Wherefore art thou FourWhere?

June 30, 2010 | Written by Dave Cannon

Happy Tuesday everyone,

From here on out, Lucie and I (Dave), will be blogging every Tuesday and Thursday to talk about current news and developments in the social media sphere. I’ll be writing on Tuesdays, and Lucie will cover Thursdays. So take a break from work for a few minutes to catch up and maybe even gain some inspiration.

Since this is the first post in the series, I’m going to reach back and talk about social media stories that might not exactly be breaking news, but are blog-worthy nonetheless. Let’s start with some cool social media initiatives.

Dos Equis

Perhaps you’ve seen commercials starring Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World. He is, for lack of a better description, a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones who happens to love Dos Equis beer. The brand has announced an initiative called Cargo Hunt. The premise goes something like this: The Most Interesting Man in the World, an avid collector of worldly treasures and artifacts, lost all his collectibles when his plane crashed. Now it is up to you to find these treasures, which are scattered online and in the real world. Conveniently, many of them landed in stores that sell Dos Equis.

When a “cargo hunter” finds a treasure,  he records a unique code found on the item and submits it online, which automatically registers him in the game database. Dos Equis keeps a catalog of everyone who has found treasure; the more treasure you find, the more likely you are to win prizes, like a camera or a backpack. Players can even scan treasure with their smartphones and claim their riches in real-time.

YouTube Play

YouTube, HP and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation are collaborating to launch a user-created video contest called YouTube Play. Amateur and professional video makers have been challenged to create the world’s most creative video, and the top 20 best submissions will be featured at Guggenheim museums both in New York and Western Europe.

FourWhere adds Yelp and Gowalla

Sysomos, a social media measurement outfit, created a Google Maps + foursquare mashup a few months ago back called FourWhere. The concept is pretty simple: using the Google Maps interface, users can find foursquare check-ins and comments in specific areas. Just recently, Sysomos one-upped themselves by adding Yelp and Gowalla data to FourWhere. Now users can point to any location on a map and gather information from all three social sites at once. It’s not available for mobile devices yet, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s on the way.

Extra Bits

Before I sign off, here are some tidbits that might excite:

• Google may launch a third attempt into the social media arena with a network called Google Me. After the Buzz debacle, critics are skeptical.
• The highly anticipated rework of Digg.com is designed to be more social and personalized, which could give the site a boost in popularity.
• Twitter has added geotagging to tweets, opening doors to new and innovative social media ideas.

That’s all for now — I’ll be back next week with more goodies. Dave out.

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