ITEC 4700: Class 14 – Social Mobile

Thursday we talked about one of my favorite attributes of social media; mobile. This field is growing by leaps and bounds and provides some of the most compelling marketing opportunities. The first thing we did was talk about  existing technologies that enable location based offerings to be possible.

• Loki (by Skyhook) – The technology behind Brightkite’s location detection
• Geominder – A location based reminder (and an element of things to come!)
• Safari & Android – This browser & OS, know where you are
• GPS – I learned from a student that this can tell your elevation as well
• Cell based location (Yes Jason. This is an old video but it’s the best I have!)
• QR codes – These little things can be used for discovery and sharing
• Location Based services
• Geotagging

We then discussed two of the major players in the location space. Brightkite and Foursquare. We talked about placestreaming, Kiteups (rhymes with tweetups), “caribou crossings (Brightkite wants to introduce you to the people that travel the same patterns that you do), the element of game (badges, mayors, etc), some of Foursquare’s recent deals, Facebook supporting Foursquare check-ins and the concept of location as a platform.

I forgot to mention meetMoi in class. Great idea for a mobile dating site and prior to class one of the students found PleaseRobMe.com. (It’s only a matter of time before the founder of Foursquare get their homes broken into by the creators of PleaseRobeMe.)

From there we touched on trends:

• By 2013 smartphones will outnumber PCs and by 2015 more people will surf the net on smartphones than PCs.
• Facebook now has 100 million users accessing their offerings by mobile phones
• Facebook Zero
• 1 million check-ins a week on Foursquare
• Where 2.0 (which I forgot to mention in class!)
• A new report on location in 2010 (I have not had a chance to read it yet but will post on it when I get done with it.)

I then listed out a number of sites that are focused on information for the mobile industry.

• TrendsSpotting – Not so much mobile but a great resource.
• Mobile Behavior
• Distimo
• MobileCrunch
• MediaPost Mobile Marketing Daily
• MediaPost Mobile Insider
• Antonella Stellaci
• MMA (No. Not mixed martial arts.)
• MSearchGroove

We then talked about the future of mobile

• Augmented reality maps
• Augmented reality browsers
• Cloud services
• “It makes calls to” – Mobile is more about data. Telephony will take a distant second.
• Nokia point and find
• Retail 2.0
• Conduit marketing

We ended the class discussing whether or not the iPad was a mobile device. Good conversation and I’ll post on this later if I can actually form a strong opinion.

Next class we have a presentation reviewing the book Twitterville by Shel Israel. (I also got the Esquire augmented reality issue to share with the class. Gotta love eBay!)