Foursquare gets a makeover and levels up

November 17th, 2011

In the past few days, Foursquare has made two major changes.

On Monday, Foursquare announced on its blog that expertise badges would now have different levels, allowing users to level up.

Just the next day, Foursquare also had a completely redesigned website.

The badges that now level up are the core 24 category badges, such as the Zoetrope badge for checking into movie theaters, Swimmies for checking into locations near water, and the Bookworm badge for checking into places of knowledge.

On the day level-up badges were released, Foursquare released the new Herbivore, Hot Tamale, and Bento expertise badges and plan to release more. A full list of expertise badges can be found on the About Foursquare blog. To see what expertise badges you have earned and what level they are, there is a new “Expertise” section of your Trophy Case page.

The badges range from level one to level ten. In order to level up, the requirements are the same for every category of expertise. To unlock level one, you can either check-in five times to a place in the category or check-in to three unique places. For all other levels, you will level up by checking in to five more unique places. At the launch of the badges, your existing data was analyzed so users won’t have to start over if they have already checked-in to many places in a category.

In the future there will be more ways to level up, such as having your tips done by many people. The badges are supposed to express who you are, what you know best, and reflect your real-world expertise. Your expertise will be used to help other users checking in to locations in that category. For example, if someone checks-in to a movie theater and you are a level 10 Zoetrope, your tips for the venue will be seen before tips from a level 1 user.

The new website (dubbed #new4sq), has a new focus on discovery and according to Mashable, may give sites like Yelp a run for their money. Your foursquare.com page will now have a large map at the top that shows everything interesting nearby, all color-codes. Your friends will be shown in yellow, places on lists in green, specials in orange, and popular places in blue.

The map is accompanied by other new features, such as recommendations based on the time of day. For example, when you go to foursquare.com at, say, 11:30 a.m., and it will give you suggestions for lunch venues. On a Saturday, it may recommend popular weekend activities. In addition, they have added List discovery and venue pages have gotten a makeover.

I find the new website to be much more attractive, and look forward to leveling up my Bookworm badge! What do you think of the new changes?

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Cyber Criminals Hijacked 4 Million Computers: How to Prevent Click Fraud

November 16th, 2011

Last Wednsday the FBI released an indictment describing an international conspiracy conceived and carried out by criminals working primarily in Estonia and Russia. The defendants successfully hijacked at least 4 million computers in 100 countries, including over a half a million in the United States which comprised of computers in businesses and government agencies such as NASA.

Taken directly from the FBI press release, the damaged created through this scheme included the following:

  • They victimized legitimate website operators and advertisers who missed out on income through click hijacking and ad replacement fraud.
  • Unwitting customers of the defendants’ sham publisher networks were paying for Internet traffic from computer users who had not intended to view or click their ads.
  • Users involuntarily routed to Internet ads may well have harbored discontent with those businesses, even though the businesses were blameless.
  • And then there is the harm to the users of the hijacked computers. The DNSChanger malware was a virus more akin to an antibiotic-resistant bacterium. It had a built-in defense that blocked anti-virus software updates. And it left infected computers vulnerable to other malware.

How can you stop this from happening to you?

In short…100% click fraud prevention is impossible. Of course the case above is at a larger scale but nonetheless, as more and more businesses begin moving online and creating a more competitive market, the greater the chance of becoming a victim of click fraud.

However, there are precautionary steps to take to protect your marketing budget. As a business owner you can stay above the curve against click fraud attacks. Be alert with your campaign behavior. Establish a baseline so you can compare campaign performance daily. Ads usually have a consistent click through rate, so when you see a sudden spike in traffic it’s something you should pay attention to. Dive deeper and take a look at your conversion rate and where the traffic is coming from.

Tools and analytical reporting only goes so far, especially if you’re not quite sure what to look for, so the next step is to research a network with enough protection tools in place and ensure they are  dedicated in safe guarding your budget. Whether the company has in house technology, use a third party resource or both, the traffic patterns and quality running to your ads must be monitored around the clock. Working with a company who shares the same value in protecting your money is a great start to a clean campaign.

 

 

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6th Annual NY XPO: eZanga Booth 211

November 16th, 2011

Wednesday, November 16th, business leaders from across New York will gather at the world famous Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for the 6th Annual NY Xpo for Business. This highly acclaimed show is expected to draw upwards of 15,000 attendees and over 300 exhibitors as the largest business-to-business marketplace in the region. The eZanga team will be exhibiting at booth 211 so stop by and chat with us, and drop in your business card for your chance to win an iPad!

Free education will be offered throughout the day and will include over 30 quality information sessions covering sales, marketing, advertising, business growth, best business practices, social media and much more! You’ll be able to identify the latest products and services to meet your competitive challenges and discover the keys to financial success and stability. Check back for photos and updates on the event on our Facebook Fan Page!

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Introduction to QR Codes

November 15th, 2011

What is a QR code?

A QR code (quick response code) is a two-dimensional matrix barcode. It can be scanned by any camera-enable smartphone that has a QR reader app installed on it. QR codes can link to digital content such as a website, social media profile, or video, or activate phone functions such as email or SMS (text messaging). QR codes can be created on any of the QR generator websites out there, all of which are free.

Where do they go?

They can be placed virtually anywhere. Popular placements for QR codes are on business cards, advertisements, and flyers, but the possibilities are endless. Specific uses and placements for QR codes will depend on your industry, the goal in mind, and your audience.

What can they be used for?

QR codes were originally used for tracking automobile parts by Japanese company and Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave. But they can be used for virtually anything. Since QR codes have spread throughout the world, there has been an informal competition of who can come up with the most creative QR code.

QR codes can be utilized by your business either to reach other business or your customers and the public. Some possible B2B uses include putting them on materials handed out at conferences and events, on business cards, or to supplement press materials. For reaching customers, QR codes can be used in advertisements, on promotional materials, and in storefronts.

 Stay tuned!

Over the next few weeks, we are going to go more into detail about QR codes, highlighting uses for both B2B and B2C and talking about considerations when creating a QR code campaign.

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

November 15th, 2011

Twitter must give up WikiLeaks data

Last Thursday, a federal judge ordered Twitter to give up information about three account holders, Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, under investigation for possible connections to WikiLeaks.

The case began in January, when Twitter was subpoenaed to hand over private messages between founder Julian Assange and other members of the organization to the U.S. government.

This is a monumental case for online privacy, and those involved are taking to Twitter to talk about it. In a blog post that he tweeted a link to, Gonggrijp stated “there’s not a whole lot you can learn from records that Twitter has on me that you can’t learn from reading my blog. There are bigger principles at stake, though, and this is not a good ruling for online privacy.”

Ashton Kutcher hands over Twitter feed

Last Wednesday night, Ashton Kutcher tweeted “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste” before finding out that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was fired for his ties to the sex abuse scandal at Penn State. He deleted the tweet, but not before receiving massive backlash in the form of angry replies.

Kutcher later admitted he had not heard about the scandal and thought Paterno had been fired due to “poor performance as an aging coach.”

He had to quickly backpedal to manage the situation, tweeting “As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case.” To add context to the situation, Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore run an anti-sex slavery charity.

He also tweeted “As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again.” His feed stayed silent, but on Thursday he published a blog post titled Twitter Management on Posterous offering an explanation of his side of the story. In the blog post, he also explained that he has handed the management of his Twitter feed to his team at Katalyst Media.

Salman Rushdie uses Twitter to solve his Facebook problems

On Monday, world-famous author Salman Rushdie found that his Facebook account had been deleted over the weekend

He sent them a copy of his passport to prove he really was who he said he was, but the passport showed his full name as Ahmed Salman Rushdie. Facebook then reactivated the account under the name Ahmed Rushdie.

After Facebook failed to respond to Rushdie’s requests, so he took to Twitter and his followers to help him. After filling in his followers, he put his faith in them, saying “Am now hoping that ridicule by the Twitterverse will achieve what I can’t.”

He also tweeted lists of other famous and historical figures that go by their middle names rather than first under the hashtag #middlenameusers. Sure enough, within two hours Facebook finally responded and within another hour had apologized to the author. After all was resolved, Rushdie tweeted “Victory! #Facebook has buckled! I’m Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun. Thank you Twitter!”

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Google+ Brand Pages finally arrive

November 10th, 2011

Just when you thought you could forget about Google+, there’s been a major feature added that may refresh its relevance. Since day one, a major shortcoming of Google Plus was that there were no pages or support for brand profiles. But on Monday Google finally started rolling out brand pages.

The brand pages are extremely similar in appearance to regular profiles with a lot of the same functionality as a Facebook page. Users add pages to their circles just as they would with other users. But there are differences between a page and a profile.

First of all, a page cannot add a user to its circles unless the user has added it to one of his or her circles already or mentioned it in a post. Secondly, brand pages are public by default. The third major difference is that pages have a +1 button and count, which can be linked to your websites count as well (more on that later!). Pages also can’t use some other Google+ features such as playing games and giving +1 to other pages.

The reason the brand pages may be such a game changer is because of Direct Connect. Direct Connect is a way of finding and following Google+ brand pages through Google Search. All a searcher has to do is type “+” followed by the name of the brand or business. Instead of sorting through a page of results, you will be taken directly to the correct Google+ page. Google+ users can also opt-in to a feature that automatically adds the brand to their circles by searching with Direct Connect. (Side note: Google+ brand pages will also now show up in Google search results.)

Google has also released Google+ badges for brands to promote their presence on Plus. Similar to the Facebook’s Like Box plugin, the widget can be embedded on web sites and lets a user either +1 the page or add it to their circles. The important thing about the Google+ badges is that it will connect your brand page with your website. This will help Google better index the brand’s Google+ page, but will also link together the +1′s from your brand page, search, and display ads. It is also required for your brand to be eligible for Direct Connect.

It’s obvious that the Google+ brand pages will open up a lot of new possibilities for brands, although there are still shortcomings and questions. For example, right now brands cannot run any contests or promotions through their page, and there are no page analytics or insights. Will these things be added in the future? There are also no custom URLs yet, something which seems impractical. Lastly, pages can also only be controlled by the one admin that created the page. Multiple admin support is expected in the future, but when? We’ll need to wait and see!

Connect with eZanga.com on Google Plus!

What are your opinions on the Google+ brand pages? Do you think they will make Plus more popular?

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Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum 2011

November 9th, 2011

This week, eZanga CEO and CFO Rich and Beth Kahn will be attending the Ernst and Young Strategic Growth Forum for the second year in a row. Considered a Hall of Fame “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year” winner, Rich Kahn is excited to be attending such a prestigious event with an amazing line up of speakers and entrepreneurs, one of whom being former President, George W. Bush.

The theme of this year’s Forum is “think big” and the keynote speakers are giants of industry, sports and the arts. They will join the more than 2,100 CEOs and senior executives from America’s top high-growth, market-leading companies at this year’s sold out Forum.

Also a monumental year, Ernst & Young will be celebration their 25th anniversary of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award. The national awards ceremony will take place on the final night of the Forum at a black-tie event hosted by Jay Leno.

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eZanga Exhibiting at ad:tech New York

November 9th, 2011

November 9th and 10th the eZanga team will be exhibiting at ad:tech New York, located at the Javits Convention Center. If you’re in the area, please stop by booth #1436 to chat with our team, experience the safari, and drop in your business card for a chance to win an iPad which will be raffled at the conclusion of the trade show.

Stay tuned for pictures from the event!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

November 8th, 2011

Twitter partners with two new data firms

Yesterday Twitter announced partnerships with two data firms: Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon. The firms will be granted access to all of the tweets sent daily. The firms will “work directly on creating and maintaining partnerships with media firms (like television networks) without Twitter’s involvement.” Companies will be able to use data from these partnerships to determine new ways of connecting with and gathering information about a show’s audience. Mass Relevance will work with media companies interested in re-purposing and re-syndicating tweets for display on websites, television shows, jumbo-trons, etc. Crimson Hexagon performs sentiment analysis to measure viewers’ opinions on a show or program.

