Entertainment check in services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party. What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now provided by Mashable. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.
1. Social Scanning:
Advances in mobile barcode scanning technology have given rise to applications that allow for comparison shopping, QR code place check ins and ultimately a social experience around product barcodes.
What this means is that at any given moment, any smartphone owner can pull out their device, fire up a barcode scanning application, scan a code and complete activities or gain access to a wealth of immediately relevant information. Really, what we’re seeing is the convergence of social media and barcode scanning to create “social scanning.”
The consumer’s scanning behavior is so significant that location-sharing check in services such as SCVNGR are giving away QR code decals to retailers free of charge. Even Google( ) is sending their own QR code decals out to small businesses with popular Place Pages. Services such as Stickybits and Bakodo are taking the social scanning experience beyond the check in and creating product-driven communities around brands and items via barcodes. Stickybits lets users add video, text, photos and audio to the barcodes they scan in the physical world via iPhone and Andriod apps.
2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery:
Web-based Q&A services have been around for years. Now the previously sleepy space is seeing renewed interest from some of the Internet’s biggest names. This second iteration of Q&A services will likely forever redefine the way we find information, because it re-imagines “search” as intelligent information discovery.
The most buzzy of the bunch right now is Quora, an intuitive and relatively straightforward Q&A site whose co-founder, Adam D’Angelo, is most known for his past role as Facebook’s CTO. Quora was founded in June 2009, released into private beta in January 2010, and immediately became a hit Q&A site with the technorati crowd. In fact, web celebrities have been known to use the site to answer questions about themselves.
There are few Q&A services that have received the same type of attention as Quora, but the just-launched Facebook Questions project — which mirrors Quora in purpose and function — was released before Quora ever achieved mainstream recognition. Now the two products are essentially going head-to-head, competing for the same audience. Another notable Q&A site that contributes to the intelligent information discovery trend is Google’s Aardvark. Aardvark approaches the space with a model that helps users surface answers through friends of friends.
3. Group Buying:
Group buying is the deal-a-day group coupon trend made popular by Chicago-based startup Groupon. Over the years, Groupon’s successful model has been copied with ease. LivingSocial, 8coupons and a host of other clones have found their own way on the web. Recently, Yelp, Zagat and OpenTable have veered away from their core product strategy to bring group buying to their respective site audiences.
In the future, look for more brands to create their own Groupon-style deals and for Groupon and its larger competitors to snatch up smaller clones in order to expand and enhance their offerings. Also watch for check in and location-based services to intersect with group buying to create services similar to GroupTabs. The notion of having patrons check-in in masses to unlock deals is extremely business-friendly.
4. Mobile Meets Loyalty:
As consumers purchase more and more smartphones and phone technology heads in the direction of the “super,” it’s only a matter of time before old-fashioned loyalty, rewards and club card programs head in the mobile direction. Two applications — Key Ring and CardStar give us a preview of what’s to come.
Both applications are designed to eliminate plastic loyalty card buildup with a single digital repository. The apps leverage barcode scanning technology so users can save gym cards, grocery store cards, drug store cards and the like, right to their phone.
This trend is just beginning to take shape as smartphones become more commonplace, scanners become more sophisticated and retailers become digitally savvy. In the future, we can expect integration with merchant loyalty programs, as well as integration with check in services like Foursquare.
5. Checking-In to Entertainment:
Consuming most entertainment media is an inherently social experience. A crop of services have popped up in recent months to refine that social experience through entertainment check ins — the act of checking into the television show or movie that you’re watching right now.
CBS recently released their entertainment check in service, TV.com Relay. It’s a browser-based mobile app for most smartphones that allows users to check in to live television shows and follows the same TV guide-style format that Philo employs. Tunerfish is another mobile and web television check in service. It’s backed by Comcast and boasts partnerships with networks including HBO, Showtime and NBC. App users answer the question, “What are you watching?” by typing in the name of a show or movie and clicking the “I’m watching” button. The service also provides behavioral incentives in the form of awards, and has been actively working to bring network-sponsored, show-themed awards into the mix. There’s also Clicker Social, a relatively new addition from Clicker that turns the television search engine and web TV guide into an entertainment check in service as well.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment