If you are like me, there’s a good chance you are frequently looking for a great place to eat but don’t want to spend much time searching. You may also want to have an easy way to review sites in a simple manner right after you finish eating at a restaurant. If you are knowledgeable of all things web then you are probably aware of other services offering similar services.

Numerous Competitors

Yelp, for example offers a robust iPhone application for finding restaurants, bars, banks, drugstores, and more. You can then filter each of the stores or restaurants based on their rating, price, and distance from you. It’s a pretty useful application aside from one thing: you can’t review restaurants after you’ve visited them from the application.

A couple weeks ago I also wrote about the LivingSocial iPhone application. One of the many features that the application is the ability to write reviews on the go. This was immediately an open void in the market as Yelp has yet to fix reviews on the go. The additional benefit of LivingSocial is their integration into all the existing social networks which offer developer platforms.

The social recommendation space is rapidly getting crowded and as we rush to fill data into the system, there are going to be some serious challenges. One of those challenges includes consistency of recommendation engines within your personal networks. If half your friends are on one network and half on another, it’s difficult to determine which one to use.

Thummit and Simplicity

While numerous competitors exist in the mobile food recommendation space, Thummit is attempting to simplify things by limiting users to 140 characters, the same way Twitter does. The focus is to build out a robust SMS service and then extend the service to support as many communication platforms as possible. You can tweet your Thummit recommendation, text it to text it to the service, or update it from the Thummit website.

While the initial beta test is focused on the D.C. area, you can currently use the service anywhere in the country. For example I just ate at “The House” in San Francisco for lunch and was able to post a review directly to the site. The service then pulls in other reviews from around the web so that no sites appear to have a lack of content.

When I saw the demo at the LaunchBox Digital offices in D.C. last week, Sean Greene, the brain behind this new product, emphasized that the company is working to integrate many more features that make it easier to review restaurants. That includes automatically determining whether or not someone likes a place automatically via sentiment analysis.

It also appears that they want to take recommendations and simple voting beyond just restaurants. Food is simply the first place to test it out. For now the service is limited to restaurants but they may expand beyond that in the near future. I think keeping the service as simple as possible will be their key to success. What services to you use for social recommendations and social voting?

Also, if you’d like to register for the site, visit the Thummit site and use the invite code “hamburger”. Let us know what you think!

I’ve been taking a look at the usage of many Twitter users over the past few weeks and I’ve also noticed that a lot more of my friends have been joining recently. While Twitter can be an extremely valuable tool, there is a serious hurdle for it. I’ve seen many users join the site, add 10 or 20 friends and start tweeting. Within a matter of weeks their tweeting frequency dies down and eventually they stop using it.

The biggest problem for these individuals? The 10 or 20 people that they follow need to be interesting enough for them to return to the site regularly. While a small segment of these individuals enjoy getting text message updates from their close friends, at a certain point receiving mundane updates from the average Joe simply fails to excite.

Then again, perhaps following the average Joe (or should I say “Joe the plumber”?) will not provide a lot of value. The real value comes out of following those individuals that can create the most engaging media within 140 characters. Many of my friends don’t understand why I tweet and they don’t have the same virtual friends that I do.

There’s an extremely engaging group of individuals on the site that understand its power and take advantage of it. Maybe I’m simply over analyzing the act of engaging with other people on Twitter. Any individual who isn’t “hyperconnected” is not going to benefit equally and I would argue is much more likely to eventually leave the site. Do you think the average person gets the same benefit from Twitter as the hyperconnected social media people do?

Is there a simple way to explain the benefits of Twitter to someone who doesn’t understand what the purpose is? Personally, I didn’t get a huge benefit until I travelled around and began to witness the benefit of following the behind the scenes chatter.

Yesterday, D.C. Based SB Nation announced a “mid-seven-figure” funding round. The round was led by Accel Partners and included Allen & Co., Ted Leonsis, Brent Jones, who previously played for the San Francisco 49ers, Dan Rosenweig and Jeff Winer who were previous Yahoo! execs, and a few others. What is SB Nation? Ultimately, it’s a sports blog network.

The company is run by Jim Bankoff, who used to be the programming chief at AOL. The network includes a group of high quality sports blogs, each of which uses a similar design across the network. The company provides equity in SB Nation in exchange for full ownership of “the content, URLs, and related assets”. Bloggers also receive a portion of the ad revenue.

It’s great to see another D.C. based digital media company generate substantial buzz, but one has to wonder how the company will justify what can only be assumed as a sizable valuation. Then again, if we run the numbers, the company could easily come up with a nice exit. With 2 million unique visitors a month, and the average blog receiving less than 2 page views per visit, at a $20 CPM, that would result in monthly revenues of $68,000 per network ad spot.

