Location Based Social Networking

A few people have said that this years Twitter is going to be Foursquare.  OK… So what it Foursquare (or the other similar site / application Gowalla)?  Basically speaking they are social networks of sorts that rely on two things: mobile phones and location.

That tells you nothing, right?  Basically once you’ve created a user account and loaded the application onto your handy dandy phone, you check in to what locations you happen to be at.  You can also keep track of contacts / friends and all that jazz.

Beyond that, there are some differences between Gowalla and Foursquare.

Foursquare is a mixture of GPS and address.  It uses the GPS location of the phone to look up the closest points to check into – the locations you can check into are address based.  Users can post tips or to-do’s at locations for other users to see.  The more points you check into or to-do’s a user does, they earn points that go onto a scoreboard between contacts as well as for your local community.  There are also badges based on benchmarks.  The points / competition part of Foursquare is kinda fun, but the best part is that you can see what other people think or recommendations for places (especially handy on restaurants).

Gowalla is more about GPS in terms of its location.  When you go to check in, it’s points are only as accurate as the GPS readings your phone / the towers you’re on at any given location.  The unique part of Gowalla is that you can drop / collect virtual items at any given location.  The rumor is that there can also be actual physical items at some locations (but I’ve only head of it once in San Fran).  Gowalla has things like stamps (the number of places you’ve checked into), pins (like badges in Foursquare), and trips (unique achievements in specific destinations and areas – none in my area).

Which one is better?  That’s completely subjective, but my opinion is Foursquare has the advantage at this point in secondary markets (I have no experience with either in a primary market city).  Why do I give Foursquare the advantage?  Three reasons.

1. GPS basis of Gowalla is not perfect.  I tried to check in somewhere (a popular lunch destination in downtown Indianapolis) only to be told that the location created for the place was about 0.5 km to my east, and thus I couldn’t check in despite being right there.  When I tried to create a new and correct spot, the map told me that I was three blocks away in another direction.  Putting in an address when creating a point may be less convenient than automatic GPS, but it’s more precise when your phone or local towers may be on the fritz.
2. Location points in Gowalla need to conform to specific categories, which aren’t always the most intelligent in their organization.
3. The drop / collect item feature of Gowalla is pretty annoying in a secondary market witout a strong userbase.  When you start up, you are given a number of of items, six I think.  When you create a spot, you’re recommended to place an item to become a “founder”.  Because there aren’t that many users in Indy, I’ve got only a few items because I keep entering spots.

Basically, foursquare is a little more refined and relies more on the user for thing like an address.  It’s a little less frilly than Gowalla, and doesn’t restrict based on an organizational hierarchy forced on the users.

So what’s the deal?  Why bother?  I’m not sure completely.  It’s something quick and easy to do that can also be a handy resource.  I enjoy both to a certain level, but they could both benefit from more local users (especially users that know what they’re doing).  As it is right now, I’m enjoying Foursquare and giving them both a little more time to increase the user base.

UPDATE (Jan 30, 2010): Foursquare has gone and taken any complaints I had and erased them (it’s now GPS based in adding locations in addition to the optional address – and it’s not as rigid in it’s gps check-in requirements).  Gowalla hasn’t improved at all, and I’m beginning to consider dropping it. I’ve began leaning more towards Foursquare, and I’ve got the mayorships to prove it.  There is another minor player on the iPhone – an app called CauseWorld.  Check into different locations, and you gain Karma points that you redeem for philanthropic purposes.   It’s a great thought, but it seems too good to be true.

Some Visitors of Note

Earlier this year, I had some metrics package active on my site. It never made the server switch. It was interesting to say the least, but it wasn’t really worth anything but entertainment for the time and energy put into it. Nevertheless, guess who visited my site before I stopped? Here’s the greatest hits:

• The United States Army Information Systems Command
• Department of Transportation
• Pepsi Cola Company / North America (PCNA)
• United States Naval Academy
• AAA of Washington
• Carmax
• Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Google (not the crawler, someone at the Mountain View office)
• Dell Computer Corporation

And my favorite is the due to the vagueness and frequent return visits:
Defense Contract Management Agency

This is not to freak anyone out, but I get the ability with my free metrics package to see the IP addresses of who is visiting my site. I don’t care who is, but it’s one of those things I find completely fascinating.

