With so much coverage of Foursquare lately (not just by me), I’ve had several people ask me what Foursquare is. Foursquare is an application for your phone that allows you to see where your friends are and tell them where you are. It also has a game aspect because you earn points and badges for checking in to new places, submitting new places and accomplishing certain tasks. Businesses are excited about Foursquare because it gives them a way to see who is frequenting their locations, as well as market to people who are nearby. Most importantly, Foursquare gives businesses the opportunity to reward their loyal customers, as well as have those loyal customers recommend the business to their friends.
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Jun
23
2009
Create a Free Mobile Website with Winksite and Keep All The Revenue Too
If you’re in the market for a quick and easy mobile website, Winksite is worth a look. A free account allows you to create up to 5 different mobile sites, which can each be customized from Winksite’s library of functionality (which they call channels). Creating a site is as easy as giving it a name and a unique url (all linked off of winksite.com), and choosing what types of content you want to offer on your site. The creation process starts with up to 3 pages of text, an option to mobilize your blog (via RSS), and choices from the community & collaboration channels (such as events, feeds, notes, chat, forum, surveys, guestbooks, and links). You have the option of whether your site appears in Winksite’s directory and under what category and location (and content rating).
The interesting part of a Winksite mobile site is all the community functions (channels) you can include to increase return engagement. Such channels include a journal, feeds, links, events, reports, notes, chat, forum, surveys, zine, and guestbook to create an almost Facebook-like social site around your mobile site. You can also invite people to become members of your site, send broadcasts to members and send messages to other winksite’s.
Winksite currently does not offer any statistics other than basics (visits, members), but David Harper, Founder of Winksite, mentioned that may be a revenue model they’ll pursue in the near future. Winksite integrates with several different mobile advertising platforms, including Google AdSense, admob, admoda and others. You can control which channels ads showup on, as well as ad frequency and placement (top, botton, random, or top & bottom). 100% of the revenue collected from advertising is retained by the site owner, who can also create what are called self-service ads to advertise sponsors or self-promotions.
While their terms of service clearly says the Winksite’s service is for non-commercial use only, Harper says that they have many commercial sites using the service and have no problem with other commercial organizations using the site. Harper’s long term goal is to get as many eyeballs on their mobilized sites as possible and build value eventually (he compared their business plan to Google’s). Winksite has allowed Harper and parent company, Wireless Ink Corporation, to gather deep consumer insights into the mobile market, which they use for other paid services they offer and are developing (mobile sharing/consulting, etc.). With over 60,000 publishers, including large companies such as Warner, Nokia, and Atlantic records, Winksite’s services are probably “safe” for use for other companies.
Give Winksite a try and let me know what you think.
Technorati tags: winksite, mobile, marketing, mobile advertising, business
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Jun
12
2009
Tetherball – A Thousand Times Worse Than Loyalty Cards
As you may be aware – I hate loyalty cards. I think they’re a pain in the butt and offer way more reward to the company than to me. I don’t mind loyalty programs, but I want the burden to be on the company to keep track of what I’ve purchased and my rewards. This may be what led to the development of Tetherball, which is a service that connects mobile advertising & marketing directly with individual consumers via a small rfid chip on their mobile devices. Marketers and advertisers seem to be estatic about the possibilities, but to me, it sounds a thousand times worse than loyalty cards.
Security Issues
While it sounds convenient to have a sticker on your mobile device that can interact with devices at a store, there’s usually very little security in current rfid technology. This means that anyone with the proper device can read the information that’s stored on the rfid chip. There’s no way for the owner of the mobile phone to turn off the rfid or control what information is on it or who can access it. There’s also nothing to stop the store that gave you the chip from tracking you in places you may not know about.
Awareness Issues
I wonder just how much people who are using these rfid devices understand how the company is using their information. Are they aware of the possible security and privacy risks? Are the companies devulging any of these possible issues?
Scaling Issues
Even if you like the idea of a rfid chip for a loyalty program, how is it going to work when all the loyalty programs start doing it? Is your mobile device going to be covered in stickers? Just think about how many loyalty cards many people carry – watch the next lady with a big purse shuffle through a card deck looking for the proper card. Will the companies be able to access the information on the other chips?
