It’s a bold vision: “build the discovery engine for hte social web”… and that’s precisely what excites us about Spindle. Based in Cambridge, MA and started in Dogpatch Labs, Spindle aims to deliver actionable information and news that you wouldn’t have found otherwise… using location, real-time data and your social and interest graphs.

Today, Pat, Simon, Alex and Alex announce Spindle as the discovery engine for the social web and open to beta registrations:

“We believe that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible via the social web and that discovery needs to be reimagined from the ground up. Location, device, time of day, the structure of the physical world, the social graph, and your interests can uncover better content than keywords. (read more)“

- Spindle on Facebook
- Spindle on Twitter

A very quick post to highlight the Call Elmo iPhone app because it is absolutely terrific and genius. The application essentially mocks the Facetime experience – but instead of a friend calling, Elmo calls. And once you pick up the call, your face appears in a mini-screen – just like Facetime. It’s brilliant in its simplicity… and in the model.

The app is $0.99 and comes with a couple Elmo calls and voicemails. But there are dozens of other videos that can purchased within themed packs. It’s terrific and you can tell by the smile in the app – kids love it.

There is no reason this couldn’t work beyond Elmo and for other formats / audiences. It’s too fun not to be popular.

Below is a series of screenshots from within the Facebook iOS app that allows users to match their Facebook friends against their iPhone Contacts: “Find Friends on Facebook: Choose contacts on your phone to add as friends on Facebook.” It’s a basic concept – but it’s tremendously powerful since your mobile contact list is really your tightest, most significant network…. and those users are surely also Facebook users.

Of course Apple performs the matching by uploading contacts from the device and then sorting them on Facebook’s servers. You may remember this practice was critiqued publicly – but Facebook is very clear about how they are using the contacts.

It is also worth noting that Facebook is clearly aware of the potential growth here (in one click I can add 1,109 new friends!) but wants to balance some quality control: “Please send invites only to friends who will be glad to get them.”

Not a ton to say here except that:

- I reached the New York Times paywall
- And it is visually very bold / intrusive
- But while it is disruptive – and that’s the goal of course – it is really not very actionable: The only part of the entire screen that is clickable are the two orange buttons.That is <5% of the screen's real estate and a wasted opportunity to users right into an upgrade flow. As it currently stands, I need to read the promotional box, click the orange button, land on an educational page and then choose an upgrade package. Too many steps and too much effort.

(Lastly, I am not entirely sure what constitutes exceeding the paywall... it says after 10 free articles but it appears intermittently)

This is the front page of Tuesday May 1st’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a well done graphic overlaying Microsoft’s big-dollar entrances into “markets where it lags behind rivals”:

- Search: Yahoo (2009): Microsoft’s billion-dollar+ deal to power search and ads.

- Mobile OS: Nokia (2011): billion-dollar+ deal to push Windows Mobile OS

- Social / Video: Skype (2011): $8.5B acquisition

- Mobile / Tablets: Nook (2012): $605m investment to bolster tablet strategy

It’s an expensive but necessary (?) avenue into three massive verticals that, as WSJ notes, Microsoft is far behind in: search, social, and mobile (OS + hardware). It is marks about one of these big, billion-dollar bets a year (four deals over the 2009-2012 period).

Price aside (Skype in particular feels very expensive unless deeper integrations in Office & on XBox emerge quickly), the Nook deal is is the one that strategically feels odd. Windows 7 users love the product – but the Nook is so far behind iPad and Kindle, that it feels as though Microsoft is better served entering the tablet market elsewhere OR focusing primarily on phones and then paying-up when the 3rd place tablet-provider has greater share. Of course that’s my take from a very, very distant seat.

I admire how much The Verge (by Vox Media) has bushed the boundaries on content presentation / visualization. For a blog-like content hub, The Verge looks entirely unlike it’s peers: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Engadget, etc. It’s one part traditional blog, one part Pinterest, and one part Flipboard. Where it really shines is mobile – specifically iPad.

