Archive for December, 2009

Posted on December 22, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Pitch: Simler.com opens new social community focused on similar interests

The Pitch
Simler.com, a new online community built to connect people with common interests, announces the public beta launch of its service (http://simler.com). Unlike other social networks, which essentially see viewers connecting with the same people from site to site, regardless of their personal connections, Simler is focused on finding similar people through similar interests. Upon signing up, a new user “tags himself/herself” with relevant attributes that describe him/her, and Simler uses these “tags” in order to connect people with similar interests.

Discussion in Simler is used to meet and converse with other users. Users can meet other people that share similar tags, for example, soccer players can find other soccer players on a local and network-wide basis. Users can also find those that have the most in common with them by comparing multiple tags they may share in common. The service focuses on meeting like-minded people while making it amazingly simple to talk to them about the things they have in common.

With an eye for design and an emphasis on usability, Simler strives to make interest-based networking a simple endeavor. Finding other users is quick and painless, and then participating in topic related discussions is just as easy.

“Simler is based on the notion our deepest relationships are built on common ground. Sure, it’s fun to talk to your friends. But it’s even more fun to talk about the things that you like,” said Simler’s founder, Ryan Goodwin. “We believe social media should be smarter, allowing you to not only decide who you would like to hear from, but also what you’d like to hear from them.”

Following a short beat period, the most popular tags on Simler include:

. Video Games (http://simler.com/video-games/
. Books to Read (http://simler.com/books-to-read/)
. Felicia Day (http://simler.com/felicia-day/)
. Design (http://simler.com/design/)
. Dexter (http://simler.com/dexter/)

To get started on Simler, head to http://simler.com and add a few tags about your interests. Soon enough, you will be swinging from the trees with similar people who like the same things you do.

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My first impressions:
Another startup with a monkey logo: See -> http://socialwayne.com/2009/10/11/startups-and-monkey-logos/ . Seriously though, I like the concept of Simler that it connects people by interests therefore making it easier for  link minded users to have converations.

Will I use it?
Maybe, it does have that “another twitter” appeal to it but it I do see the value of Simler too.

What features do I like?

• The navigation
• The sort by tags
• The comments by tags
• The tag stats

What features or information would I like to see:
I have not used Simler enough to answer this question.

What does Simler remind me of?

• Pounce
• Yahoo meme

If you would like for me to review your product or site please email: pitches at socialwayne dot com .
Disclaimer: I have no investment or relationship with the creators of this site.

Have you used Simler before? If so what are your thoughts about the product?

Posted on December 21, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Location based apps by the numbers & the month @FourSquare passed them all, but why?

As we get closer to 2010 one of the items I’m sure you have read on probably every end of the year predictions post is that location based apps are going to be big in 2010. Locations based apps are not new for example, Brightkite has been around since 2005 and was clearly growing as one of the leaders in the location based market. I’m not sure who came next but soon to launch was Whrrl, Loopt, and now we have Gowalla and Foursquare. Foursquare has been all of the buzz latley and by looking at the compete.com numbers they’re on one roller coster ride up the vistors chart.

I was told in August is when they switch domains from playfoursqare.com to foursquare.com but regardless from September to now Foursquare their traffic growth has been amazing. Moving into 2010 not only Foursquare but all of the location based apps will have tons of competition with new apps launching such as stalqer, nextstop, TriOut. I’m sure more to launch in 2010 as looking back on a 2008 post from Read Write Web saying Location-Based Social Networking to Generate $3.3 Billion by 2013.

Besides all of the buzz as being labeled as the next Twitter by the early adopters and social media enthusiast what do think is the reason for Foursquare recent growth?

Posted on December 16, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

No, I Will Not Help Your Business Spam People on Twitter

Photo via: http://stopautodm.com/

Twitter: the little platform that does it all; from marketing, to customer service and sadly, massive amounts of spam. The Twitter platform itself, doesn’t spam, but with various tools using Twitter’s API can allow people to use it for spamming with public tweets and direct messages (DMs). Spam is nothing new in the digital world, we receive millions of spam every day in our email inboxes and it’s an ongoing problem with Twitter. But with recent UI changes and updates, Twitter spam has seemed to decrease.

My LinkedIn inbox saw an unfortunate occurrence this week. I received a message from someone asking if I could help them with something that I not only consider spamming on Twitter but also to find the best tool to automate the process of creating a Twitter account for business purposes. Here’s a screenshot of the LinkedIn message. Some information has been grayed out to protect the guilty.

The individual basically wanted to launch a Twitter marketing strategy the following ways:

1. auto follow targeted people
2. Send auto DM’s
3. Target followers by region
4. Auto or easily unfollow users who do not follow back

Now I will confess and say that I have used various tools myself and for others to auto follow people on Twitter by location and keyword but I have NEVER pulled an auto-follow and then unfollow just for subscribers. Also I have NEVER sent Auto DMs to my followers or any Twitter account that I have managed. My response to this person was “Hello, thanks for contacting me, yes there is software that will allow you to reach your goals but it’s a practice that I do not recommend or suggest to others using Twitter.”

As more businesses continue to use Twitter for marketing and more social media practitioners are born every day, I hope this is not a sign of the times, as we move into 2010, of businesses who are looking to implement Twitter as a part of their existing marketing efforts. Maybe I’m being a little hard, but as you can see, this person is a consultant for a client and that brings me to another point. Yes, social media is about sharing and you can find a lot of free help online including Twitter itself. But if you’re working for a business or if you’re a business and would like consulting, that’s something I do at Twine Interactive and we can setup a conference call or a strategy session so you can get the best value out of your time and money. But to the person who sent me the LinkedIn message: if you find this blog post, there is a Twitter app store called OneForty.com

Reference link: Twitter 101 Advice for Companies: “Don’t spam people”

*Disclaimer: I have no business investment with OneForty.com

How are you using Twitter for business?

Posted on December 15, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

The 2009 Twitter Trends Report

Looking for what was hot on Twitter in 2009? Look no further, Twitter just post the Top Twitter Trends of 2009 From the blog post:

These are Twitter’s top Trending Topics across several categories—an interesting time capsule of what was happening as this decade came to a close.

News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows
1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues)
1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology
1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags
1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

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Any surprised trends that made or didn’t make the list?

Posted on December 11, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

What I'm sharing on Google Reader for December 11th

Today, while reading RSS feeds in Google Reader, I came across these interesting blog posts and wanted to share them with you. I hope you find some of them interesting. If one of them was useful to you or if you have a comment about one, let me know in the comments. For real-time results of what I’m sharing on Google Reader see my feeds on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/waynesutton
Thanks

Shared Southwest Pushes for Fans with Free Tickets Giveaway.