Question 1: How can Foursquare drive foot traffic to travel destinations?

As I mentioned here, it’s obvious Foursquare is moving toward a Whrrl-like model with it’s new 2.0 upgrade, which places To-Do’s and Tips in a much more prominent role. This change is the first of a two-step process:

1. Foursquare will take a main-stream tactic by spoon-feeding its users. First, Foursquare is introducing the core users to the idea of tips.
2. Second, Foursquare will implement more updates that will personalize and categorize the Foursquare user experience. Right now, tips are a dead end. If you leave a tip at a location on Foursquare and someone else completes your tip, you get no notification when happens. Whrrl has completed this loop with its influence scores and societies, but hasn’t yet penetrated past the iPhone platform.

Question 2: If you could only take one location-based app with you on vacation (domestic), which one would it be?

Dan Parks raised an interesting point here. Once Foursquare starts mining the To-Do and Tips data, they will be able to show which Foursquare users are more influential in certain verticals. The sushi expert’s tips will be displayed more prominently on location pages for sushi places. Same for wine connoisseurs, mommy-bloggers, urban socialites and more.

Question 3: How can an online travel sites like Orbitz and Expedia integrate LBS? What about drive revenue?

Alicia Collins raises an interesting issue here. When the reality she’s talking about comes to fruition, we will have real-world affiliate marketing. Right now, affiliate marketers get paid by how many clicks they get on certain links, or how many Amazon purchases are tied to their designated link. In a short while, affiliate marketers will be paid based on how much real-world action they are driving.

Question 4: Mobile application EpicMix lets skiiers track physical activity on the mountain. What’s more beneficial: specialty apps like EpicMix or LBS like Foursquare?

I have long been preaching the fact that location elements will become common features across almost all media, especially mobile media. In a few years, we won’t think about what location-based app we’re using. When we’re drinking beer, we’ll check into Untappd (and Foursquare along with it). When we’re running, we’ll use RunKeeper. You get the idea. Every app we use will have a location tie-in.

Question 5: How can LBS help travel marketers and content providers deliver audio and video content?

[Disclosure: One of my freelance clients was curious about the topic and asked me to include it in the chat.]

Maurice Rahmey’s point at the end is a good one. There are content creation companies already involved in LBS, or looking to get involved in LBS, but have no way of delivering their content on the LBS platforms! That’ll come soon, I think. SCVNGR will be one of the first. Stickybits is already dabbling in video and audio.

Discussion about Facebook Places

As per usual, #LBSchat skewed off onto a side discussion about what the hell that Facebook Places thing is supposed to be.

Question 6: Gowalla is partnering with Four Seasons to offer $100 gift certificates for users who complete local treks. Success or failure?

Here we have two opposing sides to the issue, and yet, I agree with both.

Want to join in #LBSchat? Head over to Tweetchat.com and plug in the #LBSchat hashtag on Thursday nights at 9pm EST. See you there!

A separate example:

My first thought is, “What the hell is going on here?” And then I see this:

So fans can interact with these characters (who I assume are being run by fellow fans) to create an interactive experience that goes beyond the 10p.m.-11p.m. time slot during which the show runs. Twitter gives these characters voices on an even playing field with fans.

This video by Ideo talks about the future of books. These folks believe that fiction literature will be interactive in much the same way as the “Mad Men” characters are living on Twitter. What’s the takeaway for entertainment marketers? Plan on making your content interactive in social spaces. If you don’t, your passionate fans will do it for you.

My question is do people always want to be active participants in everything? Is passive consumerism dead? Won’t there always be a small corner of humanity that just likes to curl up with a book and read? We’ll see.

Check out the rest of the “Mad Men” characters:

http://twitter.com/dondraperSCDP

http://twitter.com/Carla_Madmen

http://twitter.com/BethanyVanNuys

http://twitter.com/MisterDraper

http://twitter.com/HarryCraneSCDP

http://twitter.com/PeteCampbell_NY

http://twitter.com/_TrudyCampbell

http://twitter.com/The_Don_Draper

http://twitter.com/MsMeganSCDP

http://twitter.com/StanRizzo_SCDP

http://twitter.com/_BettyFrancis

…and I’m sure I’m missing a few.