With 4 ads on each site, the company could easily surpass $3 million in revenue per year. If a high traffic blogger received 1 percent of the company and it eventually is sold for around $30 million, each blogger might walk away with $300,000. Not exactly a large sum if you’ve been slaving away at your blog for a few years. Conversely, that’s at the company’s current size. If they can grow (as most networks do) significantly, there could theoretically be a much larger exit.

I don’t know any of the details though on how equity was swapped but networks tend to favor the owners of the networks and not the bloggers. In this complex new media landscape, it is pretty challenging to figure out a successful business model where the bloggers benefit. Creating a network definitely adds a lot of value for a potential acquirer though so at least it’s nice to see the creation of a valuable company.

The real question is when will we start seeing a large number of blog network acquisitions? As newspapers continue to decline, one can only assume that each company will expand their digital media presence. I’d guess that the next 12 to 24 months will be ripe for acquisitions in this space.

According to a new study published by BuzzLogic, “consumer purchases are more likely to be influenced by bloggers’ recommendations than what friends or other members of their social networks tout.” Does that mean game over for social shopping? Not really but it does suggest that including blogger recommendations into social shopping sites may not be such a bad idea.

Another interesting finding of the reports was that “blogs are becoming trusted guides, steering users who are seeking very specific information to places of interest online”, according to Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic. Unfortunately the study didn’t provide much insight as to what sort of influence peers have on social networks as BuzzLogic doesn’t appear to have much data on that issue.

Honestly, aside from the article title there was little data to backup the claim that blogs are more influential. There was a ton of data suggesting that blogs have substantial influence though. Technology blogs are the most influential for purchase decisions, followed by media and entertainment, games/toys/sporting goods, travel, and automotive.

Apparently ads on blogs were also on par with sponsored search results. If you want to advertise then, feel free to contact us! Seriously though, there is very little data supporting the argument that blogs are more influential than friends for purchase decisions. The one thing that the study suggested was that avid blog readers are more influence by blogs then by friends. I’m not sure that is really all that surprising.

It would be interesting to see data on purchase decisions based on the recommendations of friends within social networks. Do you find blogs or your friends to be more influential? Have you made any purchase decisions based on the recommendations of either?

Paul Boutin, who happens to be a correspondent for Valleywag, has posted an article on Wired suggesting that launching your own blog is pretty much worthless at this point. His rationale? Pretty much the same rationale that is passed around time and time again. The primary leaderboards for blogs around the web, suggest that you can’t become a large blog as an individual.

Paul Boutin has a point. If you are looking to build a blog that attracts millions of monthly visitors, you really have a small chance of success. Honestly though, you always have had a small chance of success. That doesn’t mean you can’t succeed though. Just take a look at the desperate brokers blog. Mashable has even gone so far as to suggest that it’s the new Lolcats.

While I disagree with Mashable, the point is that there is still the potential for viral success. Viral success is created by developing hyper-niche content within an unfilled niche. That’s how I grew AllFacebook and while it’s not as big as Techcrunch or Mashable, it’s still possible to create a large enough audience that you can sustain a small business and potentially grow that business.

Other statistics that Boutin uses to support his argument that there is no point in blogging? Boutin suggests that it has become more challenging to generate relevant content that moves up to the first page in Google results for one and two-word phrases. I think Boutin is accurate about this. When you regurgitate content that has been republished for instance on Techmeme, it is challenging to move to the top of Google.

When you generate original content though that targets and unfilled niche, there is still a good chance of success. Ultimately that’s where I differ with Boutin. Yes, the large niches like “technology” have been filled but there still are numerous unfilled niches and it takes a good entrepreneur to find those.

A third argument that Paul Boutin suggests is that the buzz is not taking place in blogs and is taking place on other social media sites (Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc). I agree with Paul’s statement but yet again, it’s still possible to generate buzz on a blog.

Blogging Ain’t Easy

The bottom line is this: if you want to build a successful blog, you can’t do it part time. It has to be full-time and you have to be willing to work ridiculous hours to succeed. Nobody said it was easy and I can guarantee you that none of the top blogs will say it’s easy. Even many of the largest blogs are still finding it challenging to optimize their revenue model.

It’s easy to dismiss blogs as a platform for generating buzz. That’s because it takes time and effort to succeed. Paul Boutin also uses a statement from Robert Scoble to suggest that blogging is dead. Robert Scoble says “I keep my blog mostly for long-form writing”. Blogs are not meant for short-form content. That’s why we call Twitter micro-blogging!

Do you think blogging is dead? Would you recommend that others start a blog? Have you had success with blogging? Is it that much more challenging to launch a successful blog now?

