We’re now less than 365 days away from the London 2012 Summer Olympics (and have been for some time now), but in case you were wondering about Sochi 2014, Rio de Janiero 2016, and PyeongChang 2018, we’ve got you covered with this cool countdown timer. This week’s edition of the Social Mashup features ESPN exclusive partnership with Foursquare, Skype’s acquisition of GroupMe, StumbleUpon’s continued rapid growth, and Google+ verification badges.
ESPN and Foursquare
The champion of sports television has teamed up with the leader in geo-location check ins to supply tips on major venues across the United States. Starting last week, when you check into certain sporting events on Foursquare, useful information such as game time, teams, venue, location, and more are made readily available plus all of ESPN’s news coverage of the upcoming games.
ESPN will provide facts, stats, and more on the brand’s venue pages for major sporting events including NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college football, college basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, racing and more as the year continues. ESPN now also has their own Foursquare Page, where fans can leave whatever tips they want about any ballpark, arena, or stadium. One example of a good trivia tip about Camden Yards we saw was as follows:
“There are two orange seats here. In right-center, the landing spot of Eddie Murray’s 500th home run. In left, the honorary mark of Cal Ripken Jr.’s 278th HR ball, the record breaker for shortstops.”
And for those Foursquare badge aficionados out there, when you check into a venue or event where ESPN has left tips, you are eligible to earn the Foam Finger Badge (pictured to the right). We actually really dig the design of this badge … who doesn’t love foam fingers?! Totally classic.
Skype to Acquire GroupMe
Interesting news is now emerging from the VOIP / SMS technology space. Skype is on the verge of acquiring one year old company GroupMe, a group messaging service.
GroupMe was founded at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in New York last year. The service focuses on group messaging and conference calling that enables users to stay in touch with groups of people via mobile phones. Users can send free text messages throughout the group as well as leave voice mails. The potential acquisition will add group calling capabilities to Sype.
While the purchase price has yet been disclosed (reportedly $85 million), we do know that earlier this year GroupMe raised $10.6 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, and several other investors. Skype, of course, is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft for over $8.5 billion.
Skype plans on keeping GroupMe as a stand alone brand at present but will look down the line to integrate it into Skype’s product seamlessly. Skype CEO Tony Bates had this to say:
“The group messaging space in general is one of the most important markets for Skype. GroupMe creates a very sticky instant feeling. Like Skype, it is an everyday interactive form of communication. Skype’s goal is to get to 1 billion users. Mobile is the place to do that.”
StumbleUpon’s Dominance
If you were to guess which social media website drives the most website traffic, what would you pick? Facebook? Twitter? Well … then you would be wrong. The answer is surprisingly StumbleUpon.
According to Mashable, StumbleUpon accounted for 50.27% of all referral traffic from the top 10 social sites. Facebook was second with a 38.9% market share, while Reddit, YouTube and Twitter each garnered less than 4%. Essentially, it’s a two horse race at this point.
In case you are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon and its rapidly growing service, it can be summarized as follows (direct from their company description): “You tell StumbleUpon what you like and StumbleUpon takes you to great stuff based on your interests.” In recent months, StumbleUpon has rolled out sleek new versions of their website discovery service on desktop, iPad, iPhone, and Android.
What do you think of StumbleUpon? Have you ever spent a few hours simply Stumbling across the internet? If so, have you ever tried other niche content discovery services like Pinterest, TasteSpotting, and Foodgawker?
Google+ Verification Badges
Impersonation of celebrity profiles, fake business accounts, and spammers fronting as public identities have long plagued the internet since the inception of MySpace and the social networking boom. In fact, nearly all successful social media services which offer public profiles incur this growing pain.
Now the folks at Mountain View, California have made the decision to roll out Verified Badges to high-profile celebrity accounts on Google+. This is clearly a move toward increased authenticity across Google’s new and redesigned social platform and a necessary offering to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the celebrity arena. Say what you might about celebrity accounts, but mass buy-in from Hollywood, music, and sports personalities is a guaranteed ticket to quicker adoption of a service.
From a management team’s perspective or a brand’s marketing strategy, Google+ represents a major headache … simply one more major social account to consider and most likely an afterthought (for the time being) other than syndicating existing updates from Facebook or Twitter for the vast majority of already overloaded and understaffed social media managers.
Verification Badges are of course not a new concept and already exist on other social media services like Twitter which slowly (but surely … if you know the right person) verifies high profile accounts. Something that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube offer which Google Plus does not yet offer is vanity URLs which coupled with verification badges make it a little easier to identify official accounts. Google is also not removing fake celebrity profiles, at this time, like their competitors Facebook and Twitter. Take a look at Lady Gaga’s profile below as an example of how difficult it is to tell.
One aspect unique to the Google+ verification process is that Google is considering a move toward a verified system for all users. Lack of a verified presence for all members of an online social community has long been a contentious point for many and also a service offering that creates much jealousy among B-List, C-List, and D-List celebrity personalities that are passed over for not knowing the right person at Twitter or Facebook.
Verified Accounts show a grey check mark. When a user hovers over the check mark, ‘verified name’ displays on the browser. One criticism and piece of feedback that we have for Google is to make this badge more prominent. Why display an official mark when it’s not a focal point and easy for users to spot?
Obviously this is tailored primarily to verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who accumulate a large number of Circles but it’s possibly it could be expanded in the future. We’d love to hear your thoughts on Google+ and verification for all users.
