I love that Twitter is baked directly into iOS…. but could be so much more – and I’ve written about that from the launch (example here). My primary frustration is that the integration doesn’t do enough with my contact list – which remains the most accurate, important social network. Furthermore, Twitter uses aliases – and I rarely remember people’s Twitter usernames. This problem exists even within the Twitter app or popular readers like Tweetbot.

Apple has a Twitter Contact tool – but it doesn’t do enough: I should be able to connect with the user by name and not by username. After all, my contact list is the more natural convention and, of course, how I know these people.

In the below screenshot, I Tweeted a TechCrunch article by Anthony Ha – and the only reason the association worked is because his Twitter handle is his name!

Big opportunity for Apple to make Contacts more social and usable. And for Twitter to grow usage and cement user identity.

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.”

Two trends within Facebook that I have written frequently about:

- Facebook Offers: which has morphed from a Groupon-like platform to an extension of their sponsored ad format

- In the River Marketing: which is particularly important for large products / platforms like Facebook (examples here: New Facebook Photos and Facebook Places)

Combine those and you have the following series of screenshots: Facebook’s In the River promotion of their new Facebook Offers product. When you visit your Facebook page, you are prompted with a takeover atop the status box:

“Welcome to Facebook Offers: Drive people to your busienss with an offer that people can share with their friends.” Various examples are cycled through – starting with Red Robin in this case ($5 off).

You can then “take the tour” and Facebook walks you through the various components and how to set up a campaign. Notably, its placed in-line next to the Status and Photo box…. that is prime real estate.

The walkthrough itself is not exactly noteworthy (write a strong headline! Choose a great thumbnail!) – however, the presentation of the tour and the location of the product is important. Furthermore, the final step of the tour is very interesting because it demonstrates the friction of online to offline content and commerce:

“Prepare your staff: Let your staff know about the offer so they’re ready to accept it from people who show it from a mobile phone, or in printer form.” Easier said than done as this is a far bigger problem than a one-line reminder to tell your staff about the coupon.

I haven’t logged into Google Plus in a little, so I cannot tell if this is a new feature or a result of my infrequent usage – nevertheless, I was taken aback by Google’s new Trending on Google+ module… which looks exactly like Twitter’s. While it is interesting to see that the topics are related (ie Junior Seau, NFL), I was most interested by the use of hashtags on Google. Within my Google+ network, I have not seen hashtags used with any regularity (whereas they obviously are part of the Twitter culture) – I also would have assumed they would relied on real-time search and trends to populate the list.

Email unsubscribe flows are typically binary: either super simple to unsubscribe (how it should be) or super convoluted (having to uncheck preferences, confirm email addresses, etc). This is a clever flow by Jetsetter because it is in fact super simple (just one click)… but it gently ‘upsells’ users: “How about just one email a month?”

First, that’s such a gentler, kinder way to ask for email access than having me check a slew of boxes.

Second, it comes after they have unsubscribed me – so there is established trust. When they say “just one email a month”, I believe it.

Lastly, Jetsetter promotes their Facebook and Twitter pages. If you are going to lose an access point to your customers – might as well push other avenues to communicate and interact with them.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to watch the Facebook IPO Roadshow video. It’s fascinating and well done. There is a ton in there worth discussing / pointing out, but I wanted to highlight one of my favorite screens (shown below):

It shows Facebook’s growing advertising revenue and the four stages of advertising platform growth that have helped it grow (of course alongside monstrous user growth!):
- Reach (their userbase)
- Relevance (targeting)
- Engagement (like, share, etc)
- Social Context (sponsored, open graph, etc)

And what’s missing? How about off-Facebook advertising…

More here:
TechCrunch / Roadshow Video / WSJ

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?

With the rise of Pinterest, I have enjoyed tracking the brands and campaigns racing to leverage the platform and be early movers. For instance, a couple weeks ago, I highlighted Harrod’s Pinterest / curator contest.

Here is relatively similar program from Jetsetter. Like Harrods, Jetsetter is using Pinterest to drive curation:

“Our fans ask us all the time how they can become Jetsetter curators. Now’s your chance to show us you have what it takes. Using Pinterest, create the ultimate destination pinboard…”

It is effectively a way to:

1. drive best-of-lists (ala early Yelp and eBay efforts)
2. understand data and users preference
3. and drive viral traffic by rewarding social sharing on Pinterest (“Pin it to win it in our Pinterest Giveaway”)

It’s simple, clever and amazingly low-cost. Furthermore, it seeds usage and drives followers on a growing platform where most brands are still slow to adopt.

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.

The below screenshots show a new module in Facebook newsfeed: “Trending Articles”. It is a clustering of popular posts based on Open Graph actions of similar types (in this case “read” articles).

The clustering by type is itself interesting (as it has implications for Open Graph and applications) – but the presentation is especially unique as we have not seen modules like this appear within the newsfeed. The clustering and the in-line scrolling are entirely new formats. If popular, it represents possibilities for other formats like photos, check-ins, etc.

It is also interesting that you cannot comment from within the module. Users can share – but not comment. This is bizarre because it differs from what appears in the Ticker. It also is potentially harmful for an article’s overall visibility in the Facebook feed / ecosystem.