99% of the visitors are just locations and the name of the ISP (Cox Communication, SBC, Concast, etc.)… but those lucky individuals with registered IP’s get to let the world know who they are looking at…

Television and Entertainment Delivery

A little podcast let me know that Hulu was pondering about going to a subscription model next year, or soon thereafter.  This just got me to thinking about how we get and pay for all the entertainment we consume.

I’m all for paying for something that contains value.  The traditional TV model was that we paid for our content by being the consumer of advertisement that pays for the content to be produced.  Technology has been nudging it in a different way for a while.

Cable was the first straw.  It’s a club of sorts that you’re subscribing to.  The main source of revenue for cable subscribers followed by their own advertising placement.  The cable companies in-turn pay a fee to networks to distribute the content.  Different tiers cost more or less money and therefore contain more or less content for the consumer.

The ability to record (VHS) was the next straw.  This was a manner in which the consumer could record any broadcasted content and play it back at their discretion.  The how and why is a little individualistic, but it’s more than common to do it simply to skip the advertisements.

The file sharing boom changed the game.  Content was going everywhere with no discernible revenue going to the content provider.  There needed to be an answer, and the answer was online networks like Hulu which was not that far from a traditional advertising model.

So…  Hulu is thinking about going to a subscription for its content.  This really pisses me off.  Not only is Hulu hit and miss for the content it’s providing, but the only reason it succeeds is because it’s free.  I just tried to give a specific new show a chance and view the first episode, but it had been removed as it is not in the most recent five episodes and therefore not available to view online.  I guess they really don’t want a new viewer.

We currently have a satellite dish, and portions of our monthly bill go towards all the different networks.  I pay for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, MTV, and so many others on the list.  I even pay for channels that I never watch and wish I didn’t pay for.  So why should I be charged for content on the same content providers that I already pay for?  It’s total BS…

I just hope that someday people will get their heads out of their asses and offer a true a la carte solution.  I pick the exact channels I want to have on tap at any given moment.  If I subscribe to ABC, then why shouldn’t I be able to watch any piece of their content from past or present?  Maybe I pay a higher rate for less advertisements…  What about the option of paying me for being a consumer of commercials?

I understand that companies need to make money where they can, but you want to do it smartly that can encourage growth and a loyal user base…  Oh well…

UPDATE: of course a few days of posting this, I learn that Apple is shopping a subscription plan for watching television shows.  The rumor was that for something like $30 a month, a user would have unlimited access to viewing television shows.  It’s an interesting idea…

Viral Quantity vs. Quality (content, not flu)

So two things got me thinking about viral videos this past week.  One was a friend’s post about viral video at the IMA’s Blog (link), and the other was a list of all YouTube videos with over 100 million views (link).

After absorbing all that I think the whole notion of a video being viral is dying for two reasons: the massive penetration of the internet and the creators of the content.

The Content
Viral content online was made into a buzz-worthy phenomena  mostly because of the novelty of the distribution.  Take for example the types of viral videos that were most popular in the early days of YouTube (the most responsible site for the distribution of viral content) – it was mostly random acts of ludicrous items which was partially a product of, or responsible for, the MTV Jackass type of content.  While this type of content can still achieve lots of views, the most viewed content BY FAR is produced content…

Just look at the list of the videos over 100 million views. The vast majority of the list is highly produced video content.  While a few are considered “user generated”, most of those are professional entertainers.  Only one is probably an unscripted moment caught on video.

Internet Proliferation
Where previously viral referred to a video with an exponential rise in views in a short video of time, I think it’s almost evolved into being thought of as something more to do with how much of the internet-going population is exposed to the content in terms of hits or metrics.  So while it may be more common for a video to get a million views, the vast increase of users in general trolling the internet content every minute has diminished the value of a million views.

Then there’s metrics, of which we have both too much and not enough depending on your outlook.  Want a weird case study about this?  Take the Rick Rolling phenomenon.  Because of the multiple locations of that single piece of content spread across the entire internet, it is not accurately represented in total hits.  But that’s also misrepresented because the vast majority of those people who got Rick Rolled navigated away after a very short time.  Especially if they got hit multiple times.

