Category: marketing

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.

A new rung on the social media ladder

Update, Jan. 19, 2010: Josh Bernoff introduces the new version of the social media ladder in this morning’s post. “Conversationalists” are on the second rung. – AC

Those of you who sat in on my CASE District VI session on social media last week may recall a discussion of the social media latter, a concept introduced by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their wonderful book about the rise of social media, Groundswell.

The ladder is one way of illustrating the “social technographics” Li and Bernoff created to classify different Internet users — from the “creators” who publish blogs and user-generated videos to the “collectors” who use RSS proficiently to the “joiners” who link up via social networks. Above is a shot of the ladder from my Tweets, Tubes and Feeds presentation, and here’s a good explanation of technographics from Bernoff himself.

Well, the ladder just got taller. Forrester Research just announced the new social technographics. The original ladder, Bernoff explains, did not take into account “the rapid conversations that take place in tweets and Facebook status updates.”

To reflect the new behavior, we’ve added a rung to the Social Technographics ladder: Conversationalists, a group that starts out with 33% of the online population (compared with 70% who consume social content and 59% who use social networks).

I’m not sure where on the ladder that new rung fits, although for $499 I could buy a report from Forrester Research that would probably tell me. Anyway, the new rung makes sense. The conversations occurring on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere have exploded over the past 12-18 months, reinforcing what The Cluetrain Manifesto told us some 11 years ago: that “markets are conversations.”