won’t change no matter how many apps become available.

(Photo credit: gnta’s photostream)

My obsessive app prioritizing is probably not the norm – I’m sure there are many people who just keep accumulating apps until they reach the 9 screen max. Either way, your organization behavior with apps is most likely very similar to how you manage blog subscriptions, your desktop, people you follow on Twitter, etc.

Let’s not forget about the problems that start to arise when you have too many apps on your iPhone including: slower performance and freezing, too many app updates, low memory, and decreasing battery life (steady improvements to hardware/software may address some of these issues). On the other end, Apple will have to keep hiring more people to try and keep the app store clean. As long as the quality of apps increases and Apple continues to manage the app store effectively, I’m all for the rapid growth. And the rapid growth will continue as long as we keep seeing success stories from the developers themselves who are increasingly starting to reveal sales figures.

I also wonder if Apple should phase out featured apps completely (but keep Top lists) similar to how Twitter hopes to abandon its suggested users list. In the future, I hope to see them make less “App Store breaks 200,000 apps” announcements and more announcements about improvements to the app store. The other major players like Google should also focus on designing a better app marketplace, then maybe people won’t care as much about them always being behind in total number of available apps.

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Dec

10

Online fun: better include my friends

Filed Under Gaming, Mobile, Social Media, Web | Comments 

The obvious: there’s a rapid rise in social gaming along with social network integration within almost anything fun we’re doing online. When we play offline, it usually involves our closest friends so it’s not surprising the same is becoming true online.

What surprises me is the fact that major brands haven’t really been too aggressive in experimenting with social games and simple, fun apps. Of course that will change soon, but hopefully only if it makes sense for the brand. If they aim to target a younger audience, I think a branded social game can be a very powerful marketing effort based on the success stories we’ve seen so far.

This quote from a recent article in Ad Age sums it up nicely:

While the heavy gamers remain highly serious and addicted to games, we’ve begun to see another emerging, and even larger, market — casual gamers who are into social networking. They visit gaming sites during their lunch break for a shoot-out, for instance, or for a fun break at night or on weekends. This changing demographic is opening a wider opportunity for marketers who should definitely look into gaming as an area of growth potential for communicating their brands.

And two more quote’s from the Three Minds blog:

If customer engagement and social relevance are the new holy grails of marketing then designing for play should be put on the agenda of all marketers.

The fact that gaming is still unexpected is an opportunity to surprise and delight your audience.

Below, I wanted to highlight some of the examples that came to mind since social games/apps and other miscellaneous fun social sites started gaining traction. I’ve included some general usage stats and pointed out what made them social.

OMGPOP

For those unfamiliar with OMGPOP (formally called iminlikewithyou), it has been around for a couple years now and growth isn’t slowing. It can be highly addictive and judging by the chat rooms, it seems to be most popular among teens. Teen or not, I think some of their most popular games such as Draw My Thing and Balloono can appeal to anyone. They’ve made it extremely easy to invite friends to instant matches which is one of my favorite features (no sign-up required).

omgpop

The stats:

  • Balloono has been played over 106 million times which amounts to nearly 3 million hours
  • Blockes has been played over over 52 million times which amounts to nearly 2 million hours

What makes it social:

  • Private games w/ unique invitation links to invite friends through AIM, Facebook, and Twitter
  • Quickly join live multiplayer games, make friends by randomly challenging them
  • See which friends are playing after logging in & join their games

JibJab

You’ve probably seen these videos or eCards pop up in your Facebook news feed or at least read about JibJab on TechCrunch. Sure they’re a bit cheesy but there’s no denying people love to create and share these with their closest friends.

jibjab

The stats:

  • 6 million registered users, over 100 million visits/yr (source)
  • Gained 1.5 million users through Facebook in 5 months (source)
  • 80% of new users are now signing up using Facebook connect

What makes it social:

  • Taps into Facebook to remind you of friends’ birthdays for eCards
  • Import Facebook photos to easily customize videos to share

Fishville

Plenty has been said about all the very popular Zynga games. I recently decided to give Fishville a try instead of Farmville and Mike Arrington is not lying, it’s very easy to get hooked (which shouldn’t surprise you).