Quantity vs. Quality
The problem with this fixation on hits is the whole notion of quantity vs. quality in terms content penetration.  Some create content just for the sake of hits, but it’s completely different for those creating content for the sake of driving revenue, commerce, or true interest for any reason…  In that instance, the focus should obviously be on quality of content.  If you make content for a business that gets 10,000 hits with little to no content retention, it will be of very little benefit to the business.  In most cases, it’d be better to create content that generated a few hundred hits with a higher rate of retention – it will have a much higher return of investment.

lack of originality

So in watching this most recent episode of Diggnation (#199), I was very quickly pissed at one of the hosts (Alex Albrecht) for a project he’s undertaken.  He’s part of a team creating an iPhone app that’s just of a dog licking a screen (so it looks like your iPhone has a little dog inside it licking the glass from the inside).  It has the oh so creative name if iLick.  Sounds like one of those little apps that you don’t really care about, but you know there are countless others out there willing to drop a buck or two to have this on their phone for whatever reason…

But anyway, here’s the rub.  This is exactly like a web site/video with a claimed copyright of 2005 (link).  So someone else did it years ago.  That shows a lack of originality on the part of the app developers.  It gets worse in my opinion due to the fact that one of the two major podcasts Albrecht co-hosts featured the video just referenced over a year ago (Diggnation #136).

I have no idea what level of intellectual property protection is available to the original creators, but regardless of that it shows an overt hijacking of an idea for profit.  Sure, it’ll be on a small scale with little to no profit for the developers – but its the disregard for the originality of someone else’s idea that tick’s me off…  And I know you can make the argument that his idea is different in specific ways – but it’s pretty clear that this idea looks a hell of a lot like another piece of media as well as his becoming specifically aware of it a long time ago in a very public forum.

So that got me to thinking about the whole notion of inspiration, borrowing, infringing, and stealing in terms of originality.  That’s the whole purpose behind intellectual property laws, but intellectual property protection is so weak and useless unless you have lots of money to fund lawyers to establish and enforce such protection.  To that end, intellectual property protection is a luxury to an extent…  Sure, it’s inherent once you create something – but to protect it and enforce it takes more time and money than most have…

Using or taking the original ideas of others has advanced a lot of things…  Television…  Electricity…  Transportation…  Computers…  While the act of doing so may be  accepted to an extent, it is a definite window into the character of a person or company.

This is probably my biggest frustration and concern over all things internet based.  Once you put something out there, there’s no 100% way to ensure that whatever you create won’t be stolen or misused to whatever ends.  I love the creative commons movement, but it’s still got a ways to go.

Metrics Ton

Everywhere I turn, there’s metrics.  I’m a metric of sorts, as you are.  Everyone and everything has the possibility of being a metric.  So without beating around the metaphorical bush anymore, metric is a construct for a unit of measure.  The use I’m referring to is the application of metrics to study habit online.

Looking at online metrics wasn’t anything I learned in my fancy school, but it’s just coming up more and more so I began digging around in my tiny online tide pool.

It’s completely fascinating!

First you have to realize the limited scope that I’m talking about.  I currently look at metrics for my site and for my Flickr account.  Since I started looking at it very recently, my blog has ranged from around 5 to 50+ hits in a day.  The typical count is somewhere in the 10-20 hits a day range…  This depends heavily on the blog topic du jour or the happenings elsewhere producing a spike in a search term that leads to my site.  My Flickr stream has spiked upwards of 350 hits a day, but it typically gets something like 50-60 hits a day.  Hits on Flickr can also depend on many things.

Given my limited scope of visitors, the statistics aren’t really able to be generalized widely.  Why?  Because the sample is too small which has made outliers more prevalent…  Proof? The search term leading people to my blog the title of THIS POST because people misspell what they’re looking for.  I find that to be very funny.  On Flickr, my most popular image [shown] has over 4,200 views right now mostly because it was utilized by a search engine as a result when the search term is “tattoo”.

So it’s not meaningful data at all…  But that doesn’t mean that digging into the stuff isn’t really interesting…

Looking at how people view your images on Flickr based on the content, your tags, or submission to groups.  Sometimes I’ll take an image I love, and it’ll do nothing.  Sometimes I’ll post an image I don’t really care much about and it’ll get a ton of views for who knows what reasons.

On the blog, there are three interesting things.