Transferability Issues
What happens when you get a new mobile device? Will you be able to transfer the sticker to the new device? Probably not. So you’ll have to go through some sort of new sticker transfer process. What if you have multiple devices? Depending on how the technology is implemented, there may be issues with controlling who is actually using the loyalty chip.
Less Invasive Technology
It seems like there would be less invasive ways to use mobile technology for loyalty programs. Many new phones are smartphones – or Internet enabled, which means they’re able to connect to an Internet website. Many also have the ability to connect to wireless hotspots. As the price for these devices comes down, more people will have them. A company could use their wireless network in-store to easily create the same sort of loyalty programs without having the issues presented above in an rfid chip.
What Would You Do?
Is there a company you trust enough to put a rfid chip on your phone? Are you concerned about your privacy and security of your information? What do you think?
(photo by grey pumpkin @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: tetherball, loyalty programs, mobile, marketing, mobile advertising, business, reward programs
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May
27
2009
Mobile & iPhone Versions of Sazbean.com in Just Minutes with MoFuse
I’ve been investigating various mobile applications and services, and one of the most fascinating are services that easily create mobile versions of websites. As more people have smartphones, it will be extremely important to have a website that is usable on mobile devices (and others). Luckily, RSS feeds make it very easy to port content across different platforms.
Previously I took at look at Unity Mobile, which was fast, but I enjoyed the experience with MoFuse much more. Creating the site was as easy as giving the RSS link for my blog, uploading a logo and changing some colors. The interface was very similar to WordPress or other blogging software. I was able to preview the site before it launched, and there’s a WordPress plugin which will automatically direct mobile traffic to the MoFuse site. I can also monetize the mobile site with ads (revenue sharing) and MoFuse has neat features like click-to-call. For the full review, head over to New Media Hub.
The Sazbean.com mobile site is here.
iPhone Sazbean app can be found here.
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May
18
2009
Need Quick Mobile Site? With Unity Mobile, Be Up in Ten Minutes
I played around with setting up a Unity Mobile site last week for a review I wrote over at New Media Hub. While the article is geared towards media publishers, I think it has some good info for anyone interested in creating a mobile website. And as the title of this article says, I was able to create one in about ten minutes.
Priced at $99/month, Unity Mobile provides all the tools for local media companies to create a mobile site fast. By using their templates, adding some images, text, and RSS feeds, a publisher can create and activate a mobile website in around 10 minutes. Revenue is generated via CPM or CPC based advertising networks with 50% of the revenue going to the publisher. While publishers cannot sell their own advertising, Unity’s system is ideal for local media who want to concentrate on delivering their content on mobile devices without worrying about finding advertisers. – Quick Mobile Site? Unity Mobile is up in ten minutes – Sarah Worsham – New Media Hub
You can try out Unity Mobile for free. They have 30 day trials, but even without the trial, you won’t be charged until your site actually goes live. If you happen to give Unity Mobile a try, I’d love to hear how it works for you.
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Mar
09
2009
Why I Have to Have a Smartphone but Can't Live Without My iPhone
Not only do I work online, but I pretty much live online. I use web-based applications for just about everything – email, calendar, documents, networking, etc. It’s much easier to have information available online from any computer than have to rely on having my laptop all the time. However, the drawback is needing some way to connect to that information without a computer – a smartphone. Ever since my first blackberry I’ve been hooked on smartphones and having all the information I want at any time with a touch of a button.
Recently Aaron and I finally got iPhones, and now I wonder why we waited so long. Obviously there have been benefits to having a device that has been upgraded a few times since it first came out. But the functionality and design of the iPhone makes me wish my computer worked as elegantly (and as a Mac it does come close). I have yet to run into something I can do on my laptop that I can’t do on the iPhone. Granted, there are a few things I would rather do on my laptop – and typing long blog articles is certainly one of them. I also know there are some limitations of the iPhone, but I have yet to run into one that I really care about.
