Here at a&g, we’ve been thinking and reading a lot about Facebook Places, and we’ve come to the conclusion that as a standalone product, it really fails. Click the picture below to watch our video commentary on Facebook Places.

Want to talk more about emerging technology and some of the goodies we’re working on at a&g? Drop us a tweet (@schneidermike or @EricLeist), leave us a comment, or contact us here.

Watching

People may not be passionate about everywhere they go. Maybe that’s why according to Forrester Research, 96% of adults do not check-in and broadcast their locations with their mobile phones. However, many people are passionate about what television shows and movies they watch. And increasingly, more people are spending time watching TV and movies online, or multi-tasking on their laptops while they watch. Maybe that’s why popular TV shows regularly reach trending topic status on Twitter.

There are a few emerging platforms that are working to leverage these trends. Keep an eye on services such as Miso, Fanvibe and Clicker. They bring social and semantic context to media consumption, and they might catch more momentum than location-based services if they reach the mainstream.

Events

Most events are inherently social, so maybe this trend is more about events becoming digital. Now, it’sfairly common practice to find pictures from events on Facebook Pages where event hosts expect subjects to “tag themselves.” St. Edward’s University took huge steps forward by promoting participation on Whrrl for the school’s 2010 graduation ceremony. Flikr boasts groups for events like Bonaroo and SXSW which point to the growing trend of group storytelling. Sporting events and conferences alike are projecting Twitter streams and text-2-screen content for real time social commentary. Events are taking shared experiences to a new level in the digital world.

Products

Barcode scanning applications on smart phones open up whole new worlds of possibility. UPC codes aren’t just for cashiers anymore. Stickybits is a mobile application that uses barcode scanning technology to give users the ability to attach “bits” of media such as pictures, video and comments. Booyah’s MyTown recently released an upgrade that rewards users for “checking in” to products. You can’t overlook the power of Google Shopper, an application that uses image recognition and barcode technology to show shoppers where they can find online product reviews, and where they can buy the product for lower prices.

Eating

Networks like Foodspotting and Yelp have been around for a while, but eating is going social starting with a new restaurant opening in New York City this month. It’s called 4food, and it gives its customers the powerto create, name and market menu times to their social networks. The whole plan is tied into a rewards and loyalty program. Speaking of social loyalty in the food service space, Tasti D-Lite is miles ahead of the game. The company encourages users to check-in, tweet and post their brand engagement to Facebook in exchange for extra loyalty points.

Expect these trends to cross paths with more established ones such as real-time communication and group buying. Want to talk more about emerging technology and some of the goodies we’re working on at a&g? Drop us a tweet (@schneidermike or @EricLeist), leave us a comment, or contact us here.

We have been a little obsessed with the possibilities of location-based social networks and gaming platforms lately so we decided to check ourselves instead of checking in. We hope you enjoy this tongue-in-cheek look at the LBS space. As always, if you have questions about how to activate with this stuff, drop us a tweet (@schneidermike or @EricLeist), leave us a comment, or contact us here.

If you compare all location-based services to Foursquare, you need to stop right now. The user experience on SCVNGR, an application for virtual scavenger hunts, is entirely different from those on other location-based services. Yesterday, The Ad Club hosted a SCVNGR hunt for local advertising and marketing professionals to find the judges for the The Hatch Awards. Eight a&g employees joined the hunt in downtown Boston.

How a SCVNGR trek works

1. A company or organization licenses the SCVNGR platform to create a journey complete with trivia questions, miniature missions and puzzles.
2. Users download the SCVNGR application onto their smart phones and use it to find the locations within their desired trek. They can also play over SMS.
3. SCVNGR tracks each user’s progress throughout the trek and awards points for completing tasks.
4. At the end of each hunt, the winners are rewarded with prizes ranging from Super Bowl rings to iPads.

What SCVNGR gets right

• It’s easy to access for both users and companies.
  
• It provides a gaming layer on top of geo-locality that brings the user past the simple check-in found on Foursquare and Gowalla.
• It gives users tangible and intangible incentives to explore hot spots and sights they might not have found otherwise.
• Through the activity tab, SCVNGR chronicles a shared experience for all users participating in the hunt.

