Matt Churchill

Path, the so-far-brandless mobile social network, announced over the last few days that it has reached 2 million users worldwide.

Path is, in a sense, the ‘perfect’ social network, uncluttered by ads, facilitatory to content sharing cross-network and has a beautifully simple UI – It’s person to person exchange friendly.

You share thoughts, location and imagery with no unhelpful content as an unimaginative border and background, allowing you to have a personal digital connection with friends.

It is yet to adopt a brand-focused offering, however, and this is the greatest potential problem that may face the burgeoning platform.

Brands eventually find their way on to most popular platforms as their potential revenue is sought to allow a service to grow. be it through ads or dedicated profiles, the big and small, useless and useful, brands always get their place.

Path is at a point where to grow, there must be either an increase in revenue from users, advertisers or an optimistic VC.

I, as a user, sincerely hope they stay away from membership charges and advertising.

However, as a marketer, I can see that a presence on Path could present many opportunities for brands.

Being present in a user’s stream serving them with content is of course the bread and butter of digital communication.

The Path community are after a personal experience, something that brands struggle to offer once they find themselves with a community too large to handle.

Path could give brands an opportunity to do just this – but it will require investment. We’re getting past that hurdle now as brand managers, both locally and globally, see the benefits of communicating with customers online.

Sharing pictures that are inspired by a small group of users, or encouraging a group of people to listen to music a brand likes could generate interaction.

With a user base of 2 million, the potential reach is far less than that of Facebook or Google Plus. However, the personal touch that the Path experience can offer, may be enough to encourage users to interact with a brand should they set up a presence.

Personally, I hope Path remains ad and brandless, professionally however I anticipate it is only a matter of time before a Path strategy becomes an ordinary part of the job.

Wednesday will see Wikipedia, joined by a host of other websites including search giant Google, ‘blackout’ or protest against SOPA, the anti-priacy bill that is currently going through the US legislative system.

The aim of the exercise is to highlight how the bill will hinder consumers online.

Interestingly though, Twitter will not be taking part in the initiative.

Dick Costolo, Twitter CEO said:

@digiphile @jayrosen_nyu that's just silly. Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.

—
dick costolo (@dickc) January 16, 2012

However, he later clarified that it would be foolish of Twitter to blackout, rather than the likes of Wikipedia who will be doing so readily.

It is interesting that Twitter, as a real-time ‘active’ communication platform, has taken the decision to allow information to continue flowing freely, whereas Wikipedia, for all intents and purposes a ‘static’ online media, has the opportunity to vent the opinion of a community with one single action and ceasing an information transaction.

Wikipedia is, to my mind, the embodiment of social culture and is one of the most important evolutionary devices that the Internet age has delivered.

The main comparison, and I am sure there are many, that jumps to mind is that of the Ancient Library of Alexandria.

Alexandria, an Egyptian wonder, was destroyed by Julius Caesar, and knowledge was lost, because of an accidental fire.

We must not allow the same to happen to our Internet through the intended action of a small group of individuals who do not see the benefits of freely shareable, accessible and consumable information.

Elliot Pearson was recently featured on Foursquare’s Follow Friday for his list of London’s indepdendent coffee shops. Here, he shares his advice on how to make the perfect Foursquare List.

The much-requested list feature is now rolled out across the Foursquare platform and has opened up much of what Foursquare aims to encourage and provide. While there are many uses for which this feature excels, from recommending places you’ve visited to friends right through to ordered guided tours and treasure hunts, it is easy to neglect key aspects that make a list a worthwhile experience for those following it, depending on what purpose the list aims to serve.

Focused Recommendations For Convenience
Followers want the convenience of having a ready-made list of places they can turn to in day-to-day situations without having to search a multitude of apps or browser pages. The beauty of geo-location services means that a number of steps can be removed in between a need surfacing, locating and gaining directions to, and finally arriving at, a suitable venue to satiate that need. For this they need lists that are comprehensive enough, yet sufficiently focussed, that they can be anywhere in their area and still be within a reasonable distance of a recommended venue that helps with what they are looking for. Too many inappropriate venues and they’re straight back to searching and sifting.

Lists as a guide book
Covering a specific area, whether a neighbourhood, city or country, can serve as a great way to help people visiting make the most of the time when they arrive. These guides can often be more general than those mentioned above, as the length of time they are required is limited to the duration of the visit. Rather than information that needs to stay fresh with day-to-day options, it is more useful as a single reference point for everything that person may require while they are there. Including in a list the key places of interest (with a tip explaining the background of why it is of interest, or indeed an unknown fact that other guides may not cover), recommended places to eat and drink, as well as key transport links or information points, helps the user to feel they can turn to it for any eventuality as they would if they were walking around with a local.

Use your expertise
It is surprisingly easy to tell when a list is constructed by someone with a passion for what they are listing. Rather than merely populating a list with various places from the local vicinity, users want venues recommended by someone who knows a sufficient amount to be able to hand-pick the right places, and Foursquare acts as a replacement for a word of mouth recommendation from a local who knows. If someone has turned to a Foursquare list, they are looking to find what they would not normally have found or considered alone, so a list of preferred local restaurants populated with fast food chains is somewhat defeating the object. With Foursquare’s inclusion of expertise levels on badges, list authors are accredited to some extent by proof of their experience of a sufficient number of places within a category.

That extra insider guide
Foursquare is built around the premise of discovery, and regular users are often looking for those hidden gems that are either worthy of being an ‘off-the-beaten-path’ destination, or highlight undiscovered treasures that they may pass every day. People have always found pleasure in visiting places that the masses are unaware of, so helping people discover such locations adds an extra edge to your lists. This can range from a lesser-known but trendy nightlife spot, to a point of interesting local history, or tucked away art exhibit.