The screenshots below show my favorite treatment – which I personally have not seen elsewhere:

- There is a navigation bar on the left column (actually more like a table of contents)
- As you scroll through the page, the corresponding section highlights (ie Video Review)
- But the bar is also clickable – so that you can easily jump from section to section
- I imagine over time, you also include small Facebook and Twitter buttons

Of course this is in addition to the persistent header that sits atop the browser. The Verge uses that real estate to promote breaking news, hot articles and membership (Login / Join).

Last week I wrote about Facebook’s newsfeed clustering of posts published by the same applications.

While it is interesting as a signal of the newsfeed’s evolution – it is represents the larger theme of Facebook relationship, promotion, and integration of applications (and the larger application ecosystem). Obviously Facebook has always been supportive of the ecosystem – from Zynga & LOLapps (gaming) to Spotify & Pinterest (content) to Wantful & ShoeDazzle (off-Facebook commerce), etc. In fact, yesterday’s news was that “visitors from Facebook accounted for 1.1 billion visits to iOS and HTML5 apps, meaning an average of more than 6 visits per user.”

The emergence of Facebook’s Timeline, Open Graph and the proliferation of applications atop the platform (mobile, newsfeed, ticker, etc) – Facebook relationship with applications is evolving:

- How do they cluster by type and by shared users? (example here)

- How do they cluster by recency (example below with “Recent Used Apps”)

- How do they cluster by popularity (example of trending here)

- How do they prevent the Ticker and newsfeed from being overwhelmed by content? (more here)

- What role does Timeline and off-Facebook play here?

- And ultimately, what does this mean for Facebook’s off-Facebook.com strategy: promotion, monetization, mobile, etc?

I talk about Klout all the time and encourage marketers to integrate / leverage the service as a way to engage quality users & customers. This has implications for advertising, customer service, product experience, etc.

This is an entirely unrelated point – but I think it’s extremely clever and unique. Klout has released a new iPhone application and they are using iOS’s “Badge” system to display your Klout Score atop the app’s icon. Terrifically simple, smart idea and a way to bring users back into the application (which is the single most important and challenging aspect for most applications).

I love it and expect / encourage others to think about how this relates to their service and their users.

Watching the Sprout channel with our son, a mini commercial aired for Pillow Pet’s new product: Dream Lites. They announced a special Promo Code (“PROMO”) that would save 25% off an order. This is a common way of driving purchases and tracking efficacy / sources.

The great consumer I am, I pulled up DreamLites.com on my iPhone to find the following screenshot… which entirely negates the point of a promo code. It’s a huge text promotion that says “Enter promo code DREAM to save 25%”. What’s the point?? If you are going to do this – might as well just say: regularly priced at $X. But now 25% off!

Strange.

Worse yet, when tax and shipping are added up – the purchase price is actually more than the 25% off. Might as well promote free shipping with full price. Even at the same total price – and with a generous refund policy – that’s more compelling because I get frustrated paying S&H (thanks to Amazon and others).

I write a lot about targeted marketing – which means effecting messaging your users at the right moment and in the right place. I use the term “in the river marketing” to describe it. Here is a great example by Flipboard – a master at mobile design.

Flipboard – which has huge distribution as an iPad app – is trying to promote their new iPhone app (which generally is a different experience and design). To do that, Flipboard gets as “in the river” as possible. The welcome screen generally displays a story from your network. In this case, it is a note directly from Flipboard’s CEO Mike McCue and describes their new iPhone app. This ensures that all Flipboard users see the message and, at the very least, recognize that Flipboard now exists for iPhone. That’s aggressive. But it’s targeted: these are Flipboard users and iPad owners (so they likely have iPhones as well).

The major question that mobile publishers / developers struggle with: how do you then drive conversion? What next after this message? Driving downloads across device is difficult. Driving downloads from the web is even harder. Then layer on tracking to understand the efficacy of the campaign and it’s unfortunately very difficult…