SCVNGR still has to overcome a few barriers

• It does not operate well in verticals. Challenges for one trek are mixed in with general challenges as well as challenges from other treks. SCVNGR doesn’t provide a filter for users to find exactly what challenges need to be completed for a specific trek.

Congratulations to a&g's Matt Dexter and Lauren Steingold who accidentally got engaged while completing a task for a different SCVNGR trek.

• Challenges with open-ended answers are sometimes very picky. One of yesterday’s tasks required users to name what artifacts were displayed in a glass case at The Green Dragon Tavern. A gaggle of Ad Club members huddled around the case guessing answers like “musket” and “rifle.” SCVNGR was simply looking for the word “gun.” On an old-fashioned paper list scavenger hunt, a wider range of correct answers would have been accepted.
• At times, SCVNGR’s challenges are too virtual. They don’t necessarily require users to go find a location. One of The Ad Club’s challenges told users to go to Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park and write a rhyming poem about Boston. But users didn’t actually have to physically go to the park. They could write the poem from anywhere, which takes the “hunt” out of scavenger hunt.
• Scavenger hunts are team experiences, but the application does not make it easy for multiple users on the same team to follow along on each of their phones. Instead, teams share one cell phone that tracks their progress, which can present lots of confusing “wait, let me see your phone” moments. Couple that with the difficulty of trying to read a cell phone screen in bright daylight.

SCVNGR has enormous potential to allow users to find the gaming layer on top of the world around them. New developments for the application are popping up all the time, so expect some of these issues to be resolved soon. SCVNGR just announced a rewards program earlier this week, and a Blackberry application is rumored to be on the way.

The location space is expanding in many different directions right now. Want to talk more about location-based services and some of the goodies we’re working on at a&g? Drop us a tweet (@schneidermike or@EricLeist), leave us a comment, or contact us here.

Social media are built on our human need to share information. That includes personal information such as what we’re doing, where we are, who we’re with and (increasingly) what we buy. Now, companies and consumers are grabbing hold of social commerce, but are both parties fully taking advantage of it?

Social bargain-hunting service Groupon is currently operating in 52 cities. Its website boasts users have saved almost $300 million through Groupon’s featured deals. The average deal price on the site has steadily increased from about $25 in November 2009 to $45 in April. More markets are opening their doors to social commerce, and droves of consumers are flocking to the idea.

How social commerce works

On Groupon, if a predetermined number of people purchase the discounted coupon each of them get the product or service at a discounted rate. In the very rare instance that the deal fails to reach the predetermined number of purchases, everyone’s transaction is cancelled and no one gets the deal.



With a similar service, Living Social, users get discounts if they convince their friends to buy the featured products and services. These services are giving companies and consumers the power to leverage online sharing, creating win-win situations in the process.

BUT that’s not all…

What if companies decide to hand over other promotional activities to the social realm? All signs point to the social commerce trend’s continued success, so why not take social sharing past one-time discount coupons?

Purchase-sharing site Blippy lets users broadcast what they buy to their social networks and spark conversations around those purchases. Some people see Blippy as a huge invasion of privacy, but that may be because outside of the conversations, Blippy doesn’t offer any incentive for users to share. That’s where merchants have an opportunity to step in. They need to give their customers incentive to share their location and/or purchases. That incentive can come in many different forms other than pre-purchase discounts as with LivingSocial and Groupon.

Consider the following possibilities:

• An electronics store gives customers more points on its loyalty program for Tweeting purchases automatically.
• A ticket vendor offers free parking for an event to a user who posts his football ticket purchase to Facebook.
• An apparel company with an exclusive product testing club for its most frequent customers gives those customers more freebies to try if they blog or post pictures of the clothing on social networks.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends. So each piece of content shared on the site has potential for a 130x multiplier effect. TypePad just released a study that proved Facebook Like widgets increase blog traffic by 50%. Imagine if the same increase was applied to products or services. And that’s only Facebook. Add that influence to email contacts, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Foursquare friends and other social groups. We’re talking about huge opportunities for vendors to let their marketing run rampant through their customers’ networks.

Want to talk more about social commerce and some of the goodies we’re working on at a&g? Drop us a tweet (@schneidermike or @EricLeist), leave us a comment, or contact us here.