Additional Insight
Filling your list with photos and tips from each venue fleshes out what is otherwise a nondescript list of locations and businesses. It gives you a chance to add character and personality to your list, and using your aforementioned specialist knowledge can enhance the experience for users. The Foursquare tips system is increasingly meritocratic, based on a person’s expertise level of the category of venue to which they are leaving the tip. With higher expertise levels you’ll find your tips prioritised on venue pages, which in turn increases awareness of yourself and your list. Always be aware that tips ‘done’ by users increases the priority of the tip, so make it worthwhile for people to acknowledge.

What are the top ten music blogs of 2011, I hear you ask?

Well, I’ve had a think about all of those that I’ve read regularly and listened music from avidly and whittled down to a little list that I hope you find time to investigate further!

Aquarium Drunkard – everything you need to know about music you’ve never heard of. Awesome.
yvynyl – simply, pick the best stuff, share. Great.
Abeano – award winning music blog, it wins awards for a reason…
Pinglewood – primarily video based, highly under rated
Off Modern – great collection of new music, intelligently picked
Gorilla vs. Bear – consistently finds new music, and it looks good too
Bear Eats Beats – into Indie & hip hop? This is the blog for you
Twenty Four Bit – amazing taste in music, a must read
Pigeons And Planes – need an introduction to a bunch of music you’ve never heard of? Pigeons And Planes does that job, spectacularly well.
Robot Pigeon – somehow the RP guys find bizarrely wonderful tracks from the most obscure of places, you’ll never leave

So, tell me, what music blogs have you discovered this year?

Kred is the latest tool designed to measure your Twitter influence, built by the good folks at Peoplebrowsr.

The Good Stuff

In the version I’ve had a play with, there are several sections choc-full of data to play with.

Overview: This is your dashboard that gives you the headline, ie, your score and recent activity; who you’ve retweeted, conversations you’ve had, who has mentioned you etc.

Activity: This is where it starts to get very cool. One of the best things about Peoplebrowsr is the ability to segregate by community – Kred has taken this technology too. This means that when you’re looking at influence, it can be broken down by interest area, such as social media, or sport.

What’s really interesting here is that you can not only see your communities, but click through to see what other communities people you’re engaging with are a part of. Neat.

Friends Activity: This outlines who has been mentioning your friends. This is incredibly useful if you’re trying to understand who potentially you should be looking to reach as a second or third contact point.

Get More Kred: This is a feature that I’m yet to see any of the influence analysts include within their offering: a solid offline meaure of influence. You can include all those speaker slots you get, your level of education (and therefore connections you might have), memberships to clubs and organisation, charity and sport involvement and how often you travel (the unspoken metric for importance is of course frequent flyer miles…).

There is also a little more analysis on your online profile too and a sample of people to consider following.

Community Kred: This section looks at the sphere of the different communities Kred is analysing, who is influential in them and where you rank (if you rank at all). This again is incredibly helpful if you’re deciphering who you need to try and engage with to raise your profile.

Analyse: “Coming Soon” is filed under this section, I wait with held breath!

How It Works

Each community is relative to itself – this, for me, is key.

Kred have have put together a Rules section, outlining how your score is calculated:

Kred Influence is the measure of what others do because of you. Influence increases when others take action because of your content. Your Influence score increases when someone retweets, @replies or follows you.

Scores range from 1 to 1,000 with higher scores representing greater influence. The score of the person with the most Influence is set at 1,000 and all others are normalized relative to it. Kred Influence is normalized for the Twitter universe and within communities, which means that someone in every community has a score of 1,000.

You receive Influence Points every time others interact with you or your content. 10 Points are assigned for the most common actions like replying to people and retweeting content. You receive more Points if someone with a large following does something for you, like having a message retweeted by someone with more than 10,000 followers.

Influence Points are then translated to your Kred Influence Score. Since Kred Influence is normalized on a scale with a maximum score of 1,000, the rate at which Influence Points convert to Kred Influence constantly changes as everyone in the social universe accrues Points. The ‘Points To Score Conversion’ curve also grows steeper as Kred Influence Score grows. The higher your Kred Influence, the more points it takes to move up.

In Summary

Whilst acknowledging that influence is extremely difficult to measure, Kred is offering a different perspective to the other tools that exist.

I must admit I am a fan and I’ve been pretty excited in the build up to it going live – I’ve not been let down, it is very promising indeed and I look forward to the next iteration being rolled out.

Facebook have bought Gowalla, according to CNN. The world’s most formidable social network has snapped up the US location based social network, for an undisclosed sum.

According to CNN:

“It’s a perfect match,” said the source, who asked not to be identified because the deal has not yet been publicly announced. “As far as the big picture, Gowalla’s vision is about people telling stories, and Facebook’s vision for Timeline is about stories about important moments in life.”

Given Gowalla’s struggle to break through in the battle against rival Foursquare, it is no surprise that the decision has been made to sell the property, and more importantly, it’s developer talent.

As Facebook looks to develop it’s location based offering, you would imagine that the tech team would slot straight into this part of their business.

However, I do not see it that way. I think Facebook have seen a team of innovative developers who can be redeployed to make other elements of Facebook better – the timeline, as cited above, would be the obvious place to start.

There is no sign of the deal being mentioned on either the Facebook or the Gowalla blog, but it will be worth keeping an eye on these two sources for official confirmation over the coming days.

It is an unsurprising yet unexpected move from Facebook – they buy good technology and integrate it in way or another, I just figured they’d look to acquire a different LBSN, someone like echoecho or Scvngr, as they are relatively smaller and would be cheaper to get a hold of.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Gowalla fits in with the Facebook family. It also leaves Foursquare’s path to domination a little clearer, don’t you think?