Why MyTown Should Add Virtual To Their Product Check In Arsenal

Booyah's MyTown just started implementing product check ins to its 2.5 million user base, adding a bit of Foursquare-like functionality to their app.  Scanning item barcodes earn users points and the potential for real life perks, giving retailers the ability to track consumer patterns, geo-local info and more.

TheNextWeb praised the value of this kind of data, but said that MyTown will both suffer and reap the rewards of needing to stay tied to physical location.  As it stands, app owners need to actually scan the barcodes on the products they want to track, meaning they have to be standing in an actual store to check in. This plays into the geo-location trend well, but if I were MyTown I would be looking beyond the strings of physicality.

I will admit I have never played MyTown's Monopoly like game and so I don't know the gameplay implications of adding virtual checkins, but let's put gameplay aside for the sake of spelling out the huge e-commerce opportunity here:

Imagine if product check ins could also take place online.  Any participating retailer could add something like a QR code badge to their online product pages so that users could check in with online retailers as well as in physical stores.  Retailers could gather a more complete data set for where consumers are discovering and lusting after products and with every online partnership MyTown gains increased visibility.  

At first people would see the badge on product pages and wonder, possibly downloading the app and jumping on board.  Then, if the app delivers on its promises, people get hooked, more retailers join the bandwagon, and virtual MyTown badges become the e-commerce version of Facebook's Like buttons on the web.  Looks like MyTown could be poised to Run This Town Tonight.

 

 

Posted via email from LaurenProctor's Thinking Posterous

Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software

via youtube.com

Amy Jo Kim reviews the psychology and system thinking behind game design.

Imagine a world where we applied these principles to our real lives in ways that allow us to thrive in everyday workplace activities.

Posted via web from LaurenProctor's Thinking Posterous

A Brief History of Social Media

Check out this website I found at socialmediarockstar.com

Posted via web from LaurenProctor's Thinking Posterous

Brand Rankings of Luxury and Social Media Competence

I may work for LuxuryLab and therefore hold some bias, but this unprecedented study and subsequent ranking of 109 brands and their digital competency (especially related to the luxury industry) is worth checking out.

Download it here (after spending lots of time on our website where you can stay abreast of luxury news).

Still think I'm biased and trying to coerce you into yet another reading assignment you don't have time for? Then listen to AdAge, Jeremiah Owyang (overall guru, author of Groundswell and partner at Altimeter Group), or Hwanjin 'David' Choi, a Seoul, Korea based Tweeter who said something I don't understand about the Digital IQ Index but marks the first person I know of to spread the research internationally. (Serves me right, for my ignorant American bilingual nature. If his Tweet was negative, at least he was gracious enough to add the link.)

Whatever the case, check it out. If you do anything related to branding or online media it's truly worth your while.

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Awesome New Music Find: UK based master of fun, Jamie T.

You Can Still Watch the Girl Throwing Ball Back Here and Other Thoughts on How Companies Handle Copyright

The daughter who threw the ball back at the Phillies game quickly became an internet sensation with viral power until the MLB pulled the video from YouTube. Apparently they don't want to play ball and share the rights to their content, but I found a clip that still works and you can see the video below (at least at the time of this writing).

As an aside, I don't think it should go unnoticed that Fox News got in contact with this family via Facebook. It's an interesting time for journalism and media.

Disney is taking a completely different stand on user generated content. When a group of flamboyantly gay guys went to Fire Island and remade Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA" Disney employees not only embraced, but also encouraged the viral nature of the remake by emailing the video to each other. Rich Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide even took the time to call up Mr. Fudge (the video maker) and tell him he liked the video. So what does this reaction vs the MLB reaction mean for branding, copyright, and the nature of the internet? My opinion is right out of Lessig.

Miley Cyrus - "Party in the USA" Fire Island Ramake

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Music Recommendation: The astonishing, beautiful Catherine Feeny

Catherine Feeny - "Mr. Blue"

Realizing Our Potential and Other First Impressions From Would Be Internet Powerhouses

Remember when Facebook first started? The homepage looked like the picture on the left and if you didn't type "the" before "facebook.com" you'd find yourself lost in cyberspace.

Why was the transition so seamless? When did we stop typing "the" and did anyone notice?




Or how about four short years ago when YouTube looked like this? We've come a long way. (If you're interested in seeing the way 20 other sites looked when they launched check out this great Telegraph collection here.)

Perhaps more important than memories of MS-DOS, floppy disks, and external hard drives though, is the fact that it's easy to forget the power we hold. It wasn't all that long ago when people never traveled much more than a few miles from where they were born. Letters were delivered via horseback and now we can send our words circling around the world with a few keystrokes.

It's miraculous and about as easy to forget as the days when we used to type "thefacebook.com."

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Founded in 1986 but still current in a retro sort of way, Shudder to Think plays rock that walks the fence between gritty and surprisingly gentle.

