Walter Elly's blog and website

In case you haven’t heard, it’s SXSW panel voting season. This year (thanks to Monica Wright‘s encouragement) I’ve submitted a panel that combines three of my favorite subjects, SXSW (My trip there this year blew me away!), foursquare (you know I’m addicted!) and Foursquare Day (zomg you didn’t know I was all up in that?). It’s titled Foursquare Day: Realizing the Location-Based Services Revolution. Foursquare Day founder Nate Bonilla-Warford will be co-presenting with me on the proposed panel! (UPDATE: Voting ends THIS Friday night so vote now!)

With special thanks to the thoughts and insights from Foursquare Day co-organizer Jessica Barnett and SXSW alum Margot Bloomstein (who has her own awesome panel up for vote!) Nate and I were able to put together a kickass proposed panel (atleast foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley thinks so! [Thanks @dens!]). The panel discusses the current and future possibilities of Location-Based Services, using Foursquare Day 2010 as a case study for how we helped accelerate that future and discusses how YOU can help realize the full potential future through participating in Foursquare Day 2011! Please check out our panel and vote for it! (Be sure to leave a comment here or on the panel picker if you do, thanks!)

Now, as you know, Facebook launched Facebook Places last week, and during the launch event they shared the stage with foursquare (and other partners) to speak about possibly integrating with Facebook Places. Now comes the ensuing discussion about foursquare’s relevance now that Facebook will be deploying Location-Based Services to their 500,000,000 users. Given the panel topic and our thesis about Foursquare Day 2011 I feel that I need to weigh in on the subject: I don’t think that foursquare is going to go away anytime soon. I think that Facebook Places will either integrate smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare will march on without them to continued success.

On one side of the argument I think that the opportunity for foursquare here is tremendous. Facebook included foursquare at their Places launch event and appear to want them to integrate with their Places service in some meaningful way. They’ve also opened the door up for others to integrate as well (Gowalla, MyTown and Yelp so far). Effectively Facebook has handed the keys to their 500 million users to all these services. Given Facebook’s simplistic “check in and find out where your friends are checked in” service model I think there is a very strong possibility that Facebook intends to completely leave “value-added” experiences like badges, discounts and mayorships to 3rd parties to deliver. This might play out in the way Facebook applications have played out – 3rd parties would compete on the merit of their value-adding check in experiences through the marketplace of Facebook users choosing to integrate their service, or not. Given this opportunity the future is bright for foursquare: Facebook Places integration means that foursquare’s user base can grow as Facebook Places goes (which is already happening, by virtue of Facebook Places being a mainstream LBS educator). A win, win.

Now on the other hand, there is the possibility that Facebook and foursquare will never play nice and/or Facebook Places will not become a force for foursquare to reckon with. Some of these points were explored during the August 24th #4SqCHAT (which I strongly encourage everyone, especially fans of foursquare or LBS, to check out). I found the discussion to be very interesting- here are some tweet-highlights that shed light on this “other side of the coin”-

To recap, the feeling is that Facebook Places is currently just barely viable, Mashable readers atleast still prefer foursquare, yet if only 1% of Facebook adopts Places it’ll be bigger than foursquare. One of foursquare’s opportunities here is to convert Facebook Places users (as I discussed above). But hope for Facebook Places integration should be tempered by the fact that Facebook and Twitter have not played nicely in the past. Of course, since only 1% adoption makes Facebook Places huge the business opportunity is also huge, but it if only businesses are excited about this (I too am guilty of this, thinking from a marketing perspective and being excited there more than anything) then that’s a bad sign. This led the group to think on motives behind why foursquare was created versus Facebook Places, which pointed out that the spirit behind each yields different community reactions (Facebook rebellion as a movement versus Foursquare Day as a movement).

With either possibility, Facebook Places integrating smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare marching on without them to continued success, it’s pretty clear that foursquare does not need to check out of the Location-Based Services game. Facebook Places may earn the “uber-mega-super-duper swarm” badge for having a larger user base, they won’t take over as mayor anytime soon. However by growing the LBS community, be it through Facebook or foursquare, we all stand to benefit- and that’s why I’ve proposed the SXSW panel. Please give it a vote, spread the word and let us know what you think!