So far we’ve had Where and SCVNGR join the discussion, the TriOut team on board from day 1, and promotion from some really interesting Foursquare resources such as 4squarebadges.com, aboutfoursquare.com, @FoursquareHelp. Yesterday I spoke with Whrrl creator Pelago’s VP of Product/Marketing John Kim at length about the product’s roadmap and strategy after he noticed how much we were tweeting about Whrrl on #LBSchat!

This chat is quickly becoming a kind of focus group for the location industry. If you’re reading this and taking part in the chat, thank you! If you want to get involved, we chat on Twitter on Thursday nights at 9pm EST with the hashtag #LBSchat. Check out last night’s transcript.

Cudos to the TriOut team for joining in. Having a platform perspective on these issues really enhanced the discussion. See the whole #LBSchat transcript here. If you’re interested in more location chatter, check out @waynesutton’s #GEOchat Tuesdays at 2pm EST.

Next Thursday at 9pm EST, we’re talking about gaming elements in location on #LBSchat. Don’t miss out!

Here’s what Facebook has the potential to do. It can solve the duplicate venues problem once and for all.

At point A., if Facebook allows business owners and managers to merge multiple LBS locations with a single Facebook page, it can solve one of the biggest problems in the location industry. That would allow the location-based platforms to better track and merge duplicate venues.

But another issue occurs at point B. What happens if not every location has a Facebook Page? Do they have to make one? Some corporations don’t allow franchisees to manage individual Facebook Pages for their branch. What happens to those locations on Facebook? Is the corporate site allowed to merge multiple Facebook Places into a single Page?

To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed by the Facebook press conference tonight. I may have missed the answers to these questions, but then again, Zuck did say, “There’s a lot we aren’t doing…yet.” The possibilities are there. Will Facebook and the LBS networks follow them up with actions? And if so, when?

If you take a stroll down Harvard Street near Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA, you’ll pass a black hole portal that leads to Roxbury. Just before you take your running start to jump through a la Platform 9 3/4, you’ll stop for a closer look and realize that what you see is not in fact a black hole. It’s a large screen linked to a camera that is live broadcasting a street corner in Dudley Square. A set of microphones and speakers links the two locations with audio. You’ll soon discover you’ve stumbled across a virtual street corner. The description of the “digital media public art project” from Virtual Corners.net is below:

Beginning in June 2010, a storefront in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, and in Dudley Square, Roxbury will be transformed into large video screens, providing pedestrians of each neighborhood with a portal into one another’s worlds. Running 24/7, life-size screen images and AV technology will enable real-time communication between residents of the two neighborhoods.

The neighborhoods we have chosen to connect are transportation and cultural hubs with rich and intertwined histories. They are only 2.4 miles apart and a city bus runs directly between them, yet very few people from either neighborhood visits the other. Using technology developed to bridge geographical distances, Virtual Street Corners instead traverses the social boundaries that separate two important neighborhood centers with significant historical connections.

I decided to give it a shot. If you’ve been seeing me tag some recent tweets with “[sponsored],” that’s why.  So far (after two sponsored tweets) I’ve made $1.12! Not much money, but it’s more than the usual $0 my other tweets make. If you want to join, they gave me a referral link:

Anyway, here’s the feature I wrote:

Media Type

MyLikes is a hybrid of earned and paid media. There’s a small part of it that’s paid media because the advertiser controls where sponsor links lead. It’s earned media because since every member can only promote one paid link per day, the advertisers are competing for relevancy and product or service superiority. That competition is happening in the earned media/social media space.

Description

MyLikes pairs advertisers with influencers and allows those influencers to promote links and get paid by the click. It’s affiliate marketing gone social. I’d argue it’s an improvement on affiliate marketing because it focuses on relevance. There should be no surprise that it was founded by a former Google product manager and a former Google engineer.

MyLikes is an open social network. Members build profiles and establish interests by promoting or “liking” products and services. There is a selection of sponsored links they can choose to promote on various social networks, but they are only allowed to promote one of those per day to prevent users from spamming. MyLikes works with advertisers to match the best influences with their marketing needs, and those advertisers invite the top targeted users to promote their products. The member revenues flow into a PayPal account.

Content Flow

Content surrounding MyLikes is cyclical. The advertisers create landing pages and then buy clicks to those landing pages. The MyLikes members choose which links to promote and create content (which can be positive or negative) to frame the link within a certain context. Users who click on the links from MyLikes members through Twitter or Facebook are then taken to the landing pages.