Carrying around the iPhone makes it easy to stay connected to my network and clients, so I’m not as concerned with being away from my computer while I attend business or networking events. And unlike a lot of technology, the iPhone never seems to get in my way. It’s as easy to use and fun to play with as my first computer way back in the 19**’s. What other technology can you say that about?
(photo by Panduka Senaka @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: iphone, mobile, mobile web, business, smartphone
Feb
19
2009
Should You Worry About Mobile Users?
Aaron’s post yesterday was inspired by the fact that one of his father’s friends now has an iphone. Sure, a lot of our friends have iphones, but they tend to be tech people and early adopters. When a technology reaches our parent’s generation, it generally means it has reached a more accepted position – and this is especially important because our parents are Baby Boomers, many of whom are in decision-making, purchase-making positions.
So, should you worry about mobile users on your business website? It depends. Does your intended audience view your website with a mobile device? With the popularity of the iphone, smartphones have reached further into the consumer market. Before, most of mobile web use was by Blackberry users, who were generally business users.
Even if your site’s users aren’t using mobile devices yet, they probably will be within a few years. So, it may be a good idea to at least take a look at the mobile market – or at least put on your todo list.
(photo by Gaetan Lee @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: mobile, mobile web
Feb
18
2009
iPhone apps are this decade's dotcoms
Anyone remember the late 90′s hype over dotcom names? Everyone was clawing their neighbors and friends to stake their claim on some dotcom property like they were ’49ers in a gold rush prospector’s fever dream. Back then it wasn’t unusual to sit down for a haircut and have the barber pitch you on his new dotcom hair-related venture that was an absolute lock to make him and his investors GDP-of-Mexico kind of money. Does that irrational exuberance ring a bell? If you didn’t get to experience that fun in the 90′s don’t worry, you can see the mini-sequel being played out in the iPhone App Store right now.
Here are the things I’ve read in the last two days that have hearkened me back to a crazier time when sock puppets pitched pet food.
- Casinos are on alert that iPhones are being used to count cards. That in its self is unsurprising, money and technology are happy roommates in the criminal youth hostel that is Vegas. The hype portion of the story is that because its being done on the shiny iPhone with an app available over the app store it is now news.
- iFart and ‘Pull my Finger’, two highbrow apps that were clearly made instead of that business productivity suite the creators ‘totally planned on’, have landed in a civil court case over trademark infringement. This story hit CNN.
- A nine year old kid in Singapore just released his first iPhone app, which was a huge hit to the tune of 4,000 downloads. That was even before the free press got a hold of the story. Now expect to see Apple pushing Objective C as a supplement to Oregon Trail in our public school computer classes (not that the Apple 2e’s many schools have could even run xCode)
- Average Joe makes $600 grand a month on the iPhone application he made in his spare time. Not that there is anything average about Ethan Nicholas, the Sun software developer who wrote and aptly marketed his iShoot game and got a whole bunch of lucky when it took off big. No, the ‘Average Joe’ part is what everyone reading the short news blurb will hear in their head, as in ‘if he can do it so can I’, thereby fueling the next big surge of iPhone Programming for Dummies books.
All this hype is fun to watch but there are a couple things that I suspect will come if this bubble is anything like the 90′s. First I envision corporate boards around the world calling up their marketing department asking to get their logo branded on an iPhone app that does ‘something hip and cool’, never mind that its a paper company in Nova Scotia who’s clients still use rotary dial phones. Then there will be the requests by friends and family to help them with their vanity app consisting entirely of coverflow pictures of their cat (free to download, $35 bucks for the upgrade). Finally, like the 90′s, it will all end when the one billionth iPhone app is released and the only company to actually still make money is the in the business of indexing all the apps and selling ads next to the results.
Google and Microsoft announced similar app stores for their mobile operating systems, coming soon. The real question everyone is asking themselves is will important applications like iFart be cross-platform supported. One can only hope.
Photo attributed to Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake
Technorati tags: iphone, iphone apps, iphone applications, mobile, apple, software
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