October

• YouTube Launches Politics (10/6): Looking for politicians’ platforms, blunders, and defining moments? Look no further than YouTube Politics, launched in the first week of October. Everything you need to keep track of who’s in the lead and who’s falling flat leading up to next year’s election.
• Foursquare Launches Radar (10/12): Radar is a sign of maturation rather than just an app update, and it includes several logical and useful mechanics for Foursquare users. The app will now notify you if you are near a To-Do, or if a place on a List that you follow is around the corner, or if several of your friends have just checked into the same place only minutes away. Makes sense, right? Oh, and they changed the dodgeball from purple to green; don’t freak out.
• Facebook for iPad (10/10): The Facebook iPad app was a long time coming, and it lives up to the billing. Chat, scroll through bigger photos, discover new messages, events, and more on the left-hand navigation bar, and find out what you need to know now with the new notification tray. That said, Facebook applications still aren’t functional through the app; updates to come, no doubt.
• X-Factor Enables Voting on Twitter (10/25): This award show certainly made social a key element in the voting aspect of the show. Fans could vote via DM to @TheXFactorUSA or through their Twitter social microsite, and they could join the conversation using the hashtag #XFactor. Another award show, the People’s Choice Awards 2012, would incorporate Twitter into their social activation on a larger-scale, as users simply had to tweet or retweet a nominee with their category hashtag. As live TV gets more interactive in social, the fans win.

November

• Twitter Launches Stories (11/1): On the first of November, Twitter launched their first installment of a new series called Stories, where they highlight different tales of Twitter helping people accomplish things in life, from saving a bookstore to selling a fish moments after it’s caught. Stories big and small can be submitted to Stories, and anyone can do it, simply by mentioning @twitterstories or including #twitterstories in a tweet. A nice way for Twitter to both humanize the brand and highlight real stories that showcase Twitter’s value.
• Groupon IPO (11/4): Groupon finally IPO’d early in November, following other players earlier in 2011, and initially was met with positive market reaction, followed by a slow decline. We’ll be following this one throughout 2012.
• Google+ Launches Pages (11/7): As most predicted, Google+ launched Pages in the middle of Q4, and they seem to borrow best practices from Facebook Pages, Twitter Profiles, and YouTube Channels. Anyone can create a Page, and businesses can put their best customers into circles and levels, host hangouts to launch new products or answer questions, and share new content with followers. As we said earlier this year, it will be really interesting to see how businesses leverage Google+ for B2B and intraB.
• Foursquare Launches Expertise Badges (11/14): Whether you see this move as a gimmick to keep folks interested in badges, or as a legitimate evolution of the badge system that Foursquare has perfected, there is no doubt that it’s fun to unlock badges. With the update, certain badges will display expertise levels as you visit more and more of those venue types. Get your badge game up!
• Foursquare Expands Deal Partnerships (11/29): Specials have given Foursquare an edge in 2011, as they continue to add new partners, this time with Scoutmob, and throughout the year with AmEx in June, Groupon in July, and others. Foursquare will continue to stay relevant and gain users as both Specials and consumers’ mobile buying habits mature in 2012.

