Posts by dlo
The 2012 South by South West Interactive conference (SXSW) just ended and introduced many new start-ups to the technology landscape. Among the most buzzed-about topics at this year’s conference are social discovery apps.
You may be asking, “What exactly are social discovery apps?” Social discovery is a service that helps users discover potential social connections in their proximity. These connections could be people they already know or strangers who share common friends or interests. Their main utility is to forge new, random meetings based on your geographical location and to hopefully translate that to a real-life conversation. For instance, you can sit next to the same people every day on the subway, but never know their name. Now, with the help of social discovery apps, you could learn their name, where they’re from, what hobbies they have and any status updates they’ve posted about their upcoming weekend. This goes one step further than other location-based services such as Facebook geo-tags or Foursquare, which only broadcast to your existing social network where you’ve checked in.
Social discovery start-ups such as Highlight, Glancee, Sonar and Banjo received excited buzz at SXSW. While they all work to find you new friends, each works in a different way. Highlight and Glancee use your phone’s GPS running in the background and constantly broadcast your location to the app. This allows the app to alert you in real time to other users in the area and “pushes” to you what you have in common, without you physically checking into the app.
Other apps such as Sonar and Banjo will pull in location data from status updates or check-ins from other social networks, such as Facebook or Foursquare. They aggregate these public check-in data and alert you of nearby users and their interests. This gives you more control as you choose to check in and decide to view potential social contacts.
The mass-market adoption of these apps must overcome a couple of obstacles; the biggest ones are privacy concerns and how to jump to the mass market from the SXSW bubble. In terms of privacy, how will these apps facilitate a real-life meeting without being creepy? One thing to keep in mind is that Facebook and Foursquare each have run into privacy concerns before and were eventually embraced by the public.
Second, recent changes in the social media landscape show that many consumers are connecting on more interest-based relationships (such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+) rather than shared past (same high school, sorority, yoga class, etc.). With the direction of social media changing, this may help the jump of social discovery apps from popularity at SXSW to public adoption. These apps show us that we’ve only tapped the surface of what geo-location apps can do and where the next extension of social media is taking us.
Back in October, Sarah Voges introduced Pinterest to the blog. The rise of this online bookmarking site has been exponential. As of November 2011, TechCrunch reports that Pinterest is up more than 2,000% since June. Its audience is mainly female with boards centered on wedding, food, décor and many more.
Brands are beginning to find ways to utilize this new kind of social media to speak to their consumers. The greatest potential for success in this space is the rise of social shopping because people trust recommendations by friends more than marketers. By sharing and viewing Pinterest boards with your Facebook and Twitter networks, you can easily see what your friends are interested in and recommending. Advertisers that work in the retail, food and fashion industries can obviously benefit from pinning their pictures or products on the site and being part of users’ social sharing.
Here are few examples:
Nordstrom, one of the nation’s leading fashion specialty retailers, created Pinterest boards showcasing gift ideas and holiday outfits. Once you click into the picture, you’ll be redirected to the product page on the Nordstrom site for purchase. How convenient!
Real Simple magazine creates boards centered around tips for decorating, recipes, gifts and overall holiday inspiration. Every one of their pictures links back to the article or picture on their site. The popular magazine reports more referrals from Pinterest than Facebook for the month of October. Below are some of their recent boards.
Whole Foods, the national grocery store specializing in natural and organic foods, is interested in Pinterest by using it to be part of people’s passion points. To show brand personality, they’ve created a board for gardening and sweets. To raise awareness of their community involvement, they’ve made a board for their nonprofit organization, Whole Planet Foundation. All their boards create conversation starters and establish the company’s personality without selling anything directly.
As Pinterest gains more users and views, more brands will take notice and join the movement. They have the opportunity to showcase their products, link back to their site for purchase, converse with their followers, raise awareness of their community involvement and express brand personality.
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