Every Friday, Reprise’s best and brightest meet to discuss the week’s top industry news. It’s a meeting that sometimes ends in laughter, sometimes end in tears, but always ends with interesting insights, insights we’ve decided to share with you, dear reader.
Foursquare’s Crowley: Facebook Places “Boring” http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/raw/?p=3688
Small piece on what mobile check-in phenomenon Foursquare’s co-founder thinks of Facebook’s recently launched Places,a seeming competitor with a much larger potential platform, and how he intends to stay ahead of the social networking behemoth
Our take:
Our group found it interesting that FourSquare signups spiked the day Places came out. We attributed this to Places creating a new awareness of location based social networking in general, plus the limitations of Places. While Facebook should be at an advantage to pick and choose from others innovations since they’re starting late, they don’t have any of the incentives or deals Foursquare users enjoy. Foursquare is also platform agnostic, while Facebook has decided to make the mobile version of Places available only to iPhone users so far. John Chan, our VP of Media, mentioned a friend of his who uses FourSquare to remember where he’s been (Memento, anyone?) so maybe Facebook can use Places as a mapped diary, or they can start to include tips and recommendations from friends. Regardless, as evidenced by the absence of Places postings on most people’s walls, Facebook has some work to do.
Apple and Google Prepare for Mobile Ad War http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/26/technology/mobile_advertising/index.htm
With Apple and Google’s respective purchases of Quattro Wirless and AdMob, tech companies are betting big on a mobile ad boom.
Our thoughts:
While many of us thought that Apple’s demo of Nissan iAds we had seen for the upcoming Leaf were impressive, they also felt a little excessive and reminded some of banner ads that blocked the screen back in ye olde Internet times. Just because you can do a lot to take over the device with mobile ads doesn’t mean you should. Marketers need to ask how do people use their phones? Our coffee klatch agreed that the opportunity to market in mobile is very strong around local location and product searches and in store reviews and even apps that guide you to different things (How to Bake Cookies in a recipe app could guide you through the ingredients in your local supermarket for instance). In other words enhance the user experience, don’t disrupt it.