December

• YouTube Gets a G+ and Facebook Facelift (12/1): YouTube gave itself a facelift in December, rolling out a Facebook-esque left-hand navigation, along with incorporating a newsfeed of Google+ +1′s and shares, in addition to YouTube uploads and likes. Twitter, Facebook, and Orkut integrations make the new YouTube a social video hub.
• Facebook Acquires Gowalla (12/2): Early in December, rumor had it that Facebook had acquired the location-sharing service, Gowalla. It seems that the Gowalla developer team will now work on Facebook’s Timeline feature, with some moving to the Palo Alto office and others moving to Facebook’s Austin office. A nice acquisition that certainly brings talented minds to Facebook so that it can further incorporate location in future updates.
• Twitter Announces Brand Pages (12/8): In the second week of the month, Twitter announced that they would be rolling out brand pages, similar to those on Facebook and now Google+. This seems almost like ‘too little, too late’ as Twitter feeds are easy to leverage and deploy elsewhere on more robust digital brand properties. That said, it seems like a good investment on their part and should give them more to offer to their advertising partners. More to come…
• Zynga IPO (12/15): Zynga opened mid-month with a very poor performance, as compared to the other tech company IPOs from 2011. Zynga’s business model is sound, and the poor showing may be more tech IPO exhaustion than anything else; however, we will definitely be watching this one closely throughout 2012.
• Facebook Timeline Rolls Out (12/15): One of the biggest changes during the quarter was saved until the last few weeks of the year, as Facebook unveiled Timeline to users’ profiles globally, followed quickly on 12/18 with the mobile roll-out. A massive change not just for users, but for agencies and developers, as ideas began swirling around on how best to leverage the new Timeline for brand integrations. Additionally, and more importantly, this was my birthday.

There you have it; the fourth quarter of 2011 in all it’s glory. Let’s wrap up with links to all of the major players’ summaries; take a look at the hot topics, watch some of the top videos from the year, and get cracking on your New Year’s resolutions.

• Facebook Memeology 2011
• Google Zeitgeist 2011
• YouTube 2011 Rewind
• Twitter 2011 #YearInReview
• 2011 Holiday Travels on Foursquare

Now that we’ve had some time to absorb the changes in the space during Q3, let’s take a look back at the big announcements, compare the new landscape to the changes from the second quarter, and project what will have the most impact for Q4 of 2011. In a sentence, Facebook’s f8 developer conference contained more sweeping changes to the largest social platform (now 800 million users) since its launch in 2004.

July

• Twitter Town Hall @ White House (7/5): In July, the first ever Twitter Town Hall was hosted at the White House by President Obama, and tweeters could send in their questions using the hashtag #AskObama. Our President has always done a good job using social media to connect with and converse with voters – he and his staff were widely acclaimed for their use of social during their campaign three years ago – and this was another great example of the flattening effect that technology has on society, all the way up to the highest office in the land.
• Facebook Video Calling (7/6): When Facebook and Skype joined forces, we knew it was only a matter of time before regular text chat would turn into video chat, especially with Google+ Hangouts launching a month earlier. Usage numbers aren’t public, but the feature itself is quick to install, easy to use, and sleek in integration.
• Foursquare Redesign and Notification Tray (7/15): Foursquare made a couple plays during Q3, both to their web interface and to their mobile app. In this update, a new notification tray is unrolled to users, and is met with positive feedback. The tray simplifies and rolls up many of the processes that foursquare users had become accustom to, providing an experience with less friction and a smoother overall experience for surfacing relevant content.

August

• Foursquare Brand Pages Now Self-Serve (8/2): In early August, foursquare opened up the Brand Page creation process to businesses, making the process infinitely more scalable and increasing the value (via Page control) for businesses on the platform. To get started with your brand page, check out Foursquare: Create Page.
• Facebook Messenger (8/9): With the acquisition of Beluga, Facebook made a strong play into mobile messaging and released a stand-alone mobile app called Messenger. It integrates directly into your Facebook Messages, syncing conversations and surfacing the friends with whom you message the most. With over 350 million active users accessing Facebook via mobile, expect to see more attention given to the distribution channel from the largest social platform during Q4.
• Linkedin Launches New Mobile App (8/15): Linkedin launched a massive update to their mobile app that has people flocking to their respective app stores. The new UI has been met with praise, and it should result in a renewed interest in keeping abreast of your In network, at least for now.
• Targeting Your Sharing on Facebook (8/23): In an effort to make sharing and privacy more transparent with its 800 million users, Facebook began rolling out targeted sharing at the end of August. This allows users to post updates and content in three tiers, Public, Friends, and Custom (where you can target by List group), in addition to being able to pre-approve tags in photos and updates before they go live. Also, Facebook surfaced the View Profile As button, making it easier to see how your profile appears to any other user on Facebook. Overall, these changes are another step forward in gaining the trust of the masses.
• Mixi Launches Brand Pages (8/31): Japan’s largest social network, Mixi, with 23 million users, launched their version of brand pages at the tail end of August. Mixi isn’t Facebook, but it will be interesting to see how brands decide to leverage programs and campaigns back and forth between the two platforms.

