Adopt or Die: The Anxiety of Checking In on Foursquare

Posted by Jon Thomas, 17 Jul 2013

I’m a social media early adopter. I should be, considering I write for a digital content marketing agency’s blog. I post photos on Instagram, share thought nuggets and articles on Twitter, argue on Facebook, capture looping slices of life on Vine (and now Instagram Video) and check-in using geolocation apps.

The manner in which I, along with millions of others, experience and share life’s moments is decidedly different from the way we did a mere decade ago. But that’s the way life goes, and technology is changing how we live on a daily basis.

However, if my recent trip to a local restaurant is any indication, merchants aren’t getting the message. Many of them are so slow to adapt that a simple redemption of a Foursquare perk can turn into a confusing, annoying, anxiety ridden encounter, inevitably resulting in customers being afraid to embrace the technologies intended to create a better, more rewarding experience. 

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Will Facebook Exist in 2020?

Will Facebook Exist in 2020?

Posted by Jon Thomas, 18 Sep 2012

I have a bet with a friend who works in finance. He believes that Facebook will not exist in seven years. I, a marketer, couldn’t disagree more. It reminded me of when, in 1995, astronomer Clifford Stoll claimed that the Internet was “grossly overpromoted" and would ultimately be looked on as a fad. (He has since acknowledged his mistake.) More from Clifford later.

It’s difficult to define what “existence” even means in today’s digital age, when social technologies are imagined, developed, funded, adopted and acquired by a media conglomerate (often Facebook) in a matter of months, not years. Myspace is technically still in existence (I had to test it in my browser as I wrote this, just to be sure), but it’s far from relevant anymore in the social sphere. If Facebook goes the same route, I’ll concede defeat. 

But I don’t expect to be in that situation come 2020. Though Wall Street is panicking about the stock price, which has shrunk by nearly half, Facebook is a game-changing technology, and technologies like that don’t just fade away in less than a decade. As we do the automobile, we can’t image what we ever did or would do without it. It’s a technology that we seemingly never saw coming (as opposed to a smartphone or tablet, which were arguably natural evolutions in product innovation), and technologies like that are special. 

So if I’m so confident about the future of Facebook, where do I think it’s going? What do I think it will look like in seven to 10 years? As technology is moving so quickly, it would be futile for me to speculate on exactly what Facebook may be at that time, but here are four that opportunities could help sustain the platform.

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Is Foursquare Becoming the Perfect Local Ad Platform?

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 25 Jul 2012

Local merchants that’ve ignored location-based check-in platform foursquare have just been handed a serious reason to get on board: Local Updates, the first-ever way for merchants large and small (all one million of them, currently) to communicate directly with their customers on the platform, has arrived. As of today, they’ve even begun testing the waters with Promoted Updates, a way for a business to attract new customers through paid placement (the difference: spots, matched relative to interests and activity, are only seen when you’re actively searching on the Explore tab). This, coming a month into foursquare’s strategic shift in approach—including a rebuilt mobile app (try it out if you’ve written FS off)—means that the newfound focus for the platform as a social-exploration tool is as much about enabling richer user-to-user interactions as about enabling richer business-to-customer and customer-to-business interactions.

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Will Mobile Rule the World in 2012?

Posted by Katie Edmondson, 21 Dec 2011

You know Grandma Mildred’s annual holiday proclamation "Everyone is using them dang cellular telephones!"? You can say that again, Grams. And while she may still be resisting the constant influx of newfangled tech and software, almost everyone else has embraced mobile with open arms. A while back, predictions had Internet usage on mobile devices overtaking the same on desktops and laptops by 2015. We happen to think that at least for millennials, mobile may already have usurped more traditional devices, thanks in part to a number of key apps and events.

Join us as we take a look back at mobile’s massive growth this year as a way to forecast 2012: the year in which mobile takes over and rules the world.

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Mashable Follow

Mashable Tests Social Waters with “Follow”

Posted by Jon Thomas, 15 Apr 2011

This post originally appeared in our April issue of “Live Report from the Future of Marketing,” our monthly Post-Advertising newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and…Mashable?

In early February, albeit relatively quietly, the top website for news in social and digital media introduced Mashable Follow – a “social layer” that is the first big move in Mashable’s journey towards becoming a “true news community.”

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Barbie & Ken: Reunited and it Feels So Good

Posted by Stephen Bottari, 24 Feb 2011
The news shocked the world on Valentine's Day of 2004: America’s favorite couple was breaking up after 43 years of going steady. The split even made the evening news. There was public outcry. How could this happen to the perfect pair? Where did Barbie and Ken go wrong?! Luckily, thanks to some creative marketing, it looks like there is new hope for these star-crossed lovers.
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Gap Facebook Free Jeans Deal

Gap and Facebook Deal Leaves Customers Bewildered

Posted by Jon Thomas, 09 Nov 2010
On the heels of a logo switcharoo that set the internet ablaze, Gap recently caused a commotion in the location-based marketing world with a campaign to give away 10,000 free pairs of jeans at U.S. Gap locations. Unfortunately, the commotion was coming from the thousands of annoyed customers on the wrong side of the geolocation/smartphone learning curve who were ultimately left puzzled and pantless.
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Location-Based Marketers: Where Is Everybody?

Posted by Andrea Fjeld, 08 Nov 2010
Inquiring marketers want to know: Where are you? They’re fixated on location-based social networking as the next way to hook consumers. They’ve got platforms in place and cash in their wallets…so where the heck is everyone?
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Attention-Hungry Foursquare Burns Tourist Retinas

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 14 Sep 2010
Let’s say you're an up-and-coming, much buzzed-about social media platform, looking to increase public awareness of your services. Sounds like some "advertising" is in order, right? Any campaign should necessarily reflect your hyper-connected, forward-thinking approach, right? Alternatively, you could just throw your money at a massive LCD billboard in the middle of Times Square, searing the retinas of lemming tourists, shouting amidst the cacophony. You could do that, if you were Foursquare.
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