I hate traffic. Better yet, I loathe traffic. There are few things worse than being stuck in traffic.
"I'm in my car. The engine is running and I have someplace to be but I'm getting nowhere fast because apparently everyone else on the planet had the same idea." That's the way it feels sometimes doesn't it?
Enter Waze, an app that uses the GPS functionality in your smartphone and user gererated content from other drivers to create smart maps. See an accident? Report it to Waze and everyone knows to avoid it. Cruising along on the highway only to see your smooth sailing commute turn into a parking lot? Waze uses your phone and those of your fellow angry commuters to alert the people that there is traffic ahead.
It's pretty cool. The only major flaw that I see is one that is there for safety sake. You can't update app while your phone (meaning your car) is in motion. What if I'm a passenger? Anyway, if you commute you should definitely check it out.
Raise a glass with friends wherever you (or they) are.
Beer is a social beverage. So it should come as no surprise to see a social application created specifically for people to share, discover and socialize about beer. The app is social to the core and allows users to connect their Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare accounts to add context and find friends.
What's funny is I just installed the app tonight. It's funny because I have long since lost count of the number of photos of my beers I have shared on Instagram, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. I love beer and I have a huge community of friends who are big time craft beer fans. Yet, to date I have just used a quick photo and a description to raise a virtual glass with my buddies.
I'm going to give Untappd a go for a bit. Heck, I'm on vacation during the holidays so there might just be a few beers in my future. Check out my profile here.
They just don't want to pay the same price they had to pay when music required physical media, packaging, transportation, inventory and the other necessary evils of non-digital delivery. It simply makes sense to force people to spend $1 per song or listen to commercials in order to enjoy music.
Spotify appears to have figured out a business model that suits both the record labels and users.
Spotify has a freemium model. 2.5 million users seem to find the paid Premium versions attractive enough to fork over $4.99 or $9.99 each month to enjoy music just the way they like it.
Spotify Social allows users to connect with friends via Facebook and enjoy music together. You get access to their music and they yours. This is a very attractive concept for users, artists and the labels as music discovery has long been difficult.
Why not let your customers design your product and decide what is worthy of production?
Before there was Groupon there was Threadless. Maybe Chicago should get more props for being a hotbed of social business? Anyway, Threadless is one of the simplest, coolest, most brilliant ideas I have ever seen. So much so that I can't believe more companies aren't look for way to implement their business model.
The concept is simple. They sell printed t-shirts (and now a buch of other stuff too) but they only make and offer for sale the shirts that customers say they want to buy. Another cool part of the concept is that designers submit their t-shirt ideas to the Threadless community for vote (and hopeful production) which makes the company's R&D cost and risk substantially lower than other companies. It seems to be working as Threadless is pulling in over $30 million a year.
Klout is a tool that measures social media user influence. Its algorythm is often mocked for the obvious inacuracy and ludicrous variances at the individual level. Are we really supposed to believe that Chris Brogan has the same influence as President Obama? That just doesn't make sense to anyone.
Like many analytics tools however, the accuracy of the results tend to degrade when boiled down to small numbers. The algorythm probably rocks when applied to a large population but loses something when you look at one individual member.
What Klout is attempting to do is surface influencers for specific areas. As the screen shot above illustrates there are certain people who are influential, or at least prolific, on the topic of personal finance. If you want to connect with a bunch of people in that area of expertise these people might be good connections for you and your brand.
Your Klout score should not be seen as a status symbol. As much as many people would like it to be. It's a number generated by a computer that has analyzed your posts, your connections, your connections' posts and their connections and all the other activity that is easily accessable via the APIs of a variety of social networks. It has no way of knowing how much real social mojo you really have.
My recommendation is that you use Klout to explore people of interest and relevance with an eye to those who have above average influence/reach in those areas.
I've covered a few location based services in this series like Foursquare, Oink and Yelp but Plancast is different. This application is all about sharing where you plan to be not where you are or where you have been.
The application is also different than Meetup in that Plancast is more about following people and discovering cool events through them and less about the events themselves. Like many other social tools you can follow people of interest and get updates via the web, mobile and email.