September

• Facebook Subscribe and Changes to Newsfeed (9/20): Pre-f8, Facebook rolled out several important structural changes that took aim at some nice functionality that already existed outside of the platform. The Subscribe button was introduced, which essentially allows you to receive a person’s status updates in your newsfeed, like and comment on them, without being connected to them as friends. Take that, Twitter. Then Facebook rolled out Smart Lists, which segments your friends into groups, which then allows you to dictate both what you share with them and what gets shared with you, and upgraded the ticker to display a real-time stream of activity across your social graph. Take that, Google+.
• Share Photos on Twitter via SMS (9/21): Right before f8, Twitter introduced SMS photo sharing. Some may ask, why are upgrades being rolled out for SMS in Q3 of 2011? The significance is that there is still much of the world where smart phones aren’t as pervasive, but where users still need to connect and share. A picture is worth a thousand words, and as global new sources like CNN increasingly source the ‘public journalist,’ photos take center stage when breaking global events, be they natural disasters or political upheavals.
• Facebook Timeline (9/22): In September, Facebook began unleashing feature changes and upgrades, and everything came to a head at f8 with the introduction of Timeline, which represents a new lens on the user profile page, largely unchanged since it’s inception. Timeline also represents an enormous opportunity for brands, as they now have the ability to weave themselves into the fabric of consumers lives with utility and entertainment like never before. For more on this, check out Paradigm Shift for Brands on Facebook.
• Google+ Membership Climbs (9/26): Reported in late September was the continued growth of the nacent social network, Google+, and how it was primed to take over significant market share from other players and, most importantly, Facebook. Then people seemed to realize that nobody else was there. Hindsight is 20/20 so we’ll see what happens with Google+ in Q4, especially with the roll out of brand pages and functionality.
• Foursquare Global Hackathon Winners Announced (9/28): On the heels of f8 was the announcement of the foursquare global hackathon winners. The winning applications were focused on utility and social good and, if anything, show that there are still rich developer communities outside of Facebook. That said, with the advent of tagging locations and new apps that allow for User, Action, Object functionality, will folks continue to use foursquare when it means they can only checkin to a place, when on Facebook, you can checkin to a place, be reading a book, be hiking a trail, and be cooking a dish (hopefully not all at the same time)?

f8 truly changed the direction of all players in the space, from Google+ privacy advantages, to foursquare checkins, to Twitter follower functionality. Now that Facebook has surpassed the number of users that the entire Internet had in 2004, and with the fact that they are dictating the structure of the landscape with such sweeping changes, should we consider the Facebook Platform the ‘new’ web?

Did we miss any major updates from Q3? Link us to them in the comments!

While the majority of notable first quarter 2011 changes in the social space originated from Facebook – from the launch of Facebook Deals and Questions to the shift from FBML to iFrame – this past quarter’s shifts were more balanced across the landscape, and as the months progressed from Spring to Summer, the changes got more dramatic, with the climax occurring in the final days of June. Let’s take a look back at the social landscape from Q2 2011 so we can paint a picture of what Q3 has in store.

