wheresitworking?

Happy Holidays: from Google, but for Facebook

Happy Holidays everyone. I just wanted to extend a quick holiday greeting.  I’m going to borrow the holiday greeting image from Google Analytics, because I like it so much. It is from Google Analytics’ Happy Holidays post to everyone.

Biggest takeaway from the 2009 holiday season? For me it is the fact that according to Hitwise, Facebook was the number one most visited site on the web on Christmas day. Phenomenal when you take into account the incident in Detroit, which presumably drove loads of traffic to Google and the major news sites.

What does Facebook’s dominance mean? Well, nothing that we didn’t know already, but perhaps a slap in the face for some media providers, that rather than focusing on your own sites, maybe looking for creative ways to integrate into your audience member’s Facebook visits is where the focus should be.

Just some food for thought; I’d gladly write a longer post but we’re scrambling to finish up year-end activities at SwellPath before the first monthly reporting session of the new year hits. Enjoy the rest of 2009 everyone and best wishes for a wonderfully successful 2010.

Tags: Christmas web traffic, Facebook, Google Analytics

Google Finds Location Based Social Networking (LBS)

About 6 weeks ago Google launched Latitude, a location based social networking (LBS, though apparently that can stand for “location based service” also) application (even if Google refers to it as something else).  I’ve been paying close attention to this space, even though I’m not the most active participant, for several reasons.  One being the growth of local Portland startup Shizzow.  The space is filling up with a variety of competitors, so it was interesting and a bit disappointing to see Google jump into the fray.   No one wants to see Google jump in and knock out a bunch of these companies just because of their available resources and massive user base.  Nonetheless, companies like Shizzow still have a chance to thrive, if they choose their partners wisely and keep their users happy.

Location based social networking applications generally all work the same: I am somewhere, and I either decide to let others in the network know where I am, or they can automatically see where I am on a map.  This is generally done from a smartphone, but not exclusively.  I won’t waste a lot of time discussing privacy concerns; obviously some of us don’t want people to know where we are at all times, so there are generally “opt-out” or “turn off” options with the applications that just show all your connections where you are on a map (like Latitude does).  Shizzow doesn’t have this type of mapping capability; and it may or may not be in development, but it seems to be a necessity for survival in this space.

It probably goes without saying that many of these applications integrate with your Twitter account, so that you don’t need to double your efforts to announce to your Tweeps where you’re at.  Likewise, photographs are integrated into some apps.  Brightkite may be the biggest player in the space, and functions like a Twitter, with location, and the ability to put a picture in your update.

I have few hunches about who is going to end up the dominate player in this space.  One of them being: whoever partners with Yelp is going to have a significant advantage.  Another being: whoever Facebook buys will probably have a bigger advantage.  Now, I realize there are a lot of assumptions there, but it seems like Shizzow and Yelp are a natural fit, and it seems like Facebook could pick someone up and have a much easier path to critical mass. Regardless, this will be an interesting space to watch in the next year or so.

Tags: brightkite, Facebook, mobile phones, shizzow, Twitter, yelp

Birthday Wishes from Facebook and Adidas

Happy Birthday to me!  I don’t see enough sites taking advantage of stored birthdates to send customized messages on a birthday, but I got a few today.  I got several emails from vBulletin forums I’m registered on, all the same format:

Subject: Happy Birthday from [forum name]

Hello [username],
We at [forum name] forums would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

The first one was great, but after the 3rd I wasn’t that impressed.  Can’t these be customized a bit more?

Another message I got was from Facebook.  Of course I heard from about 75% of my Facebook friends, with birthday wishes on my Wall etc.  But Facebook itself took the time to wish me a Happy Birthday from the top of the home page.

Finally, one other noteable: Adidas sends a nice email with a 15% off coupon code every year, and they send it a week before your birthday, beating everyone else to the punch.

If you are capturing your members or customers birthdates, are you using that data to send them a special something?  If not, should you be?

Tags: adidas, Facebook, targeted birthday messaging, vBulletin