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Klout: Measuring Online Influence

Take the need to market to influencers, the rise of the attention economy, set to a reputation system and you have a tool like Klout.  Ever since their strong presence at Blog World Klout does as it says "Klout the Standard for Influence".  Dropping any one's Twitter handle into Klout search pulls up metrics that are like the Google Analytics of influence.

Let's start with an overview of a user's dashboard when they check on their score.  The basic Klout score is a rating between 1 and 100 that reflects a combination True Reach, Amplification, and Network. These 3 catagories track 35 different vairables when computing your score.

The badges note different influential milestones the user has reached. While each of the badges correlate to an increase in one of the 3 major Klout score metircs, I see the game elements as a way to help encourage people to link their social media accounts to Klout.  While it is interesting to know that this user is listed in a 100 different Twitter lists, Klout's next screen is where they break down serious data.

A user's Amplification Probability rates the possibility that something you say online will cause others to respond to it.  This includes the stats listed in the bar underneath this catagory: total retweets, unique retweets (how many different individual accounts has retweeted you), in/out bound message ration (in and outgoing direct messages), total Facebook likes, and total Facebook comments.

In this blog's next update we'll be going over the nect 2 catagories: Network and True Reach

Facebook Privacy- Is Your Account Wide-Open To The Public??

All too often, we notice that our clients' personal Facebook profiles are completely public to the entire Facebook network (over 500,000,000 people!). Without the proper privacy settings, all of your pictures, wall posts, and tons of other personal information is viewable to anyone with a Facebook account - putting you at a higher risk for identity theft and other problems. In this short video, Christine shows you how to quickly and easily correct this problem.

For a full-screen view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sd7Vof3RGg 

Facebook Places now offering deals. How it stacks up against FourSquare

Facebook has just rolled out Facebook Deals for Facebook Places.  First let's get you up to date with their location based service offering¹:

Individual Deal: Instant deal with check in.
Friend Deal: Reward groups up to 8 people at a time.
Loyalty Deal: punch card (2-20 check ins)
Charity Deal: Your business can pledge to donate to a charity based on check ins.
You can also set deal duration and deal quanity.  Facebook Deals are limited to one deal at a time.  Facebook says that it takes up to 48 hours for a deal to be approved and that it may reject a deal if they feel like it doesn't provide enough value.

While on paper Facebook Deals sound as full featured of their main competition FourSquare there are a few major differences.

One Deal at a Time: Both services say that only one special or deal can be active at a time but FourSquare has a work around so that you can always offer a special to the Mayor of a venue.  You can also word FourSquare specials to do other types of special combinations.

Facebook May Reject Your Deal: While both services have the same 48 hour approval time frame Facebook requires that your deal be "significant".  Facebook doesn't know you, your business, or your customers so how can they judge your deal fairly? 

On Facebook's own blog annoucing deals there's a cigar business complaining about his deal being rejected. "You allow cigar businesses to have fan pages, yet I cannot offer MY customers a discount for checking in?"  FourSquare allows specials that announce special things you can do at a venue.  Tabe BBQ ran a special telling people to come in at a certain time to try off the menu items.  Under Facebook Deal's that type of deal may be rejected.

FourSquare Has More Check In Options:FourSquare has a presence on every smart phone OS.  In addition to that their mobile website is fully functional for check ins.  Is your customer base mostly non smart phone users?  FourSquare allows for SMS check ins so no customer feels left behind on deals.  Facebook may have a potentially larger user base but lacks in options to include everyone.

When it comes to the winner of the location based service space my money is on FourSquare.  “Twitter has its DNA and it’s succeeding in a way that -- Facebook couldn’t crush it with the status update,” Crowley said².  Fast Company has called Facebook Deals a "huge success³" but FourSquare has had this type of success with many companies repeatedly. 

FourSquare is suffering from growing pains however. “Some things don’t fully work the way we want them too. Part of it is we’ve grown so quickly, hitting nearly 5 million users. We need to go back and fix some of the core things that differentiate Foursquare from others in the space,” Crowley said³.   As long as FourSquare stays nimble, adds features, and entices businesses to use their specials over deals, Facebbook will fail to crush them.

