Social media is a value exchange, and the exchange of value requires common currency.
In 2008, we conducted social media workshops for a number of clients. Below is Part III of the full-day presentation (also see Part I and Part II).
In Part III, we dive into the four types of social media currency. This may not be an exhaustive list, but it covers a broad swath of the social media economy.
Social media value comes in the form of various types of currency. Cash is not one of them.
Just as cash was once backed by gold, each of these is backed by corresponding value.
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Social media is a value exchange, and the exchange of value requires common currency.
In 2008, we conducted social media workshops for a number of clients. Below is Part II of the full-day presentation (also see Part I.).
The second part of the workshop introduces the concept of a social economy—the economy in which social currencies are exchanged.
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Social media is a value exchange, and the exchange of value requires common currency.
In 2008, we conducted social media workshops for a number of clients. Below is Part I of the full-day presentation.
Admittedly, we encountered many blank stares when suggesting social media success amounted to trading in various types of non-cash currencies. For the most part, these people were expecting tutorials on using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs. And if we hadn’t gotten sidetracked with other projects, that would have certainly been part of the second workshop. But before one can understand how to effectively use these individual tools, one has to understand how and why they’re used in the first place.
This first section defines the social media landscape. We’d been using terms like Web 2.0, the social web, and social media fairly interchangeably. This attempts to clarify. Again, this was in 2008.
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Giving Twitter credit for effectively spinning off companies like Foursquare, Gowalla, Plancast, GetGlue, and Foodspotting.
Happy Days is one of the most successful and iconic sitcoms of all time. This idealized portrayal of life in the ’50s and ’60s ran from 1974 to 1984. It gave us the Fonz, the term “jumping the shark”, and a bevy of spin-off series. In fact, few shows have had as much success in spinning off other hit shows as Happy Days.
The shows Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy each had successful runs and launched the careers of Penny Marshall and Robin Williams respectively. Then there was Joani Loves Chachi and the less successful career of ’80s teen idol Scott Baio. In each case, the main characters were introduced and developed on Happy Days. Audiences got to know them. Producers undoubtedly tested them for breakout potential, and the spin-off shows debuted with built-in familiarity. By and large, the same phenomenon is happening with Twitter.
Yes indeed, Twitter will be remembered not only for its own success but for that of so many successful spin-offs including Foursquare, Gowalla, Plancast, GetGlue, and Foodspotting to name a few. To be clear, we are not referring to the cottage industry of companies built on the Twitter platform such as TwitPic, TweetDeck, or TweetUp. These are part of the broader Twitter ecosystem. They’re part of the main show. The companies we have in mind are entirely independent of Twitter but were spun off based on the behaviors Twitter pioneered and made popular.
How is this possible? Well, the Twitter platform is as simple as it is brilliant. It appeals to our narcissistic tendencies. It is the lowest common denominator for most of the connected universe, a place to voice our opinions and potentially have them affirmed. It’s a place to vent and promote and seek acceptance. It’s no wonder how successful it’s become nor how much influence it’s had on how people use Facebook. The problem is that the Twitter platform (nay, the Twitter experience) is a mile wide and an inch deep. It does so much in terms of sharing and linking information that it’s impossible for Twitter to satisfy our deeper needs—to satisfy every narcissistic niche, if you will. It simply lacks the features and infrastructure. So quite naturally, new companies have responded to the demand. Here are five that fit the bill.
Foursquare and Gowalla
Before there was Foursquare and Gowalla there were tweets about your current location. Isn’t that what a checkin is? It’s a tweet about where you are at the moment, yes? If you tweet that you’re at the Starbucks on Main Street, those who (a) know you, (b) follow you, and/or (c) live near you will know exactly where you are. They certainly don’t need a map, and you never needed a badge or mayorship to prompt this type of tweeting. It followed naturally from the question, “What are you doing?” The problem is that Twitter does a thousand other things. It’s impossible to see only tweets about your friends’ current whereabouts. Hence, the need for services like Foursquare and Gowalla, which include very specific feature sets that make checkins, i.e. tweets about where you are, more useful and meaningful. These services go deep into this vertical tweet niche. So it ought to be acknowledged that the rapid success of Foursquare and Gowalla has a lot to do with the behavior Twitter established. Dodgeball? Sorry, the widespread consumer behavior wasn’t established there.
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This post was written by Rob Reed. He is the founder of MomentFeed, a location-based marketing, strategy, and technology firm.
Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.
Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.
Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn’t been the technology itself but how we’ve used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.
Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We’ve decentralized media production and distribution. We’re doing the same for energy. And we’ll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.
The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us—namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:
1. Checking in for Good: If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it’s that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships, and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded “societies” to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful checkins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility, and civic engagement. Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it’s not about cause-worthy places.
2. Eating Locally: Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one “eat nothing—or almost nothing—but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home.” Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there’s a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer’s markets, and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer’s market but through them. All the while identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.
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