Today has been a foursquare kinda day for me (not foursquare day, that’s different). Today I wore my, cherished, favorite foursquare shirt (that I won at SXSWi by literally playing foursquare on the street with the foursquare team), I got to register a new venue on foursquare as well as log 5 check ins (including checking into a totally new venue for me [nope, it was not the one I setup]), AND I got to spend some time exploring a hot new foursquare analytics tool from a hot social marketing software company. (disclaimer: my good pal CMajor tipped me off to this because she knows I love foursquare and she works for Awareness.)

That said, onward with the awesomeness:

After re-confirming that I am, indeed, the mayor of all 3 MicorArts checkin locations (sans MicroArts SA of course), I started to explore this tool and realized I could use it to find out some awesome stuff that I can trot out to possibly get brands to pay more attention to foursquare and to start maximizing the value of the foursquare opportunity they’ve got in front of them (while helping to grow foursquare at the same time [which, in case you don’t know me, is something I’m passionate about]).

Let’s start with Planet Fitness. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. Over 400 venus have been registered with more than a third of those venues having 50 or more checkins. That kind of active check in distribution is similar to Starbucks! Granted, there are over 16,000 starbucks venues registered and Starbucks is a foursquare sponsor, but still- there is a reason they are a sponsor- because people love checking in at Starbucks. And you know what, Planet Fitness? People love checking in their too- so why don’t you step up and recognize? I know you’re atleast aware of foursquare. But think of how great it could be to formally make foursquare part of the Planet Fitness experience! As the video in that link shows, being mayor of your Planet Fitness is awesome, and desirable. Us foursquare users who are also PF members know this. But Planet Fitness, you could harness this desire and bring it to the rest of the smartphone-toting Planet Fitness members (and potential members!) and create so much demand you’ll have to create new franchise rules to accomodate it! Ok, I can’t guarantee that kind of demand :P – but think of the possibilities!

The other brand I wanted to highlight is, Cumberland Farms. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. The check in distribution is similar to McDonalds’ foursquare analytics – about a quarter of the 314 Cumberland Farms venus have had 11+ check ins. WIth only a slightly higher distribution of checkins in their favor, McDonalds embraced the Foursquare Day movement (and heck, they even became an early adopter of Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched location based service). But where is Cumberland Farms with their location based services…ahem…foursquare strategy? While I have to hand it to them for their pretty fun and effective Facebook page, I’ve got to say: Cumberland Farms, look at the numbers! You have a great Foursquare opportunity in front of you and you need to take advantage of it! Here’s an idea- how about free chill zone for the mayor? (disclaimer: I’m toooootally the mayor of my Cumberland Farms– but that’s only a small reason why I want Cumberland Farms to jump into foursquare :) ). Atleast experiment with it guys–at the very least, I’d like to see some participation in next year’s Foursquare Day. The opportunity is yours to make happen!

So, what about you? What brands would you like to see take advantage of the foursquare opportunity? Let’s talk about it and perhaps we can make a game plan for how we can get them involved!

I first heard of Foursquare from my usual news-source: Twitter. I think it started showing up in my stream over the summer last year when I first started to us the services from https://the-indexer.com/ for my website. I downloaded it, played with it, but wasn’t in one of the covered cities so I didn’t think I’d be able to use it meaningfully. It seemed interesting, maybe something to check out later.

It wasn’t until I was at IMS09 and I was figuring out lunch plans/who was doing what when Rachel Levy (THE Boston Marketer) said “looks like a bunch of people are all checked in at Five Guys on Foursquare” that I realized Foursquare was going to stick and take off. That evening at the #IMS09 Tweetup at the Twenty8Restaurant I loaded up my Foursquare app on my iPhone and Rachel showed me how to make using it fun and awesome.

Then I was psyched for it, I totally got it and I wanted it to show up in MY town and wanted all my friends to start using it- last month that happened. That was almost 3 months later and I had almost given up on Foursquare and even with the announcement I didn’t pick it up right away again. But then someone new joined us at MicroArts – Monica Wright (SEM ninja and all around badass) and she showed up in full Foursquare mode and immediately my Foursquare habit started in earnest. Now I’m hooked and I’d like to get you hooked too. Because the more people who use it, the more fun it is!