I love Plancast even though I haven't broadcasted often as of late. Some people whom I really respect and admire use it frequently and it is a great way for me to discover the events that should be on my radar.
Social proof is a big deal when it comes to our preferences for much of what we do in life. We take queues from our friends, family, coworkers and trend setters about what to buy, wear, drink, eat and so on. It's not that we are lemmings, okay maybe some of us are, but rather it is a testament to our social nature.
Pinterest is brand new to me so I'll be exploring it over the next few days to get a feel for it. The tool is currently still in closed beta so when you go to the site you will likely have to request an invite. Mine took about 10 days or so if I remember correctly. Hat tip to Dan Dougherty for recommeding it.
The video below gives you a quick glimpse of how Pinterest works with the Google Chrome browser plug in. Similar plug ins/bookmarklets are available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
Above: A photo of Howard Lindzon, CEO of StockTwits, and me at StockTwits headquarters in Coronado, CA.
Disclosure: As the picture indicates, Howard and I are friends.
A Social Network for People Who Make Money
So, why would a social platform with a population of users numbering in hundreds of thousands have a capitalization of over $8.6 million? It's simple, the people who use StockTwits use it to make money and many of them, make BIG MONEY. As I wrote in a post over on the Socialware blog a few weeks back, active traders are one of the most profitable segments in the financial services industry.
Not only do active traders make a lot of money for themselves and the financial firms on whose platforms they trade they also are very social. Howard and team recognized this in the early days of Twitter. Traders and investors would tweet their thoughts about the stocks, bonds and currencies they trade. Why not build a platform specifically for this highly valuable population of people?
A Suite of Tools
StockTwits is a platform accessible via the web, mobile, browser plugins and a powerful desktop application. See the full list of applications here.
A hat tip to my buddy Cameron Randolph and Lucy for reminding me how important Yelp is. As a new transplant to Austin I need all the help I can get discovering the good stuff around me.
Yelp is a social network and review engine for all things local. It's most popular use is for discovery and ratings of restaurants. Think of it like a social Zagat type deal.
It is a stand alone network in the era where data portabilty and cross posting is increasingly the norm. You'll see no Facebook Connect or Twitter Oauth connection opportunity when logging in on Yelp. Compared to other location based services like Foursquare and Oink, Yelp is a walled garden.
Yelp seems to be heavy on lurkers and relatively light on active content creators. In many ways it feels like a curated solution. That's actually one of things I like about it. For me, Yelp is a discovery tool and not a network where I am going to be very active. I might be more active if it weren't a walled garden as mention above but I do appreciate that others have created the resource. For me it's like the Wikipedia of local stuff.
It's more about the venues than the people. Sure Yelp copied Foursquare's check in, badges and Mayor (oops Duke & Duchess) but when I use the app it feels like it is much more about the where than the who. And that's actually what I like about it most. I have fun with Foursquare and use it to catalogue where I've been, especially when traveling, but I go to Yelp for discovery (restaurants mainly) when I'm out and about.
Path was born from the notion that some people want to share centain things only with their closest friends. It was originally a photo sharing app for your 50 closest friends but has recently relaunched as Path 2 with allows users to expand their network up to 150 contacts and cross post to Facebook and Twitter.
The new app is being pitched as a personal journal solution for capturing all of life's moments. I definitely see the appeal and will be giving it a strong go.
What I love about the app:
It is beautiful. The look and feel are stunning. I am a sucker for a sexy app.
It's FAST! Small networks and more focused features mean a much quicker experience than Twitter and Facebook.
I love the concept of having a tool for my really close friends. I am still in morning over the loss of Beluga.
Where I see challenges for Path:
Network expansion is natural. Once you add someone to Path it will be emotionally difficult to remove them. Over time most of us will hit the 150 contact limit. Then what?
Can it really compete with Facebook? It is hard as hell to pull the average person away from Facebook. Now, the good thing is Path now talks to Facebook but the more a user needs to go to Facebook to do certain things that he can't do on Path means he's spending less time on Path.