Over the weekend, there was a lot of buzz about Britney Spears launching her own Twitter account. The initial discussion surrounded what this meant for Twitter, as it now appeared to be moving more mainstream. Britney’s presence on Twitter also coincides with the launch of her new song “Womanizer” (which I’ve embedded below).

The second discussion about Britney’s presence on Twitter was that it wasn’t personal. Gary Vaynerchuk highlighted this in a pretty entertaining video. As many people noticed, the tweets being posted to Britney’s accounts were being run by her team and not by Britney. At least Britney’s team acknowledged Gary’s request to be more personal earlier this morning.

The Varying Twitter Accounts

People use Twitter for different purposes. The most obvious is for expressing personal thoughts and then communicating with others. Some users (like myself), mix personal and promotional purposes with Twitter. I for instance post my blog posts and then post personal thoughts and write about the activities that I’m up to.

Comcast, which is probably the best brand example on Twitter, has Frank Eliason who manages the Comcast cares account. Frank monitors all instances of people tweeting about Comcast and gets directly in touch with them. A small group of accounts are actively managed by other people. For instance Barack Obama does not personally update his Twitter account.

Instead, Obama has a team which regularly updates Twitter with Obama’s activities. That doesn’t stop Obama from being the largest user by a huge margin. Barack Obama has over 100,000 followers.

What is the Right Way to Use Twitter?

This all brings me back to my original question which is: what’s the best way for brands to leverage Twitter? Gary Vaynerchuk believes that brands must provide a personal voice and a face if they are going to succeed. NPR News has one of the top 100 Twitter accounts though and they provide nothing personal, only news. There are 18 brands that function like NPR in the top 100 accounts.

The other 82 are all individuals. Does this mean that one should use Twitter as an individual then? I’m not quite sure to be honest. I think that based on the accounts I’ve looked at, you have to choose from the onset whether or not you want to be personal, or act as a brand. If your account is as a brand, don’t expect to have the same type of personal connection which helps small businesses grow.

Large brands can go off their brand name but small brands are forced to be more personal. What do you think is proper etiquette for brands? Do you prefer the personal route or the branded route? Is there anything in between?

While you could argue that blogging in general has crossed into mainstream based on the number of visitors attending top blogs, most visitors don’t know that what they are visiting is called “blogs” though. After speaking with one individual last night, I’ve concluded that some people will just never get involved in social media or take advantage of the many tools at their disposal.

The Inner Circle

I’ve realized that much of social media is really an inner circle. A large portion of these readers participate in the conversation on Twitter, Friendfeed, and other platforms are part of a relatively small yet influential circle. While that circle continues to expand, I’ve begun to wonder if the majority of individuals will ever become highly active in social media outside of Facebook and mainstream social networks.

When Charlene Li wrote the book “Groundswell” she highlighted Forrester’s social technographics profile and the various categories. The six types of categories are creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. The “joiners” do nothing more than participate in social networks for the most part. The spectators and inactives do even less. A whopping 44 percent are inactives.

I rarely think about how disconnected from reality I am but after talking with one person last night I definitely realized it. There’s a group of people that require an alternative form of communication to have what is ultimately “inside conversation”. This morning I concluded that much of this conversation amounts to what is secret code among fraternities.

The average person doesn’t understand what one is talking about (for instance when referencing “Twitter”), but the few active social media active participants are the only one that knows what’s being discussed. When the conversation is outside of the mainstream, is there any way for the conversation to eventually become mainstream?

Yesterday afternoon Digg announced that they had secured yet another round of funding. This new round is for $28.7 million. Two things come to everybody’s mind: what are they going to do with all that money and did Kevin and Jay take some cash as part of this round? Is the company prepared to release the latest cure for cancer? Probably not.

I’m giving Digg a hard time. I mean Facebook was able to raise almost half a billion after all their rounds of funding right? While the site attracts over 20 million monthly users domestically and even more worldwide, the site isn’t exactly at the early stage of their growth. Are they? The site is preparing to launch support for the Facebook Connect service and they’re hoping that this helps transform the service and attract a broader audience.

Perhaps the site will become the social voting site for absolutely everything, not just news. After four years of operations, a lack of profit, and many unsuccessful exit attempts it appears that the next best option was to go for funding. I have to give it to the Digg team, they have some serious cohones! While I love using the site to find the latest tech news, I’m just not sure that the service is transforming the world the way that $40 million in total funding should.

Perhaps this is all part of the Web 2.0 mindset though. Give a lot of money to people that are building services that help us organize the nearly infinite information on the web. Do you think this round is justifiable? What do you think they could possibly be using all this money for?

If you’ve gone to any of the industry conferences in the past year, you’ll have heard the same pitch from all the companies: “We’re selling engagement.” We understand that there is inherently value to brands when consumers engage in various activities within a branded environment. How much value is provided through that engagement? Nobody knows. How do you measure engagement? Also an unknown.