April

• YouTube Live (4/8): While YouTube is the largest source of video on the web, live streaming was not in the repertoire until April, when YouTube Live launched. Initially open to only a few beta partners, YTL hasn’t seemed to pick up much traction, and in competing with already well established players like Ustream, Justin.tv, and Livestream, they will need to make a big push in the second half of 2011 if YouTube Live wants to be relevant in the streaming space.
• Facebook Safety Tools Upgrade (4/19): In mid-April Facebook released an upgrade of their safety toolset which contained two main improvements. For one, new Two Factor Authentication would, if enabled, ask a user for a code any time they access their account from a new device, to prevent unauthorized access to the account. The second improvement deals with HTTPS and third-party applications; now whenever a user exits a non-HTTPS certified application, they will revert to HTTPS as soon as they leave the experience.
• Facebook Deals (4/26): Unlike Checkin Deals, regular Deals are akin to Groupon or LivingSocial in that you’re offered up local specials that are easily shared with friends; and because the user is already within Facebook, the idea is that sharing and planning of the experience among friends will be much more seamless than doing it on a third-party site. Deals was released in beta in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco, with plans to launch nationally.

May

• Foursquare and Starwood Hotels (5/10): In early May, Starwood Hotels partnered with foursquare to plug checkins into their existing Starwood Preferred Guest program so that users could earn points, participate in giveaways, and unlock rewards like extended stays. This was one of the first executions of incorporating an existing loyalty program with foursquare, and others like Heineken, Vons, American Express have followed suite since. Look for more legacy reward programs to integrate geo-location, either with foursquare or with Facebook Places.
• Twitter Permissions Process Update (5/17): Twitter took steps in the middle of the month to make the permissions process for third-party applications a bit more transparent for users. The specific changes included removing existing apps’ ability to DM users (permission was revoked and the apps had to request again), all new apps having to specifically ask for DM permissions, and a more detailed permissions screen that spells out each item that the app will have access to and each ability that will be enabled. These changes shouldn’t have a huge impact on the user or brands on Twitter, but it does boost the security and goodwill of the platform.
• Twitter TweetDeck acquisition (5/25): In the last week of May, Twitter acquired London-based TweetDeck from Iain Dodsworth, allowing them to provide an in-house power tool for their super users. It’s not uncommon for social platforms to purchase small third-party technology shops to build out their core services; sometimes, it’s just more cost effective than allocating the internal resources.
• Twitter Follow Button (5/31): Twitter’s biggest new feature of Q2 was the Follow Button, a response to the Facebook like button, and was initially released on 51 partner sites including MTV, IMDB, Sports Illustrated, Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Adding the follow button to your site is now very easy, and no brand with a Twitter presence should be without several across their digital properties (brand site, ecomm site, Facebook page, etc.). The more that Twitter can engrain itself across the web, as Facebook has done, the more likely it will be around for years to come.

June

• Twitter Search+Photos (6/1): Hours after the Twitter button was released, Twitter also announced an innovation in photos; users are now able to attached photos to tweets from Twitter.com and from the official mobile app, and are able to search for photos either via hashtag or via username. An example of a third method of innovation – rather than acquiring a tech shop or fully developing the capability in-house – Twitter partnered with Photobucket for media hosting, and has given TwitPic and yFrog something to think about, going forward. That said, Instagram has given everyone something to think about when it comes to creativity in photosharing.
• YouTube Creative Commons (6/2): YouTube hasn’t been a frequent innovator over the past number of quarters, but this update is subtle in its significance. Users are now able to add Creative Commons video clips (think B-roll) to their own videos to make them more robust. This goes with the true spirit of the social web, and it’s great that YouTube is embracing the Creative Commons the same way that Flickr has in the past.
• Foursquare and AmEx (6/23): Toward the end of June, foursquare and AmEx announced a massive partnership on a scale seemingly larger than the aforementioned Starwood Hotels Preferred Guest program. With AmEx foursquare specials, users simply link their credit card and foursquare accounts, checkin at a participating national chain – of which H&M and Sports Authority were the trailblazers – and click “load to card” and the special will appear on your next statement. This will present a massive opportunity for brands for the remainder of 2011, both on foursquare and using Facebook Places. The name of the game is seamless user interaction, and foursquare and AmEx have nailed it here.
• Google and Google+ Rollout (6/28): The biggest announcement, perhaps of the year thus far, and most certainly of Q2 was the rollout of Google’s new social network, Google+. Circles, Sparks, and Hangouts are some of the first features rolled out, and definitely address some of the issues that have plagued other social networks, namely Facebook, specifically in regards to privacy. Google has taken steps to re-examine privacy, collaboration, and sharing, and has put out a product that should have true staying power, unlike some of their other extinct ventures like Wave and the Nexus phone. The most exciting part about G+ is going to be the rollout in the second half of the year for business accounts and profiles.

