Finding location, losing privacy

by David Iwanow ON 25 June 2010

The latest, growing social media trend is location based services like FourSquare, but are consumers ready for the privacy issues that location data brings?

The Apple iPhone is one of the leading smartphone platforms, but has the recent iOS4 Software update enabling iAd gone too far? It seems Apple has created a catch 22 situation: users can opt out of being served targeted ads by visiting oo.apple.com, but then miss out on many iPhone benefits.

If you don’t want to share your exact location details with Apple then you may not have access to future apps from iTunes. So as a consumer you have to decide to provide Apple with your real-time geographic locations or not have access to its iPhone applications.

Apple highlights that your detailed user location information is only available to all its partners and licensees… which only appears to leave out those not using its platform? This change is a move designed to protect iAd advertisers and potentially iPhone app developers, but at what cost to privacy?

Apple’s changes to its user agreement seems similar to Facebook’s recent privacy changes, which gave great benefit to advertisers but not users. The Facebook change to ‘Like’ pages combined with the recent Wikipedia-style pages made the users profile data more easily targeted by advertisers.

Not wanting to be left out of the location game, Facebook appears to be on the verge of launching its own location-based features, but will privacy be again compromised by forced opt-in? The Facebook feature is likely to be similar to the recent Twitter Places update where users can opt to tag the tweet with their current location.

The new Twitter update allows users to “Add your location” with every individual tweet, but was already available by external platforms such as UberTwitter.

The interesting aspect for advertisers using FourSquare as a platform is they can begin to better target those who are visiting their venues or in the nearby area. The benefit is that a local Las Vegas tour company can now target those who are just visiting Las Vegas and not waste marketing dollars on local residents by offering them visitor promotions*.

But on a different campaign Hard Rock Casino, Las Vegas can provide a special birthday offer for Las Vegas residents who have checked in with FourSquare at nearby venues. The potential benefit of geo-targeting is a more relevant audience with localised ads allows advertisers to deliver better ROI on their local marketing campaigns.

The potential concern for consumers sharing so much information is that companies like Apple and Google may not be able to quell privacy fears about their behaviour data gathered on iPhone and Android. For marketers will applications like FourSquare increase their importance for local marketing while still enabling enough granular settings to protect the user privacy?

*Disclaimer: The Lost Agency is working with this client.

An event review of SMX Sydney

by David Iwanow ON 1 May 2009

As many people are aware, Barry Smyth and his team from Search Strategies recently held the annual Search Marketing Expo in Sydney.

This was one of the first events I had attended since the economy really started to take affect on marketing/advertising agencies and Im really glad I did as there was lots to take away. For those who missed out, Ive summarised the take-home messages from each day below.

Day one

The keynote speech was presented by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, which I was running late for so I ended up checking out of the exhibition hall as it is sometimes better to have a good look around while things are quite.

This conference was smaller than some of the international versions but this presented an advantage in that it was easier to choose just between the two streams. The first stream focused around Search Engine Bootcamp with a mostly entry-level focus, but it was also suitable for a refresher course for most attendees. The other obvious advantage was the access to the international speakers and the opportunity to have a decent talk with the presenters.

Bootcamp sessions

The morning was a great refresher around web design and SEO basics presented by industry veteran Bruce Clay. After the lunch break, the sessions moved into keyword research, link building and copy writing for search. The final session around Bootcamp moved towards the paid elements of search on the topics of ad copy, management and landing pages.

SEO sessions

The second stream was more involved and focused around moderate/advanced SEO techniques. As SMX does very well, they start of the day easier and as the audience warms up and the caffeine kicks in the topics tougher.

The early morning sessions dealt with key areas of maps/local search and what’s in store for mobile search and video optimisation. I have already written a post based around the topic of video optimisation and viral video. After the lunch break, the sessions moved into more advanced topics around best practice links and URLs. It seems that spam is still a secondary issue to getting number one in search results for many clients who typically engage a SEO agency.

The last sessions of the day covered CSS, flash, bots and international SEO. These topics were great as it dealt with best practice techniques for business while still getting the results for your business. CSS seems to be one of the best ways to control visual elements within a website and offers increased levels of usability for existing websites without rebuilding the whole site. International SEO was provided a number of ideas about how your multinational competitors might be trying to steal your local market share and how you can fight back by growing yours.

Day two

The opening keynote speech was presented in a very entertaining manner by Bill Tancer the GM of Global Research for Hitwise. He talked about how Australian users typically use Google for more navigational queries and how your parents maybe searching differently for the same site. He advised that many of the topics he discussed were featured in more detail in his book Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters. It would appear that many of the important key points covered at SMX Sydney were consistent over time just the leading players changed.

The streams topics were more diverse on the second day as with most SMX events there were more intermediate/advanced sessions. The sessions covered a number of diverse topics: SME, conversion, social media, paid search and webmasters.

Conversion session

SME presented a number of great hints and tips for working with SMEs and also how they have different needs, budgets and goals. The co-current stream was focused around conversion tracking leads/sales and conversion optimisation increased ROI. This was one of the most important session for businesses as it dealt with decreased market share and how you can still grow your business in this environment.