1.http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=446183422130
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10100163069768683

2.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-11/foursquare-user-base-exceeds-4-million-as-growth-trumps-sales.html

3. http://www.fastcompany.com/1700469/facebook-places-deals-gap-a-huge-success

4. http://searchengineland.com/foursquares-crowley-fatigue-plans-to-fix-54856

The Future of Television - Internet Enabled TV

• Search TV Shows through channels, Google apps, and the web all at once
• TV gets a home page - a Google Chrome like display of favorite shows, websites, and apps will appear when you first turn on your TV.
• Browse the whole web with a complete web browser
• TV to web to TV is seamless or you can do picture in picture simultaneously
• Android Marketplace: Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, games and etc
• Your phone as a remote
• Intergrates DVR functionality with Dish Network

• Streams your iTunes library
• Stream your photos
• iPhone or iPad as remotes
• AirPlay - rented or paid content to be shared across all Apple devices "Apple TV gives you access to some of your favorite Internet content" Flckr, Mobile Me, Youtube, Netflix
• HD Rentals $4
• No flash support


Google TV in Depth:

Sony's new Google TV offering could be a sneak attack to get the 65+ generation online more as they spend only 8 hours online a week, the lowest amount a week compared to all other age segments. They also typically spend 43 hours a week (a full time job!) watch TV. 46% of this age range are interested in an easy way to have Internet in their TV so market demand is there as well. Source

With full web plus the ability to go picture-in-picture with web and live tv people now don't have to break out the laptop for many things they would normally go online for. Checking in on Get Glue, looking up show information, or participating in live show discussions and contests can be done directly on your TV.

Apple TV in Depth:

If you're a typical iTunes user you must have spent hours upon hours carefully curating your iTunes library and organizing music and media into categories. Apple TV makes it easy to enjoy your carefully curated media on your big screen and home audio equipment wirelessly.

Apple TV is built to fit within the entire Apple product ecosystem. On top f using your iPhone as a remote, iPods and iPads will share the same functionality. When AirPlay launches you can share all your rented or purchased content across all your Apple devices.

The Winner:

Right now, with Google TV just days into consumer hands, I would say it is hard to speculate on a clear winner. Google TV is going to start off with a small makret share until they have more TV manufactures on board or annouce a cheaper Google TV box. There's also the question of how much value people place on having full web and Adriod apps on their TV when it's easy enough to buy an inexpensive HTPC or the fact that many laptops now have HDMI out. Unless developers release apps that significantly changes the way we watch TV, Google TV may remain a niche product. GetGlue comes to mind, but I still say we need to wait and see.

Apple TV is giving Apple users what they want and at a very sweet price point. The various conveniences and innovations that Apple users are accustomed to (like using your iPhone or iPad as a TV remote - very cool) will guarantee tons of unit sales. Imagine having the convenience of calling your TV remotejust to find it. Apple TV can also become an easy gateway product for PC people who are looking to add an Apple product to their gadget collection.

The coming TV battle highlights the type of speculation that people are making on the market. How much of the world out there are part of the "I want to be totally free of cableTV and want to go full Internet TV." group? How much of the maret is that interested in having Internet on their TV think Google TV is the answer? One other takeaway here is the coming move away from the 3D TV hype machine (performance) and towards customers thinking about where their video comes from (content delivery) as the primary current innovation of the immediate future of TV.

(speaking of HTPCs here's an interesting infographic on the subject) http://mashable.com/2010/10/01/apple-tv-roku-boxee-comparison/

Other resources used: http://www.apple.com/appletv/
http://www.google.com/tv/




The History of The Internet & Interesting Stats

March 6, 2010

I’m always fascinated with the origins of different technologies, and I love analyzing interesting statistics. Here is some of the history of the net:    


The Internet may seem like a pretty advanced medium for communicating, but we're still really in the infancy of its growth. Although it has technically been around since the early 70s, the internet has only been popular for private use for about the past 15-16 years. Let’s put this in perspective: The television was first commercialized in 1925 and even the simple advancement of color TV sets did not come to the public until almost 20 years later!!    


Get this: The internet was originally developed in the early 1970s by DARPA- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - as a means to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities. It was originally used as a means to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data on the modern Internet, in 1972 and 1973. If any two people "invented the Internet," it was Kahn and Cerf - but they have publicly stated that "no one person or group of people" invented the Internet. (note: Contrary to popular belief, Al Gore never said he invented the internet, though he really did have a substantial part in the US legal framework and governmental issues related to it.)    


While the internet has become HUGELY popular in the past decade and a half, there is still a very large percentage of the world's population (almost 3/4 of the people on Earth) that DO NOT use the internet on a daily basis. That number is shrinking quite quickly though. If current trends of growth continue, the number of people using the internet could MORE THAN DOUBLE in the next 10 years.