What’s Valuable

MyLikes connects advertisers with influencers. There are a ton of people who have built up a following online for whatever reason: their video blog (about beer), their personality, or the cool stuff they do with their business. An endorsement from those influencers could be more valuable than paid media or owned media because of the simple fact that people listen to people. They are increasingly skeptical of brands. That’s part of the reason why I believe the future of marketing lies with people; not with brands pretending to be people. MyLikes also just secured some Seed funding this month. Robert Scoble also jumped onboard as an advisor, so it seems the folks at MyLikes are truly living their brand.

Up until this week when I saw “Alice in Wonderland,” my 3D experience was limited to 10-minute theme park shows like the “Muppets 3D” in Disney’s MGM/Disney Studios park and “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” in Epcot Center.

Needless to say, the 3D in theaters today is far superior to the 90s technology in the Florida theme parks. The question has been burning in my mind: Will 3D become the norm for visual media?

When color television first arrived on the market, many people didn’t want to pay for the new color TVs and rationalized that they didn’t need to be shown what colors a baseball field was. Eventually, however, the price for color technology declined, and color television became the norm. Movies like the “Wizard of Oz” hinged on the color aspect. Think about how much more powerful and enjoyable that movie is in color versus what it would have been in only black and white.

I think we’ll see the same predictors for the future of 3D:

• Affordability – Right now it is much more expensive to watch a movie in 3D. Like all technology, however, those prices will decline.

• Dependability – By this term, I mean how much media content depends on the 3D feature. What will be the “Wizard of Oz” of 3D? Will directors and producers figure out how to make movies and television shows use 3D in a way that transcends the “cheap 3D tricks” we see today? Movies and TV need to depends on the 3D features

• Development of a norm - There’s a catch-22 here. The first two points depend on 3D becoming widely accepted not just as a fad, but as a norm. Consequently, the norming of 3D depends on affordability and dependability.

Where will we see 3D develop into a necessary feature? Horror movies and thrillers? Sports? Fantasy?
Perhaps we’ll just have to take the plunge down the 3D rabbit hole to see what happens next.

As you can see, we were very excited last week in the days leading up to what some called “the best regional activity ever:”

My favorite part of the conference was the HR panel. Our president Rachel Sprung monitored the panel and taking question from the audience via Tweetdeck. Talk about new media enhancing in-person experiences!

My phone died this week. May it rest in peace. I seriously think all of the tweeting via text finally did it in.  But there were some great conversations happening on the hashtag. I couldn’t just sit and watch.

I’ve noticed a lot of blog posts recapping the event were thrown up this week. Here are some of the ones I found:

• “PR Advanced: Brand Yourself” by Rachel Sprung – She does a nice job of summing up the event and some of the highlights.
• Laura Flanagan took the plunge into personal branding with her first blog post “Step 1: Attend BU PRSSA Brand Yourself PR Advanced Regional Conference.”
• Ginny Soskey is ready to binge on personal branding too with her post “Branding Yourself: PR Advanced Conference Wrap-Up.”
• “Branding Yourself – PRAdvanced Conference” by Emily Forrest – Emilie focuses on lessons from a breakout session by Karen Raskopf of Dunkin’ Brands.
• Emilie O’Toole gives a few major lessons for personal branding. “Branded: Takeaways from PR Advanced 2010″
• I really like the skills assessment in Ellie Botelho’s post “Branding Myself.” I’ve got to get working on a skill assessment of my own.

Thanks to all who attended. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, and our hashtag #PRAdvanced was a trending topic in Boston!

For the last three-four months, I have been working hard behind the scenes at my internship consulting on our blog design and creating some of our web pages. Meghan M. Biro and Lisa Simons were the other brains behind the operation.

We’ve assembled a talented community of contributors from all over the country. We’ve got start-up experts, hiring pros, resume writers, HR marketers, college students, fresh graduates and everyone in between. We’ll be blogging, podcasting, posting videos and making multimedia content centered around a variety of topics: Careers, Culture, Digital Media, Green and Sustainability, Innovation.

Now, all of our hard work is public. Check us out. Subscribe to our RSS feed. Read my first post “Treat Your Job Search like a PR Campaign.” I’m so excited for this opportunity to contribute to the community and enhance my personal brand!