Posts related to Consumer Trends

Official Facebook Places Video

Check out the official teaser video for Facebook places. What I really love about it is that it maps exactly to SapientNitro’s PoV on the space-time continuum for experience mapping; in layman terms what we believe is that every moment should cross space and time. A moment crosses spacewhen multiple people in different locations can live the same moment .. for example, you share a live video feed, lifecast, share status updates, photos, and your friends all over the world can interact with this content in real time.

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Facebook Places Live

Earlier today Facebook finally announced the official launch of Facebook places. Mashable , ReadWriteWeb , and others covered it live, but if you missed the announcement, here’s what you have to know.

BTW, one thing no one is talking about yet is Places within the Graph API . You can query recent checkins by users, pages, places: GET https://graph.facebook.com/[place/Page/user_id]/checkins

That alone is SO powerful!

Anyways, starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device.

Checking In with Friends

Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time.

You have the option to share your location by “checking in” to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can easily see if any of your friends have also chosen to check in nearby.

To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

Go to Places on the iPhone application or touch.facebook.com site and then tap the “Check In” button. You’ll see a list of places near you. Choose the place that matches where you are. If it’s not on the list, search for it or add it. After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends’ News Feeds and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

Places is only available in the United States right now. But we expect to make it available to more countries and on additional mobile platforms soon.

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The State of The Internet

Great presentation / stats / numbers of the current state, size, and uses of the Internet. The main stats were: Email usage will shrink :: 247 billion emails sent per day, 200 are spam + growing trend of using social networks to communicate Women are social :: 84% social sites with more women than men 27MM tweets per day - has nothing on Facebook statuses Facebook has 260 Billion page views per month vs MySpace at 24 Billion Flickr hosts 4 Billion photos - Facebook gets 2.

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Comcast/Xfinity adds social check-ins to TV watching

There’s no question that TV & Social Web are closed together, just like pretty much everything social. From xbox live joint movie watching, to Google TV, and now Comcast’s Tunerfish.

Comcast’s Plaxo acquisition has borne fruit beyond its social media address book roots with Tunerfish, aimed at pulling social networking features and TV into one website. Currently in closed alpha, it lets TV watchers note what they’re watching and share with others, Foursquare style… so you check-in a show, check how many people have checked in, and keep an eye on what’s trending amongst the larger pool of viewers or just your friends. Of course there’s Facebook and Twitter integration, and an iPhone app will be available when the beta launches in the next few weeks.

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Real-Time Everything - the Era of Communication Ubiquity

I presented “Real-Time Everything - the Era of Communication Ubiquity” at SXSWi 2010 last week and wanted to share my deck … I uploaded it to slideshare, not sure why I haven’t uploaded all my decks there, but will slowly start doing so. The abstract / summary described the session as: A focus universe research strategy; imagine using the entire internet as your focus group. Analyze every conversation, visualize trends, compare brands, learn insights, envisage it over time, and get real factual answers, not just amplified assumptions based on focus and control groups.

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Emerging Experiences and Trends in 2010

I spoke to Omar L. Gallaga from austin360 blog right before my SXSW panel about emerging trends, including mobile, augmented reality, and social media, and he posted this interview on their blog; wanted to share a few PoV’s that I provided …

American-Statesman: As smartphones have gotten more popular, we’ve been hearing more and more about augmented reality. Can you explain to us what it actually is and how it’s being used?

Augmented Reality (AR) is the ability of combining digital and real-world aspects to provide a greater or enhanced experience. Traditionally, it’s layering a digital overlay on top of a video stream, think NFL first-down marker, or NASCAR car information. It is not new, but due to the recent penetration of web and mobile it has been getting greater buzz. It was originally coined in 1992, used in PCs in 1999, by Sony PS3 in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2009 when adopted by Flash and made available for the masses that it began to gain momentum.

NFL and NASCAR are basic examples of mainstream media using AR, but the true reach is when it’s more personal: enhance computer or phone video streams with digital layers triggered by either some market or symbol in the video, or GPS and compass information, or any data source that can be translated into personalized visualization that adds and provides value to the user. Traditional uses range from recognizing trading cards, to real-size mailing boxes, to visualizing how would your new TV look in your living room.

As smartphones have gotten more popular, mobile augmented reality still has not, but they’re setting the base bricks and platform to allow greater penetration in the future. Location awareness, compass, maps, user generated content, all contribute to greater and richer data sources that will allow for great digital and real world mashups. The best mobile apps right now are TwittARound, Layar, Nearest Tube, TAT Augmented ID, SREngine, and Wikitude AR Travel Guide.

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