FootFeed: The Ultimate GeoSocial Checkin App?

I love the entire concept of GeoSocial apps. I really do. For me the fascination begins with the truly amazing connections you can solidify with your friends & the world. They have this intangible quality to increase the importance to the location itself. Also, let’s not forget about the implications for the future of Social Media and mobile marketing industries. But for all the really great things about GeoSocial checkins, there are a few of things I’ve got to get out of my system.

The first thing I can’t stand is: Playing favorites with my location based apps. Between Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Latitude, etc. there’s a veritable forest of apps & services to choose from out there. Call me crazy, but I want to be the mayor, build up my points, and connect with all my friends in all my networks in one shot. I hate checking in more than once to a place using separate networks. Secondly, It takes way too long and kills your battery power from all the notifications that your phone sends and receives to stay connected to all these different networks. The last and worst aspect is that it takes away from the experience of being outdoors or with friends, the show, that song, that building, that moment of realizing you’re in love, etc. It insulates you as if you are still in front of the computer at home.

SHOCKER ALERT: It makes you look anti-social. GASP! The irony…

Think about it, if your spending a good 5-10 minutes trying to get that damn WiFi signal to work, so that you can checkin to that really awesome bar/restaurant/art gallery/dentist office/bar-mitzvah, that you forget you have someone talking to you or worse you’re on a date! I honestly try hard NOT to be THAT guy. (Am I successful at it? If you ask my fiancé, I’m sure she would have some choice words to say on the subject.)

But all kidding aside, location based apps rock and we all love to use them, but I don’t want to play favorites and I don’t want to be THAT hipster douche-bag guy, pretentiously holding his hand-made wooden covered iPhone, completely absorbed and isolated from reality. I want to engage the moment, not a machine. Microcosmic dilemmas call for uber-solutions. Enter: FootFeed.

FootFeed is a location based app that allows you to checkin to a whole bunch of GeoSocial networks at once! When you checkin, you still get credit as if you checked-in by logging in to each network individually. Currently, you can add 6 networks, plus FootFeed, equals 7 networks in 1! It has API integration with Twitter & Facebook. It’s pretty much the ultimate GeoSocial checkin app. It’s not quite perfect, just yet! As some networks do not have certain locations on file and you have add them to your checkin. If they had integration w/ SCVNGR, Loopt, and many other minor networks, this could really be a great tool for any Social Media Consultant.

But overall, BRAVO to the fellas over at FootFeed! No more wasted battery life. No more 5-10 minute checkins to 7 networks or having to make the decision of which one to choose. Most importantly, no more douche-bag behavior! My fiancé will love that one the most.

Download it for free for your iPhone, here.

(Question: Because of my new found affinity, does this mean I’m now a FootFeed Fiend?)

Byte Back!

Tags: api, brightkite, checkins, foursquare, geosocial, google latitude, gowalla, iphone, iPhone app, latitude, loopt, SCVNGR, Social Media, social media consulting
Posted in: Facebook, Foursquare, GeoSocial, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Posts, Twitter |

Comments: 62 Comments

October 2010 Linkedin Poll: Would you allocate any portion of your Internet Marketing budget towards Twitter’s new proposed advertising plan?

For October 2010, I chose this question for my Linkedin Poll: Would you allocate any portion of your Internet Marketing budget towards Twitter‘s new proposed advertising plan? With Twitter’s pending advertising platform in the near future to be unveiled, will anyone use it?

This sort of reminds me of the early days of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising through Google and Yahoo. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firms sprouted up left and right, as businesses didn’t want to or didn’t know how to properly control any aspect of their online budgets. The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry was relatively small and unknown. However, as time went on more and more businesses woke up from their PPC Crack-pipe reality. (imagine: a crackhead trying to get off crack. Now imagine a business that has been duped into believing their PPC campaign is driving all their online traffic to their site. That’s the PPC crack-pipe.)

Many realized that SEM firms would skew the numbers and making obscene profits from overcharging. From this chaos, sprouted the SEO industry full force, and carried with it many disenfranchised former SEM clients as the PPC Crack-pipe alternative.