1. The spike in activity if I mention particular brands.  This happened especially when blogged about two things: my distaste for the Gatorade re-brand, and our experience at Carmax.  I know that because I got hits from watchdog groups, and individuals at the corporate level for those companies.
2. The second is the application of AdSense that I’ve previously blogged about.
3. The third is the seemingly random visitors from odd places.  I’ve got a map of unique locations of the visitors.  Here’s a link to a google map [click] with markers in unique locations that have visited my site.

I can go a lot farther into the metrics, but not without spending too much time on inconsequential stuff and/or paying for the right to do so.  It’s really interesting to think about the implications – but it’s equally scary and sad.  You know the whole Minority Report scenario.  Metrics are usually taken way to far in trying to pidgeonhole as many people as possible to increase the income of a corporation.

For better or worse, it seems to be here to stay.

random internets 090227

Random stories from my small sphere

• Stupid policy in action: Microsoft defends “Don’t ask – Don’t tell” for Xbox live members
• Just read the first paragraph: Kindles and “creative machines” blur boundaries of copyright
• Feline exercise
• A writeup on 15 twitter directories

A good way to waste at least 10 minutes
A lot of trailers were posted on Apple Trailers since I left work yesterday…  A Denzel-Travolta vehicle…  Some independent drama/comedy starring Zooey Deschanel and John Goodman among others… An anti-poverty film.  A yoga documentary.  Seth Rogen in a different mall cop movie…  The Dragonball movie everyone’s been waiting for (except me that is)…  And to top it all off – a new Matthew McConaughey vehicle.

the modern chain letter

I’ve only participated in a few of the notes on Facebook.  Most of them are much like those personality inventories or random questions that we used to get when email was a novel implementation into daily life.  The same stuff was on MySpace, and now it’s time for Fakebook…

I usually don’t participate for two main reasons.  First is that I put enough personal information here, and I don’t want that much more personal info just hanging in the internets…  I can’t impress upon you enough the archiving power of the internet (I’m not being paranoid, just realistic).  The second is that I have a hard time asking others to spend their time on something so…  trivial.

Having said that, am I alone in that I actually really like filling these things out?  Introspective exercises, both meaningful and trivial, are things I like to do quite a lot.  Despite my enjoyment of filling these things out, I usually only send them back to the person who asked me to participate or delete it after I’ve done it.

Oh yeah…  My NASCAR name according to “the name game” that I was tagged on in Facebook? Dick Arthur.

Re-hash

I know I’ve brought it up before, but it keeps coming back up.  It’s just so odd the reach of social networking.

Of course the monolith of choice right now is Facebook.  I remember a few years ago when MySpace was the monolith.  I was pretty surprised about the people I found and that found me there.  It’s been almost ten times the number of such people on Facebook.

And it’s so weird to me.  I have a lot of close friends on Facebook.  I have a lot of other friends present and past that I wish were on there.

But there’s just a lot of other people.  Some were old friends.  Some were barely acquaintances.  Some are people I never put into the friend or acquaintance category.  I just wish there was some way to designate the level of relationship and then give access to information based on the relationship level.

But I have this reoccurring thoughts that both technology and social networks are in the process of changing how we live our lives as we get older and the technology evolves faster than our understanding of it’s effect on society at large.  Sorry if it sounds a little cliche, but we’re treading in uncharted waters.  Think of the generations not too long ago that only communicated based on proximity.  Now I’m a few keystrokes from touching base with a friend from 5th grade.  The implications are pretty weird depending on how you look at it.

vlingo is the… it’s cool.

Thanks Lance for pointing me towards this one…  Vlingo is an application that converts voice commands to handy dandy commands for your smart phone.

If you’ve got a BlackBerry or an iPhone, you need to get vlingo.  It’s available for BlackBerry’s free (point your browser to vlingo.com and follow the instructions – have your model number and OS version to spped things up).  You can get it at the app store for your iPhone, but since I’m not that cool I don’t know whether it’s free or not.

I think those are the only phones it’s on at the moment, but I’m sure it’s being developed for Android and maybe even HTC or Windows Mobile.

What makes it so cool? I can ask it to call people in my address book.  I can ask it to email people in my address book.  I can have it do a search on specific search engines for whatever.  I can even have it Twitter directly from voice…  It does more that I’m not going into here…  It’s very cool for a free application.

No, I’m not getting paid blog this…  I just think it’s pretty darn cool.  Get it if you can…

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