Social media session

The social media stream presented some heated discussions and divided the audience and presenters on a few points. What is suitable for one companies objective using social media may not be suitable for another.

While the topic of social media, Twitter and online negative sentiment was yet to receive any coverage over branding issues such as Amazon Fail. The conference hall was also filled with laptops running Twitter clients such as TweetDeck.

Paid search session

This stream was covered by Mark Tull from Hot Goanna on how not understanding AdWords quality score can mean business is over bidding on AdWords keywords.

The final paid search sessions dealt with larger corporate/enterprise clients who typically require complex bid management systems to deal with tens of thousands of keywords. While not everyone finds these solutions useful, some organisations find PPC Management systems a comfort factor.

Spam session

This stream focused around helping your webmaster deal with spam and how to deal with being penalised (blacklisted) by search engines. It was a good discussion with the panel highlighting that many clients expect results even if it means breaking rules imposed by search engines.

Conference overview

Overall the conference was great, it was smaller than most but the speakers invited took time to speak with attendees. Most of the panel members had to be almost dragged off the stage because they were so involved in answering and engaging with the audience. The team at Search Strategies made a good selection in speakers and it was rare to hear anyone disappointed with any session.

Exhibition room

The exhibition room was a little crowded at times, so it made sense to visit companies for more private chats during the sessions. One of the bigger disappointments was that no search engine companies were present at the conference. While they had sent representatives for presentations sessions it wasn’t the same as if they had an exhibition stand where they could answer questions and build relationships with business.

Got your social media identity?

by David Iwanow ON 27 April 2009

Social media is an amazing way for companies to engage with customers, customers to engage with companies and generally share information easily. I don’t usually take the time to look at new social media products as they all seem to be trying to do the same task, but I see that a number of companies featured in recent stories could have benefited.

One of the more interesting products that appeared on my Twitter feed early this morning was Knowem. So you may think its another Twitter or Facebook service, but in fact it solves many social issues for companies.

The LA Times covered an article today that outlines how major brands need to learn to respond to social media and quick, or get left out. Recently the social media scene has seen Ashton Kutcher fighting with CNN to be the first to one million followers. This Twitter follower race was supported by a digital billboard campaign and other traditional media such as TV appearances.

Oprah was quick to jump onto the media circus, also showing support of Twitter was US TV show The View who called to their audience to join up and show their support by following them. The interesting thing about these TV appearances was that they looked more like an infomercial for Twitter and often seem quite scripted on how easy it was to use, how it worked and even some quick hints and tips on social etiquette.

The issue that was kept quiet was that CNN did not actually initially own CNNbrk until very recently – it was setup and maintained by British web developer James Cox. The smart process occurred when CNN quietly asked him to run the account and supplied assistance before hiring him to officially run it on behalf of CNN.

The successful Coke Facebook fan page was actually created by two LA actors, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski, but once it reached one million fans, Facebook advised Coke, the trademark, owner to take control or lose it. Coke moved quickly in what is a new way of dealing with product evangelists they took them onboard and requested they run the page for the company. The newly official page has exceeding three million fans.

Facebook is not immune to issues with brands being heavy handed – Hasbro sued Scrabulous for making a Scrabble-like game, which draw angry responses directed at Hasbro to save Scrabulous.

More recently, Australian companies have started to feel the effect with Facebook closing down employee started fan pages, with requests from the company to take control ignored by Facebook. Social networks like Facebook and its policies can often damage a companys social image as their loyal fans think they have been thrown out in the cold, when the unofficial page is shut down by Facebook.

This heavy handed approach to banning what Facebook doesn’t think is official starts to blur the lines of who actually controls the content – is it the creators, the trademark owners or the social network.

So, we go back to Knowem and how it could have prevented this occurring for these companies/brands. The software is a cloud-hosted application that offers the missing link in the social land rush to ensure you own your trademark term. Knowem shows how quickly and easily you can check the availability of your brand name or vanity name across over 120 popular social media sites.

This means that companies can quickly and cost effectively claim their social media profiles across over 120 services such as WordPress, Twitter, Myspace, Digg, delicious, and YouTube.

The best thing about this service is that it can prevent your profile being controlled by a third-party who may demand millions or use it to damage your brand. Knowem seems smart enough to understand business just doesn’t always have the time or patience and offer a premium service to automatically register all your usernames. Understanding how quickly new sites are being launched they also offer a monthly subscription service that will continue to sign up your brand on the six to 10 new social media services started each month.

Now that you are thinking about social media and worried that someone will register your brands social profile, take the time to speak with a marketing agency. Many marketing agencies have social media experience or work with consultants to help you design a social media campaign to help you benefit from social media.

If you dont have the budget to hire a social media firm, request your marketing manager to use Knowem to ensure that you at least have your social identity secured, and take the social media process in stages.

Links

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story?page=1

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Social/Media/prweb2339354.htm

http://knowem.com/

http://www.thelostagency.com – my agency