Foursquare Makes It Easier to Discover Brands

Foursquare has launched a new web page to showcase top brands on its network in an effort to make it easier for users to find and follow them.

You may not know it, but there are hundreds of brands using Foursquare (1,323 brands to be exact), but most people don’t follow them, mostly because they aren’t easy to discover. Foursquare is trying to address that issue with Pages Gallery.

Pages Gallery, as the name suggests, is a gallery filled with the

Foursquare has launched a new web page to showcase top brands on its network in an effort to make it easier for users to find and follow them.

You may not know it, but there are hundreds of brands using Foursquare (1,323 brands to be exact), but most people don’t follow them, mostly because they aren’t easy to discover. Foursquare is trying to address that issue with Pages Gallery.

Pages Gallery, as the name suggests, is a gallery filled with the different company Pages on Foursquare. Through it, you can follow everyone from MTV to Zagat (or even Mashable) to get tips and other content.

The feature also includes a simple tool for searching through pages and browsing by popularity, whether they’re trending or whether they’re new. Pages Gallery also suggests pages that are popular with your friends.

Lots of brands are hopping onto Foursquare in a big way, but the additional exposure should help boost brands’ follower counts, which could be vital to Foursquare as it tries to monetize its millions of users. While it still desperately needs a way to discover brands within its mobile applications, Pages Gallery is a good start.

Color App Vulnerable to “Geo-spoofers”

Actual location not a barrier for photo sharing

Josh Wolford | March 29, 2011 @ 10:38am

It has been well documented that if privacy is what you want, the Color app is not for you.  Color, of course, is the much talked about new app that allows users to share photos effortlessly with anyone and everyone in their vicinity.

Well, apparently that last part is a bit malleable.

Turns out the perception of one’s location is good enough to fool Color into letting you invade photostreams anywhere, anytime.  Within hours of its release, Veracode CTO Chris Wysopal tweeted:

@WeldPond
Chris Wysopal@threatpost with trivial geolocation spoofing the auth model of Color is broken 4 days ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

When he tested it out, he found that he could go anywhere and see anything – much easier than expected.  He used a jailbroken iPad and an app called FakeLocation.  With this app, he was allowed to bypass the iPad’s GPS and set his location to anywhere in the world.

I’m sure most of you can see where this is going.

When he opened the Color app, bingo!  He could now browse all the photos from an area hundreds of miles away.  “This only took about five minutes to download the FakeLocation app and try a few locations where I figured there would be early adopters who like trying out the latest apps,” Wysopal told Forbes’ Andy Greenberg. “No hacking involved.”

To prove his success, Wysopal (in New York City) sent Greenberg a screencap of Color CEO Bill Nguyen’s photostream (Palo Alto, California):

Once again, this “cheat” is not ruffling any feathers over at Color headquarters.  As a spokesman said to Forbes, they never promised privacy.  “It is all public, and we’ve been very clear about that from the very beginning. Within the app, there’s already functionality to look through the entire social graph. Very few people will probably do what you’re saying, but all the pictures, all the comments, all the videos are out there for the public to see.”

And how many Color users, happy to share their photos with any stranger around them, would really care that the stranger lives in another state – or country?

Implicit Social Graphs Rise From Interest Not Location

Color Launch Generates New Round of Social Graph Discussion

Rob Diana | March 25, 2011 @ 10:49am

There has been a ton of conversation about social graphs, location and photo sharing lately. Most of this conversation has arisen due to the release of the photo-sharing application Color. The photo-sharing part of the discussion is only a gateway to the larger discussion of social graphs. I have been looking at the basic location-based applications a lot as well. Facebook Places, Google Places, and Foursquare are all fighting for the location crown. Granted, location-based applications are becoming very popular, but they were quickly outpaced by the group discount services like Groupon and Living Social. There is a very good reason for this as well. Location alone does not denote interest or intent. This is also why implicit social graphs are so important, they are based on interest or intent. Group discount services have a location aspect, but they are driven by interest and intent. All of the people involved in buying a discount have interest in what they are purchasing.

This is also why Color’s launch was received with such mixed reviews. They are trying to use location as the implicit social graph, but there is no real interest. Even if there are several people at the same location, the location may denote different purposes. As an example, if I am at a restaurant I probably do not want the interruption that would come with a location based graph. However, if I am visiting a tourist attraction I may welcome the location-based interaction, mainly because there is implicit interest in the location.

Fred Wilson has a very good description of how he was introduced to implicit graphs:

My first experience with this sort of implicit social graph came almost six years ago via my musical neighbors graph at last.fm. I don’t think I actually know any of these people in real life, but they are the last.fm users who have the closest taste to mine in music, right now. That right now is important because my musical neighbors graph looked differently last year and will look differently next year.