Looking forward to a Q3 jam-packed with updates and new features from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the top players in the social landscape. Did we miss any major updates from Q2? Link us to them in the comments!

Game over for LBS businesses based on game mechanics. Facebook Places adoption will rise dramatically as integration with the social graph drives greater positive feedback for users from check-ins. Users tire in their pursuit of badges and digital paraphernalia, opting for engagement with their friends instead.

This week, Read Write Web declared 2011 The Year the Check-in Died. Sam Bennett at GSD&M is Checking Out. What’s going on? It’s not hard to see – users receive little value for their participation.

People who have digital as a large focus of their livelihood should never forget that the only reason consumers do things online are to have some impact on real life. We don’t go online for the sake of online – it all has to tie back to offline at some point. Always. Individuals who forget about the connection end up in tragic situations like this.

LBS will survive, but only as a feature of larger scale social networks. Facebook has changed their status question to “what’s on your mind?” – pairing with the question “where are you thinking about this?” and most importantly published on a network with a huge installed base and ability to monetize status, location, and intent.

Current LBS can only deliver on 1/3 of that value proposition to advertisers. A path to monetization built on a free appetizers for the mayor requires a LOT of check-ins. Related: a friend at a large consumer goods brand tried to strike a deal with a leading service, but the analytics and data exchange capabilities were a mess. These services aren’t ready to activate enterprise-level deals even when businesses are ready to hand over bags of money.

Sooner than you think, we’ll be reminiscing about LBS badges and pins like we used to talk about fat boy laces and parachute pants.

After many shifts in the social landscape during the fourth quarter, Q1 proved active but provided few monumental changes. Let’s take some time to look back at what the last three months have brought to the social media space.

January

• Facebook Deals Internationally – On the last day of January, Facebook launched deals in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, exposing the feature to more than 114.6 million new users. For the Canada launch, a number of top Facebook brands premiered Deals nationwide, including Indigo, H&M, Dynamite, Garage, Joe Fresh, Town Shoes, and TELUS. Places and Deals have a symbiotic relationship, as Deals is dependent on Places, and Places is made more compelling by Deals; the greater the penetration of Deals among brands, the more active users will become with Places.
• Foursquare Ambassador Program – Late in 2010, foursquare launched a beta initiative called the Ambassador Program where super users could sign their favorite businesses up for specials using the free Merchant Platform. The response from users was enormous, and in January, foursquare expanded the Ambassador Program, opening registration to all users. Something for brands to keep in mind while they formulate their social strategy is that while Facebook Places & Deals and foursquare Venues & Specials operate similarly on the front end for users, the processes that businesses must go through to register their locations and set up consumer-facing incentives is drastically different.

February

• Facebook iFrames – In February, Facebook made a fundamental structural change when it decided to no longer support FBML, and instead move exclusively to iFrame. This change gives Facebook developers much more flexibility and the users a much more streamlined experience when engaging with custom engagements within a Facebook Page. Landing views can now be customized based on the user’s location, views can be dynamically updated based on the content that is being accessed, and flash elements can now load without activation (while any auto-play functionality is still against Facebook policy).
• Enhanced Facebook Page UI – With the shift to iFrame, Facebook also enhanced other elements of the Page front-end, while enabling a number of new features on the back-end. When visiting a Page, the tab structure was eliminated in favor of a left navigation, and while logged into Facebook as a Page administrator, users could now interact with other users and Pages as that Page that they administer. Admins can also opt to receive notifications when other users engage with their Page, and some basic Wall moderation using keyword filters was also added into the mix.
• Twitter Translation Center – Since 2009, Twitter had crowdsourced translation in one fashion or another, but in February, they launched the Translation Center, which enables users to sign up to be a translator and begin localizing immediately. While these users aren’t translating tweets, just the Twitter product itself, this streamlined process will enable Twitter to launch in more languages even more quickly than it has over the last twelve months.

