Month: January 2010

Can Foursquare save newspapers?

2009 was a tough year for newspapers, with all the cutbacks, closures, skinnier page widths and struggles with transitioning to the online realm. But maybe 2010 is off to a better start in terms of that last item — the online issue. At least one newspaper — Canada’s Metro News — is thinking differently about mobile media.

As Mashable reported earlier this week, Toronto-based Metro is partnering with the mobile check-in game Foursquare to provide editorial content to readers on the go.

“As a key component of the partnership, Metro will add their location-specific editorial content to the Foursquare service,” the newspaper explains. “People who choose to follow Metro on Foursquare will then receive alerts when they’re close to one of those locations. For example, someone close to a restaurant that Metro has reviewed would receive a ‘tip’ about that restaurant and the have ability to link through to the full Metro review on metronews.ca.”

As Mashable points out, this partnership offers interesting possibilities. “The partnership also serves as a symbiotic relationship that combines mobile utility with the bonus of print exposure for Foursquare as well as restaurants and retailers. Case in point, Metro plans to feature Mayor Deals every Friday in its publication. The deals are alternative ad buys for businesses looking to offer and promote mayor-only specials.”

Could Foursquare help save the newspaper business? And in the process, could it boost retail business, help stimulate local economies and even make mobile applications even more relevant? Looks like Foursquare and Metro are on to something.

Natives/immigrants vs. residents/visitors

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly a decade since Marc Prensky first introduced us to the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants as a way of thinking about people’s comfort levels with digital technology. The idea boils down to this: in general, everybody over a certain age is a digital immigrant who must learn the customs and languages of the digital world because it is foreign to them, and everybody under a certain age is a native because they grew up with the technology.

But recently I learned (thanks to Twitter) about a different way of looking at how people approach the digital realm. (And to show how behind the curve I am, this idea is nearly two years old and I’m just now hearing about it.)

This different paradigm discusses digital media and technology in terms of residents and visitors, rather than natives and immigrants.

“The resident,” explains Dave White of the University of Oxford, who wrote the residents/visitors post, “is an individual who lives a percentage of their life online. The web supports the projection of their identity and facilitates relationships. These are people who have an persona online which they regularly maintain. … The web has become a crucial aspect of how they present themselves and how they remain part of networks of friends or colleagues.”

The visitor, on the other hand, “is an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need arises. They may book a holiday or research a specific subject. They may choose to use a voice chat tool if they have friends or family abroad. Often the Visitor puts aside a specific time to go online rather than sitting down at a screen to maintain their presence at any point during the day. They always have an appropriate and focused need to use the web but don’t ‘reside’ there. They are sceptical of services that offer them the ability to put their identity online as don’t feel the need to express themselves by participating in online culture in the same manner as a Resident.”

I think the visitor/resident dichotomy makes more sense than the immigrant/native one. Because, age-wise, I ought to be a digital immigrant but I am more of a digital resident than a visitor.

What do you think?