Obviously, people’s musical tastes change over the years, so a static graph is not entirely useful. The “musical neighbors” concept and Pandora’s music genome concept allow for discovery because they are using similar interests to create the implicit graph. A person’s friends may not have the same musical tastes and thus would actually clutter the listening experience with music the listener is not interested in.

In addition to the creation of implicit graphs, sometimes there needs to be a conversion from the implicit to the explicit graph. Colin Walker talks about this in reference to sporting events and other interest-based interactions:

Repeated interactions within implicit graphs can lead to a bleed from the implicit to explicit – once you get to know them some of those from implicit graph become ‘friends’ and, after a while, can be invited over in to the explicit graph.

This bleeding complicates the structures of explicit graphs because these new “friends” are not initially the same type of friends as those people you have known for years. Then there are some people in your explicit social graphs that you lose contact with. Even though they could have been friends previously, differing interests and the effects of time can change their relationship to you. This is where the concepts behind Color become interesting. Obviously, there needs to be some flexibility or “elasticity” in your social graphs, regardless of whether the graph is explicit or implicit. Color CEO Bill Nguyen had an interesting comment about this in a ReadWriteWeb article:

In the world of Facebook, once someone is your friend, they’re your friend until you return and re-evaluate that relationship, regardless of whether or not you’ve ever spoken to them again. In reality, the relationship could have fizzled long ago, yet it’s still a bond as good as any. With Color’s “elastic” social graph, these ties can fade and disappear. Color’s ability to accurately determine location and user proximity is what makes this sort of social graph – an implied, impermanent and elastic social graph – even possible.

As I previously stated, I do not agree with the importance of location in this quote, but the general concept is important. Location and time can both be an attribute of the implicit social graph, as can be seen with the SXSW conference. Just because you are in Austin does not mean that you share the social graph with a bunch of people. However, if you happen to be near specific locations in Austin during the same time as the SXSW conference and you have previously shown interest in web and technology startups, then you would be part of the same implicit social graph. Without the interest part of the equation, you could become part of the implicit graph purely by coincidence, maybe you work or live in Austin.

Om Malik has an excellent post this morning that really hits the same points, but talks about them differently. He mentions “happiness” and “utility”:

One of the reasons Instagr.am works is because it has that “happiness” attached to it. When I see my friend’s baby boy, it brings me joy. I see Mathew Ingram at an ice hockey game; it makes me warms my heart to see him enjoying time with his family. I reward Instagr.am with my attention because it makes me happy. That is its utility.

His examples and Fred Wilson’s examples are excellent reasons why some social applications really work well and others don’t get traction.  Implicit social graphs are really driven by interests where time and location can be attributes of that interest but they are not the primary definition of that interest.

GroupMe Featured Groups Announced

Group texting app launches newest feature

Josh Wolford | March 28, 2011 @ 12:27pm

To those of you not familiar with GroupMe and other group messaging apps, they allow users to create groups of family, friends or co-workers that will all receive any text sent by a member of that group through the app – it works almost like a text conference call.  I could start a group called “Golf Crew” and then my text “tee-time at 10″ or my photo of the new putter I bought could easily be sent to everyone in the group.

GroupMe is one of the leading apps of this type.  Today they announced via their blog:

Today, we’re thrilled to announce another awesome feature of the GroupMe platform-Featured Groups. Starting today, we’re partnering with five amazing brands to help them connect with fans and bring some exciting, exclusive benefits to GroupMe users. They’re like private fan clubs for the things you love.

Since people often times forms groups based on events, bands and TV shows, GroupMe decided to specifically target those tendencies.  Users can create their own messaging groups or join larger groups centered around these featured topics.

The first five featured groups are: Bad Girls Club, America’s Best Dance Crew, Bon Jovi, Bonnaroo and Coachella.  There are incentives for joining a featured group instead of simply creating a normal group and talking about these featured things.  Group members will have access to insider information and promotions.  For example, America’s Best Dance Crew groups will be provided with insider blog posts, behind the scenes videos as well as the chance to chat with some of the actual crew members as they will join specific fans’ groups.  Coachella fans will be the first to know about any lineup changes and Bon Jovi group members will be automatically entered in prize giveaways.

This begs the question, GroupMe users are regularly chatting it up about Bon Jovi?  Is GroupMe trying to target the aging 80′s fanatic demographic?

Although the jury is out on the buzz that can be created by Bon Jovi, there is great potential for GroupMe users to have some fun interactions with other bands, shows, films and events in the future.  There is obviously great potential for money to be made as well.  It would be interesting to know what GroupMe will charge to put something on its featured group list.  And how much marketing will be allowed to members of the featured groups?  Brands will have to strike some sort of delicate balance between no marketing and inundating users with T-shirt discount offers.