What’s the fun of Foursquare? Some highlights: First, it turns life into a game (complete with awards and points to keep score). Second, it lets you connect with your Internet and real life friends in new and interesting ways (“Oh I didn’t know you went to xyz too!”) and gives you plenty to talk about (“I’m taking over as Mayor of XYZ, whatcha gonna do about that?”). Third it helps you coordinate and find your friends if ever the need should arrive (see my earlier example). But there’s another point here that is a real game changer: because you can post a note when you check into a new location on Foursquare you can now give a new location-context to your Tweets and Facebook status updates.

For example: Are you at the Red Sox game? Check in on Foursquare and share your thoughts about the game – it’ll tag your Tweet with your location so you don’t have to explain that you’re at the game – it’ll just be evident that you’re there. Just got a hookup from the drive through at Dunkin Donuts? Check in there and share the love. This means going from tweets like this:

“I’m at the Red Sox Game – terrible call! Anyone seen anything like that before?”

To

“Terrible call! Anyone seen anything like that before? (@ Fenway Park) http://4sq.com/123456”

And taking tweets like this

“Fun! I’m at DD in Portsmouth and just got an extra donut hookup. The Portsmouth DD staff rocks!”

To

“Fun! I just got an extra donut hookup! These guys rock! (@ Dunkin Donuts) http://4sq.com/abcdef”

Now, that may not seem like a huge change, but #1 you don’t have to explain where you are and #2 your Tweets contain a hyperlink to a page for the location you’re tweeting from that lets people know exactly where your experience just took place and who else is there too. It makes everything much more conversational and natural – when you’re at Barnes & Noble talking to a friend you don’t have to remind them that you’re at Barnes & Noble when you’re talking to them to help them understand the context of your conversation. Foursquare enables Twitter and Facebook status updates to be just that much more conversational and natural. This makes the entire experience richer and conversations more meaningful. It makes the whole “social network thing” more fun.

To underscore the importance of this concept I’d like to point out that Google made sure to build this feature into it’s Google Buzz service out of the box for mobile users. Anytime you post from your mobile on Google Buzz it asks you to tag your post with the place of business you’re currently located at based on your current location. Google got it right by adding location tagging to Google Buzz – it’s one of the reasons why I’m addicted to Foursquare and it’s going to help propel Buzz’s adoption rates sky high (which is already happening!). As a result I expect Twitter (or Facebook[!]) to ramp up whatever plans they may have had to make a move on Foursquare, or on adding in that functionality to their systems, ASAP.

So, does any of this interest you? I hope so. Foursquare is more fun when more people you know are on it, so get the app and give it a try today! If you’re not ready to jump on the Foursquare love train then why not? Either way I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Just a quick post to share this video I spied on Mashable via Laughing Squid.

I really like the video’s closing – paying tribute to the Airbus A320 and how it stood up to the test and performed when it needed to. Something else to celebrate- another hero of the Hudson.

Posted on Kontain.com [Time-lapse Footage of Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.

My father was at the cape covering the shuttle launch today and shared some pics of the scene from the #NASATweetUp from AFTER the TweetUp that he took while he was there- he sent them to me to share with you! Enjoy!

There will be the predictable, mandatory “first post” soon. More needs to be said beyond my mini-rant about the technology stone age blog title. But, after living with Blogger for nearly 10 years, I’ve just now finally got WordPress into a shape of my liking. Thanks especially to this guide and this blog (whatup @cherylharrison!) for inspiration. Still lots of work to do though before I start making noise about this thing.

So if you’ve already found this then awesome, please say HAI in the comments- but know that more is to come :)

This technology that we’ve got today is amazing, but it’s still not good enough. Despite that I love it, but we must remember – we are not yet at Star Trek level. These things should just WORK. We shouldn’t have to deal with crashes, or incompatibilities, or whatever. We live in the technology stone age. We’ve only just begun.