Here’s a twist for you…Who is to say that something similar to this can’t happen within Social Media, within Twitter to be precise? This parable could totally be applicable to SMM (Social Media Marketing). Could these paid and sponsored tweets give rise to yet another sub-sub-industry that is within the SMM sub-industry? Are you confused yet? Am I using to many three-lettered abbreviations beginning with the letter S?

To simplify…think SEO for SMM. What would this sub-sub-industry be called? I think: OSM (Organic Social Marketing) Sounds odd right? Paying a company to tweet out “seemingly” organic statements and links, instead of ‘in your face’ sponsored ads? You know what? I’ve seen and heard of stranger industries.

There is an industry for anything, especially online marketing.

With that as a possible perspective, would you do a paid advertising campaign through Twitter, like a PPT (Pay-Per-Tweet) kind of marketing? Or would you go with an organic approach with an OSM firm?

(Please note that not all SEM firms are guilty of price gouging, but speaking as a former client that hired quite a few firms over the years…it’s safe to say a hell of a lot of them did and still do.)

Let me know what you think. Byte back!

Tags: internet marketing, online marketing, Paid Search, pay per click, PPC, search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, SEM, SEO, SMM, Social Media, social media marketing, Twitter
Posted in: Google, Internet Marketing Consulting, Online Search, Organic Search, Paid Search, SEO / SEM, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Twitter |

Comments: 1,040 Comments

Why “The New Twitter” is better than “The Old Twitter”, Part I: The Layout.

So here we are, it’s October of 2010 and “The New Twitter” is here. It’s been some time since Twitter had an overhaul. This is not just a cosmetically vapid surface face-lift, tummy tuck, or hair plug implant they’ve done. From the ground up this is a totally new Twitter. Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding more posts detailing other new changes at Twitter. Part I is a quick overview of the Home screen layout.

The Layout: It’s most immediate and obvious change that you will see. (Click the images to enlarge them.)

Twitter’s previous layout basically split the screen in half in terms of functionality. Tweets on one side and basically everything else on the other side. In theory this sounds nice, but like communism it only works on paper. The major problem with the older layout was that when Twitter introduced Lists, it quickly cluttered up the right half of your Home screen if you follow many lists and destroyed the harmonious empty balance that we have all come to love. I have good news though. That balance is back!

When looking at The New Twitter layout, you’ll see a new Navigation bar at the top with the Search field built into it. Hallelujah! (I’ve always disliked having the Search functionality in the middle of the screen and on the right-hand side of all places!) Everything seems to flow a hell of a lot more smoothly. Tweets are still on the left hand side, but above them various sub navigation is now available horizontally: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches, and Lists. All the information on the right hand side is now compartmentalized into groups of information, as opposed to the old way where stuff was basically list on right side of the screen. I love the clear delineation of space given to each section there. Everything has importance and value. If you simply list everything one after the other, it really doesn’t give you the sense that each of these elements have relevance to you. Sections like: Your Tweets, Following, Followers, Favorites, Listed, Trends, Who to follow, now have room to breathe and yet at the same time save viewing space.

One of the many things I like about this upgrade is, how Twitter is slowly integrating it into the mainstream. I think they have learned from Digg‘s recent Public Relations version upgrade fiasco to Digg 4. (What a nightmare for Kevin Rose & company…not to mention the Digg Community at large.)

…and this is just the home screen that I’ve been writing about!

All of this observational reporting is great, but where’s the analysis? Ahhhhh…the part of the story where I squeeze the blood from the stone. This new layout will enable users to work more productively and efficiently. It might sound like mere split seconds, but they add up. This takes away the clutter and confusion. It will simply be easier to use and far more effective as a tool for any type of user. The ones who will most benefit from this upgrade will be those who are completely new to Twitter as well as a power user like a: Social Media Consultant, Social Media Marketer, SEO / SEM Firms, or any business that has a Social Media presence online.

Discover “The New Twitter” for yourself and try it out for a day or two. You can always switch back to the previous layout for now. Embrace change and use it to your advantage to achieve your goals.

Why “The New Twitter” is better than “The Old Twitter”, Part II: Functionality…coming soon.

Byte Back! and let me know your opinion.

Tags: Comparison, Social Media, social media consultant, social media consulting, social media marketing, Social Media Posts, social networking, Twitter, Updates
Posted in: Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Posts, Twitter |