Twitter Stories for when 140 characters just isn’t enough

Last Wednesday, Twitter launched a new page called Twitter Stories for when 140 characters just isn’t enough. The page explores the way Twitter has changed people’s lives. Users are invited to share their own stories by mentioning @Twitterstories or #twitterstories and including a picture or link about their story. The page will be updated every month with new inspiring stories. So far, there are stories about how a man secured a kidney transplant, how Chad Ochocinco took over 100 of his followers out to a steak dinner, and how a bookstore was saved from closing by a single tweet.

Top News and People in search

Twitter is slowly rolling out new features in Twitter search: “Popular” news and people will be highlighted at the top of the search results page. The “Top People” feature highlights one account with a link to “view all”. How the highlighted user is chosen has not been revealed, leaving some skeptical about it. The “Top News” feature does not have a link to “view all,” but more options have been added to refine the search, such as by phrase, language, hashtag, or location. As you can see in the photo below (from Search Engine Watch), the “Top News” is formatted as a bolded headline, 1 line excerpt, a small photo, and a link.

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Introduction to Foursquare for Businesses

November 3rd, 2011

If you have never heard of Foursquare, it is a geo-location app that uses coordinates from a user’s mobile device to set their location and share it with their friends and social networks. Foursquare users “check-in” to venues based on their location and can share it with their friends on foursquare, as well as publish the check-in to their Facebook wall or Twitter timeline. There is also a big gaming aspect as users earn points, badges, and mayorships.

Foursquare has huge potential as a tool for businesses. The Foursquare for Business page outlines why you should set your business up on Foursquare and how to do so. Foursquare offers two different for solutions looking to expand their social media presence: the Merchant Platform, for businesses with a central location, and the Brand Platform. The differences are outlined below, but both offer the opportunity to connect to and expand your community of followers and customers.

Foursquare Merchant Platform

Getting started

The first step is to claim your venue. Since Foursquare has been around for a while and is very popular, it’s likely a location has already been created for your venue. Once you claim it and Foursquare verifies that you actually manage the venue, you will have control of the venue and be able to create specials, use the merchant dashboard, and more.

What you can do

  • Create specials: Specials are one of the biggest attractions to Foursquare, rewarding your customers for checking in to your venue. There are several types of specials:
    • Friends specials – unlocked when a user is checked in with a certain number (set by you) of their friends on Foursquare
    • Swarm specials – unlocked when a certain number (set by you) of Foursquare users have checked in to your location within a 3 hour period
    • Flash specials – unlocked by a limited number (of your choice) of users on a first-come, first-served basis
    • Newbie specials – unlocked only the first time a user checks into the location
    • Check-in specials – unlocked every time the user checks in, based on specifications set by you
    • Mayor specials – unlocked by the user who has checked in to your venue most frequently in the past 60 days (this user is known as the Mayor of your venue)
    • Loyalty specials – similar to a punch card
  • Merchant dashboard: Lets you view real-time data, including the total number of check-ins, most recent visitors, most frequent visitors, and how many check-ins were shared to social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Foursquare Brand Platform

Getting started

If your business is not a venue customers can check-in to, a brand page will better suit you. Creating a page is very simple. Just go to the brand platform page and click “Create a foursquare page” at the bottom. NOTE: It requires that you sign in with Twitter to create a page, so you need to have a Twitter account with your business’s name as the handle, since the handle will be the same. From there, you can add the header image, profile picture, description, and any links.

What you can do

  • Brand pages: Create a customizable page for your brand with tips you leave for venues. You need to leave at least 5 tips at venues to be featured on the foursquare page gallery.
  • Partner badges: On Foursquare, users are rewarded for check-in accomplishments with badges. While there is a fee and some stipulations attached, brands can create partner badges
  • Add to foursquare: You can create embeddable Foursquare tips on your own website

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