March

• Revamped Foursquare Specials – With the release of foursquare v3, the entire back-end for creating and managing Specials received an overhaul. There are now different types of Specials ( in a similar vein to the four types of Facebook Deals): Flash, Friends, Swarm, and Newbie Specials join Checkin, Frequency, Loyalty, and Mayor Specials for a total of 8 distinct breeds. The creation of Specials was further streamlined, and it’s now easier than ever to get set up – and, of course, the process is still free. More compelling Specials mean more engaged users.
• Facebook Questions – At the tail end of March, Facebook took Questions out of beta, and released it to the general public, receiving a mixed reception. The feature has a very low barrier to entry – once a question pops up in your newsfeed, you simply click a radio button to answer – and Questions can become extremely viral because if I ask a Question, and you answer, the Question/Answer get published out to your social graph. Questions are also flexible in scope, in that they can be for close-ended mass polling (e.g. “Mac vs. PC?”), or for more focused, relevant analysis (e.g. “What’s the best restaurant in Center City Philadelphia?”)

Team Insights

Did we miss any? Post other changes that you saw impacting the social space below in the comments!

Judging from the number of invites I’m getting for FourSquare these days, its slope of new users must be getting more vertical every day. (If you’re not familiar with the service, read their overview.) After using FourSquare for a while, I’ve been thinking about its implications for business – and they’re deeper than you might think, extending far beyond happy hours and local advertising opportunities.

At initial consideration, this may seem ridiculous. I’m not going to tell you that FourSquare is the next Twitter – it’s not. It’s different. But just like so many people were initially dismissive of Twitter, the same can be said for FourSquare. After all, the driving concept behind the application is “a leaderboard for Saturday night.” The second time I heard about FourSquare, I was told that it was popular among New York moms and nannies for setting up impromptu playdates. Not exactly the FriendFeed crowd…I signed up immediately.

To understand FourSquare’s emergent business value, you’ve got to think of it as a social business application, the backbone of which is measurement. Even more than other social apps, game mechanics drive the FourSquare experience. Based on the single activity of “checking in,” all five elements exist:

1. Collecting badges and mayorships.
2. Earning points throughout the week.
3. Feedback though the leaderboard and a personal stats page.
4. Value exchanges from keeping tabs on your connections.
5. Customization of your profile and check-in messages. Anyone who uses the app knows all this.

When I consider FourSquare through the lens of Social Business Design, the value jumps off the page. The service:

• Relies on content generated by personal profiles and places, which come together in time-sensitive relationships. It also utilizes emerging technologies reaching critical mass. We call this an ecosystem.
• Motivates participants to broadcast their whereabouts with an implicit invitation to meet up. You become part of a relevant community based on geographic check-ins. This is hivemindedness.
• Allows users to send implicit messages about their status – on multiple levels – based on time and location. Others can respond in kind. These are dynamic signals.
• Permits control of messaging to personal preferences. Where and when a person checks in has meaning; some people check in “off the grid”/in private, whereas users can mute pings from others who are found to be irrelevant. This is a metafilter.

Think about these characteristics applied as a white-labeled enterprise application. Twitter : Yammer :: FourSquare : [a new "GrandCentral"?]

• Connects employees of distributed organizations when in geographic proximity.
• Lowers cost of coordination, handled today by many fragmented applications.
• Increases content production. Game mechanics spur participation and encourage collaboration.
• Allows colleagues to vet locations and set alerts for one another.

Applying these ideas in a marketing context address three hot B2C interests: mobile, social, and local. However, I think brands will find that scalability ends quickly. There are much bigger opportunities in the B2B context.

Are you seeing it? Or do you still think FourSquare just a waste of time?