Anyone Still Excited About Foursquare?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

The South by Southwest conference was supposed to be the coming out party for location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. But, for whatever reason, it failed to really capture the imagination of the digital geeks.

Not surprisingly, the lack of enthusiasm has also meant the buzz about Foursquare, Gowalla and location-based services has been, at best, muted. My theory is that, for now, these services are novelties that come on and go. There is some chatter about Blippy or Swipely, and then it disappears.

The biggest problem is broadcasting your location isn’t enough to keep people coming back. After you’ve “check-in”, there needs to be more “meat” to keep people engaged and interested. The big question is whether Foursquare, et al will be able to attract people back for the next chapter when there is more content available. Given how fickle online users can be, it is difficult to get people to come back for a second look if they were less than impressed the first time around.

Another theory for lack of interest may be that people who would use location-based services already have their hands full with Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube. As result, they don’t have the time or interest to get involved with yet another social media service.

While Compete.com is not a good barometer of how much traction that Foursquare and Gowalla are getting given both are mobile tools, both of them only have a modest of amount of traffic, which has slipped recently.

So, what’s your take on Foursquare, Gowalla and the located-based services market? Is it still early days or are they simply not finding a big enough audience?

The Battle Between Connectivity and Content

By Mark Evans in Media, Web 2.0 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

For all the talk about Rupert Murdoch attempting to re-establishing the paywall for content, and online start-ups struggling to make free services viable through advertising or freemium plans, one thing that doesn’t get a lot of attention is how Internet service providers are happily raking in the dough.

The more people use the Web, the more services they consume, including growing amounts of video, the more they want a better, faster online connection, even if it means paying more for it. The high-speed service providers have been more than happy to meet this demand by offering new tiers of premium services. Rogers, for example, has five broadband services, capped off – for now – by an Ultimate package that delivers 50Mbps for $99.99/month.

In other words, high-speed access is a good, high-margin market even taking into account that cablecos and carriers have had to make major investments in their infrastructure to offer better, faster service.

At the other end of the spectrum are the players that supply the content that makes high-speed access so valuable and necessary. This group include newspapers, magazines, video sites, software-as-a-service for businesses and consumers and games. Without high-speed access, it would be difficult to deliver a good experience.

As a group, the content players are struggling. Newspapers, for example, are trying to figure out how to generate enough advertising revenue to support shrinking infrastructures. Google is still working away on making the ever-increasing YouTube profitable, while online start-ups are hoping that subscriptions may emerge as an alternative to advertising as a revenue source.

In other words, one group – the high-speed players – is thriving, while the other is scrambling to make money. At some point, something has to give become the current situation doesn’t appear to be viable in the long-run. You can’t have a healthy ecosystem when one group is fat and happy, and the other is sick.

At a Canadian Telecom Summit panel that I moderated yesterday, this was an interesting topic of discussion that could have been even more interesting if someone from a content company has been there.

While the broadband players are working with content suppliers to expand their distribution and, in the process, hopefully make more revenue, the theme that struck me is how high-speed companies such as Rogers are starting to drive even more revenue by expanding their service footprint.

Rogers, for example, recently launched video-on-demand online, and offers access to content through it wireless network. The strategic thrust for Rogers is “convenience” so consumers can access content any time, anywhere on any device. Of course, you have to pay for convenience but, again, consumers seem to be willing to pay for access to get content.

Content may be king but on the Web, connectivity is where you’ll find the money.

When Pulling the Trigger on Premium is a No-Brainer

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

For all the talk about the freemium business model, the key issue is how consumers can be convinced to upgrade from free to paid. For many companies, the free-to-paid gap is enormous because consumers are so enthralled with free that paying for an online service is difficult to justify, even if the service is useful and valuable.

Among the freemium advocates, their optimism is based on the belief the model can work because lots of users can be attracted to a free service, and that only a small percentage – 5% to 10% – need to upgrade to a paid service. Of course, this is easier said than done because 5% seems like such a small number, it should be do-able if the service is any good.

The problem is the vast majority consumers find that free meets all of their needs, so premium is an unnecessary move. This leaves a company with lots of users completely content to pay nothing forever.

So, how do companies bridge the gap between free and paid? How do they provide a great service that still leaves room for consumers to justify eventually paying for something more. The reality is there’s no easy answer, which is why freemium is just as much art as science.

I started thinking about freemium after upgrading to Dropbox Pro 50. The free service was terrific but having only 2GB of capacity quickly became unworkable after Dropbox became a key way to do business with clients and partners. There was simply no work to continue using the free version of Dropbox, which made it easy to upgrade to the 50GB package for $99/year.

To be honest, it was a decision that didn’t happen right away. My immediate response to hitting the 2GB capacity limit was to delete unnecessary files and folders. Of course, this was like to trying to stop in a leak in a dyke with a band-aid so I finally sucked it up and did the right thing by upgrading.

In hindsight, it was a no-brainer decision because ROI on paying $10/month for a premium service will be high. In the scheme of things, it’s a small line item within the ME Consulting empire.

It is interesting, however, that I had to think about it before pulling the trigger. In some respects, this epitomizes the freemium dilemma. Even when it’s completely obvious that upgrading to a premium service has to happen, it doesn’t automatically happen.

The World Ignores “Quit Facebook Day”

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

Did you know that May 31 was “Quit Facebook Day”? If you happened to miss it, you’re far from alone as QFD came and went quickly with only 36,000 people actually quitting Facebook.

The fact QFD flopped is not a surprise. With the Gulf of Mexico awash in oil from BP’s environmental disaster, there are far more important things to worry about than saying goodbye to Facebook.

While the people behind QFD probably had good intentions, their efforts were doomed to fail. While there are real concerns about Facebook’s ever-evolving privacy policies, people aren’t mad enough to walk away from Facebook.

The reality is despite Facebook’s strategic stumble, most people like using Facebook because it’s an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family.

Second, the vast majority of people have little or no concern about their privacy. In fact, most people have probably never looked at their privacy settings.

Third, there’s no viable alternatives if you decide to leave Facebook. What are you going to do, go to MySpace? That would be a crazy move.

Instead of leaving Facebook, most people look at it as an immature child. You love the child and, as a result, live with their dumb-ass moves because that’s just part of growing up. This is why QFD hardly caused a ripple.

More: For anyone interested in Facebook’s privacy setting, check out All Facebook’s 10 Things Every Facebook User Should Know.

As well, MarketWatch has a story on how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled today at the All Things D conference.

Some Real-Life Privacy Insight

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Last week, Seth Singer and I hit the streets of Toronto to shoot a video for Sysomos. It was a simple and fun proposition: we wanted people to take a shot at saying “Sysomos” given Sysomos is frequently mispronounced.

Given we live in a world in which a growing number of people disclose all kinds of personal and professional information on social networks, I thought it would be relatively easy getting people to help us with the video. I figured we could easily get all the interviews we needed in a couple of hours.

It was surprising, however, to see how many people politely declined when they learned the video was going to appear on the Web. There are actually people who apparently still care about personal privacy, which is a refreshing perspective compared with the full-disclosure nature of social media.

At the same time, there were plenty of people happy to participate, which also suggests that people are still willing and enthusiastic about lending a hand.

Here’s the Sysomos video:

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