New Solutions Emerge

Last week news of Facebook’s new “Engagement Ads” emerged and at first it didn’t click with me but the sound of it is pretty ominous. Today MediaPost posted an interview with Facebook’s VP of Media Sales, Mike Murphy in which he says “Over the last few years, Web advertising has been all about demand fulfillment.”

The article continues, “he believes that Facebook users aren’t necessarily seeking to execute tasks or fulfill specific demands, and by nature are less inclined to click on ads that take them away from the site.” What Mike Murphy believes is something that isn’t theory, it’s fact: users on social networks do not click on advertisements and this is why Google continues to reign in the majority of online advertising dollars.

Direct sales is what advertisers want and it’s not surprising. When you can put in money into specific advertisements and you can track that advertisement to a sale, why wouldn’t you purchase more or look for other channels that can do the same thing? That’s what most are doing, but a few brave souls are beginning to explore new territory.

Engagement Advertising as the 4th Type of Web Based Ad

You are a brand manager. You are sitting at your desk trying to process a ton of data and make a decision about the next quarter’s advertising budget. You have a bunch of options including: television, newspaper, radio, mailers and online. Online is broken out into banner advertising, search advertising, email marketing, and more recently “social media” which nobody has figured out how to classify it.

If Facebook agrees with what many others are saying, the new categorization should be “engagement advertising”. Meebo has already been offering these types of solutions (as they will discuss at the upcoming Social Ad Summit) and a number of others are beginning to do the same. Ultimately all engagement advertisements boil down to one thing: the conversation.

In public relations, marketing and advertising firms there have been a number of solutions to track buzz such as Cymfony and Nielsen BuzzMetrics. These new “engagement advertisements” ultimately produce similar results. At the end of the day, Meebo or Facebook will come back to the advertiser and say “X number of people interacted with your advertisement and Y number of people are now talking about your product in comparison to Z people before.”

Still Very Early

Just as brands are cautious to enter this space, social media evangelists should be equally concerned about this hesitancy. While we alway have “attention economics” to rely on, soon enough every social media site is going to be pushing this new type of advertisement. The only problem is that the industry is still learning how to measure all of these things.

Metrics is not a new phenomenon, it’s just that technology has made it easier to measure things. Unfortunately all of us are trying to figure out ways of packaging and measuring this “new type” of advertising while at the same time selling it “as is”. Fortunately for the industry there are brands that are willing to experiment and test the waters but the windfall profits we are seeking from social media may no longer be just over the horizon.

Rather than just measuring the impact of advertising on direct sales we are now entering a phase where we monitor the impact of advertising on conversation. While there are already systems in place to monitor the conversation, it was previously challenging to influence the conversation on a large scale. What social networks are now providing is a way to influence consumers’ conversation en masse.

The real question now is: can influencing the conversation on a large scale result in sales? If it can, how do we measure the correlation between conversation and sales? Is this really the secret key to social networks generating large amounts of revenue?

Hey this is Nick O’Neill and I’m here today to tell you about ….. me!!!!!! Yes, I am wonderful [END CLIP].

That’s about all I and thousands of others of people can seem to talk about when they are provided with 12 seconds to talk to a video camera. There is a sudden boom of social video services that enable people to record and upload quick video clips of themselves. I’ve found that the majority of the content is simply people talking about themselves. Is this a particularly acute observation? Not really, if you didn’t realize this then you haven’t been viewing social media.

Social Media is Narcissistic

When I was waiting in line today to grab my Chipotle lunch I thought to myself that I’d post a tweet saying “Exhausted. Didn’t sleep much last night.” I’m not sure what exactly inspired this moment of deep insight but I can guarantee that absolutely nobody following me on Twitter cared whatsoever. They will simply ignore it in search of the next interesting post.

The problem with many of these services is that they were designed in ways that enable us to increase our narcissism. Who posted on my wall on Facebook? Did you comment on my blog post? Did you reply to my tweet? Me me me! In such an environment it’s no wonder that micro-celebrities are born because ultimately the only industry that rewards narcissism is the entertainment industry.

Where’s the Value?

It’s well known that advertising appeals to peoples’ desire to be a celebrity. When an industry develops tools for individuals to become their own celebrities, people rush in to take advantage of it. That’s exactly what social media has provided but hopefully some of these tools can turn into tools for good rather than simply tools for self promotion.

The only thing I can’t figure out about 12 seconds (and countless other “social media” start ups) is how are they any different from YouTube or most other video sites? Does 12 seconds really make much of a difference? Honestly, I think it’s relatively limiting and while I understand the 140 character limit for Twitter I have no idea where the value is for 12seconds.com.

How large can the industry get when people are only talking about themselves?