Jason Calicanis has said “they have figured out what’s addictive about social games. And what do we like about playing games? It’s playing games with other people.”

fishville

The stats:

  • 25 million monthly active users and growing (source)
  • Zynga sees revenues of $50 million in 2008 from sales of virtual goods (source)

What makes it social:

  • Become neighbors with your Facebook friends playing Fishville (like most Zynga games) plus incentives for helping them out and sending free gifts
  • Frequent news feed publishing if user allows it

Parking Wars

I had to include Parking Wars which is probably still the best example of a branded social game to live on Facebook by A&E.

parkingwarz

The stats:

  • 66,905 monthly active users but declining (down from 110k)
  • 400,000 people signed up in the first two months (source)

What makes it social:

  • Adding more friends gives you more places to park

Other notable Facebook apps: Pet Society, Scrabble, Mafia Wars, Flixster Movies, Social Interview, Friends Exposed, etc.

I Am T-Pain

iamtpain

The stats:

  • Users have created over 10.2 million recordings (source)
  • 300,000 downloads after 3 weeks w/ average time spent in app being 66 minutes (source)
  • During it’s most popular time period, was receiving 10,000 downloads a day (source)

What makes it social:

  • Basic posting to Facebook Wall or Myspace profile
  • Demoing sure to get friends wanting to try it themselves

Tap Tap Revenge

There’s no denying Tapulous is leading the way when it comes to social iPhone apps.

taptap3

The stats:

  • Downloaded by 1 out of every 3 iPhone/iTouch owner
  • 500,000 paid app downloads, over 6 million users (source)

What makes it social:

  • Challenge and battle friends online or real life 2 player mode
  • Now including messages, integrated chat, and rich profiles

Other notable iPhone apps: Words with Friends, Foursquare, Live Poker, Who Has The Biggest Brain, VW GTI, Moron Test, etc.

Modern Warfare 2

Gaming consoles made huge improvements several years ago with the most recent generation releases but it’s not until now we are starting to see the next phase of social features.

modernwarfare

The stats:

  • 7 million copies sold on day one (source), $550 millions in sales first 5 days (source)
  • 8 million online players within the first five days (source)

What makes it social:

  • Instant online play with logged on friends
  • Link your gamertag to Facebook profile

Other notable gaming console/handheld games: Animal Crossing, Halo, and basically any other game with online multiplayer mode.

———————

Most brands probably wouldn’t be creating their own console games like Burger King, but they need to keep in mind how hard it is to reach hardcore gamers. Some of my old work friends spend most of their spare time playing games like Modern Warfare.

Social gaming sites and Facebook apps are threatening multiplayer sites like Big Fish Games, Pogo, Addicting Games, Candy Stand, and Yahoo! Games and casual games in general. I’ve also been wondering why peer-to-peer iPhone games over Bluetooth have not really taken off (some examples).

For much more in-depth and daily news only on social gaming, definitely check out the Inside Social Games blog.

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Oct

30

How I bookmark the internet

Filed Under Misc, Social Media, Web | Comments 

I think bookmarking can be an art. Since there are always new web services and desktop apps being released to help people manage information online, it’s an always evolving process. I frequently spend my spare time browsing the web to stay up to date on the topics I care about and without bookmarking I’d feel completely lost.

More importantly, I’m constantly adjusting the news sources that I subscribe to on Twitter, Netvibes, and via email to keep things manageable (I support information environmentalism). For example, I used to subscribe to TechCrunch by email and follow Mashable on Twitter. I unsubscribed to both because it was simply too much to keep up with and found I usually stumbled on the most of the important articles from there anyway.

Here is what my bookmarking habit currently looks like:

Safari

safaribookmarks

My Safari bookmarks are probably the least updated. The Bookmarks Bar organizes the sites I most frequently visit (forums, personal accounts, social networks, etc.) and the many subfolders I have such as Social Web, Blog, Cars, Apple, Web Dev, Work, and Misc organize all the sites I want to keep handy.