Why Diane Tucker Might Be A Contender On My "Wouldn't Kick Out of Bed For Eating Crackers" List

Perhaps this is simply journalist humor best suited for those who have read and reread The Elements of Style as if it was the bible, but this is truly one of the most brilliant things I've read in quite some time. In one swoop, Diane Tucker has been added as a potential contender on my brilliant people I admire list (otherwise named "People I Wouldn't Kick Out of Bed For Eating Crackers").

Check out the article below. I'm curious to find out if this is funny to people who don't write.


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She's the female Jack Johnson equivalent in a way, and if you haven't heard of her yet you ought to listen now. Behold Tristan Prettyman.

Hilarious Video: Facebook Messes Up Relationships

Psychologists confirmed that Facebook increases jealousy and these people turned our tendencies into one hilarious video about how the site has changed our relationships. Watch it below, and listen for hilarious quotes like:

1. Because you LOLing all up on her comments. Is she that funny now? That funny?

2. "I'm going to change my relationship status to 'In a relationship...WITH A LOSER.' Can I do that? 'WITH A LOSER.'"

3. So you just going to do movie quizzes all day, huh? Movie quizzes?

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Diamond Rings - "All Yr Songs"

How You Can Make A Video To Connect With The World

The days of YouTube stunts like the guy who catches glasses with his face are over. Sure, if you can backflip into your Levi's you might garner a little attention, but what will really get people to pay attention is a story. We're wired for stories always will be. So when you make your next video or start your next creative advertising campaign give people a story to latch onto. It brings meaning, starts conversations, and makes you memorable.

The 2009 Cannes Festival Winner "Signs" is a prime example. Check it out and then tell your story. With it you can connect with the world.

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MUSIC RECOMMENDATION: The Lovely Feathers - "Lowiza"

Social Media Revolution

Last November I wrote about a dizzying 2008 video called Did You Know 3.0. Socialnomics author Erik Qualman created a Social Media focused video with equally fascinating statistics (and the exact same song as the previous video). Check it out:

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Take a listen to Free Energy, an emerging rock act with a gentle sentiment and the heart of a pride of lions.

So You Want To Be Quoted?

Pear Analytics filtered through 28,000 tweets in a recent about Twitter usage and consumption, and if you're at all familiar with Twitter some of the results may be predictable. Apparently 40.55% of 0ur tweets are what they consider "pointless babble," but 37.55% are conversational and 8.7% were of what Pear Analytics calls "Pass Along Value."

You may have heard about the recent Pear Analytics study analyzing the nature of usage and consumption of Twitter, and whether you've read the study or not it probably won't surprise you that 0.55% of 0ur tweets are what they consider "pointless babble." On the brighter side though, 37.55% are conversational and 8.7% were of what Pear Analytics calls "Pass Along Value."

All this is interesting, but here's the real gem of this study, the part that might actually help you. Tweets that occur on Monday and near 11:30am are most likely to be retweeted (quoted and passed along) and if you're looking for news tweets on the public timeline are most newsworthy around 2:00pm and on Tuesdays. Hopefully that helps somebody out there, but if not, check out this beautiful music recommendation.

Bowerbirds - "My Oldest Memory"

Is Cyber Warfare Effective?

Cyber warfare. It's one of the only social media related news I heard about after reports started coming out offering reasons why Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were experiencing so many problems. It was DDoS (Denial of Service Attacks) related to the conflict between Russia and Georgia, and the attackers wanted to stifle the voice of a guy with a handle of Cyxymu.

In turn, people suddenly started talking about ways to back up your social media profiles and Twitter accounts, and just about everything else on the elusive cloud where we're all starting to store more of our data. They also started talking about cyber warfare and how it might become a piece of the future. But before the lights went out on Twitter I had no idea Cyxymu even existed, and goodness knows I didn't know to he was someone whose voice was important enough to send internet usage for millions to a screeching halt.

Now my appetite for Cyxymu's words is insatiable and it makes me wonder. If an attempt to stifle a voice sends its decibels further than they would have reached before, can this so called cyber warfare really be effective?

Let's hope not.

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Now for some affable folk (although as a warning, some of his songs will hit you hard and leave you wallowing on the floor in sweet misery...okay that was major hyperbole). Check out Brooklyn's own Jonah Smith.

Nothing Is a Vault

I learned yesterday that Twitter keeps any single person's 3,200 most recent tweets and then poof, it's gone. I feel stupid for not knowing this and particularly distressed (in a not really distressed and I realize I'm being dramatic sort of way).

I suppose 3,200 is a lot, but to think that in an age when storage costs virtually nothing, Twitter isn't playing the Google card of unlimited storage? I thought we had finally found something that would put moments in a vault and help us remember the time when we picked out all the marshmallows in the Lucky Charms to see if there was enough in a box to fill an entire bowl, and then spent the rest of the night snacking on the sweetest part and wondering if we were Lucky, Charmed, or both.

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If you like Postal Service, Vampire Weekend, and/or Ra Ra Riot you've got to check Discovery.

Discovery - "I Want You Back" (Jackson 5)