Twitter

twitterfavs2

I follow a lot of people who share interesting things. That little star next to every tweet may not get a lot of use from most people but for me it’s used to bookmark tweets I want to check out later. My favorites usually include blog posts, articles, video’s, and the occasional good quote.

Instapaper

instapaperfavs

Love Instapaper. I now use it daily when it comes to long blog posts or articles that I can read during down time. I save these to Instapaper using the site or the incredibly easy Safari/iPhone bookmarklet. Because of the ease of use, Instapaper has quickly become one of my most used iPhone apps while commuting. Syncing is usually flawless and cool app features like auto-tilting and several sharing options make it miles ahead of most of the other popular News related apps.

Delicious

deliciousfavs

I use Delicious (lie a lot of people) for articles that I’ve read once then want to save and possibly refer to later. I think it’s too time consuming to try and include descriptions so I stick to relevant tags which help me easily filter my 900+ bookmarks. Sometimes I bookmark 5-10 articles a day, and sometimes my account is dry for days. What you find here will typically double-up with my Twitter and Instapaper bookmarks.

Other Thoughts

Of course, there is no right or wrong technique when it comes to bookmarking but I find this system works well for me. So how does all of this relate to marketing a new site or content online?

Marketers :: most social media strategies right now focus on trying to get more Diggs, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers. Some Twitter apps like Tweetie are now including an easy way to see other people’s favorites, so I think it will slowly become a more popular way for users to discover new content. I usually keep a close eye on who’s bookmarking my blog posts on Delicious and I don’t see why any brand or blog wouldn’t do the same. Just like Quantcast and Compete, Delicious can also be used to gauge popularity of any site (Ex. TechCrunch vs. Mashable or Apple vs. Microsoft).

Publishers :: although an app like Instapaper still has a small user base, it should be on your radar. In the same way the DVR has disrupted TV, apps like Instapaper that get rid of ads and place all the content on one page instead of 6 will continue to gain in popularity. The most frequently bookmarked articles on Instapaper and Delicious are also great places to get a sense of what people are reading and sharing online. Any publisher on Twitter can also see who’s favoring their tweets using Favstar.fm.

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Sep

28

Proof that it’s the year of mobile

Filed Under Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Mobile | Comments 

Yes, that’s sarcasm in the title. Here’s the latest: over 85,000 iPhone apps available, 10,000 apps for Android devices, 80 for Palm, and who knows how many for BlackBerry (update: someone heard me, it’s 2,500 apps).

As of right now, there isn’t a Brands category in any of these app stores and I don’t foresee that ever happening (wouldn’t really make sense anyway). As more big brands release mobile apps, it’s becoming harder to keep track of who is doing what.

subwayiphones2

So I created a Google spreadsheet to try and organize all these apps in one place. I’ve decided to only focus on the iPhone for now, but should be moving on to the rest soon if there is interest. I’m also probably missing a lot of apps right now but this will, of course, be an ongoing (and hopefully collaborative) effort.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE GOOGLE SPREADSHEET

Some trends

  1. Out of the 200+ apps listed so far, only about 15 have an average rating of 4 stars or better
  2. AndroLib shows 64% of all Android apps are rated 4 stars or better. Are branded apps in general worse or just on the iPhone? As soon as I build the Android list, we should have a better idea
  3. In general, it’s pretty obvious the total number of ratings should be a good indicator of the apps overall popularity (not downloads)
  4. The biggest category by far is Lifestyle, News being the second
  5. Brands are consistently improving apps because I rarely noticed an average overall rating that was lower than the latest version’s rating
  6. Not surprisingly, free dominates branded apps (about 90%)
  7. Top 5 most rated apps: Facebook, Zippo, Barclaycard, Weather Channel, and Google

Update: Steve Smith from MediaPost’s Mobile Insider wrote a great article titled Your Brand App Hit Parade that references my spreadsheet. Make sure to check it out if you didn’t come from there.

Please let me know what branded apps are missing by using this form or send me a reply on Twitter @jsmakr with the brand/app name.

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