New York City sidewalks are crowded enough, but lately they seem even more cramped. No matter how fast you walk, it’s hard not to notice the assorted pieces of furniture that line the edge of the road. Mattresses, couches, tables and chests — visitors to the city might wonder whether these are just remnants of the moving process or free furniture up for grabs. But to those who live here, these discarded possessions only mean one thing: bed bugs.

Able to travel in clothes and luggage as well as multiply from 2 to 120 in just three days, bed bugs are terrible nuisances that are becoming an increasingly larger threat to companies. Not only is New York City now the most-infested city in America (with 11,000 complaints last year!), but it seems that nobody is safe from these creepy-crawlies. The AMC theater in Times Square, a Hollister store, an Abercrombie & Fitch store, a Victoria’s Secret store, Elle magazine’s offices, Time Warner’s offices, Saatchi & Saatchi’s office, the Empire State Building and even, ironically, the New York Health Department have all suffered from an infestation. In fact, Advertising Age reported that if you are a business in New York City, it is almost next to impossible to avoid one.

“I don’t go to the movies anymore, I’m not sitting in those seats, and don’t sit on wooden benches,” said Gale A. Brewer, a member of the City Council, to The New York Times. Brewer even crosses the street when confronted with discarded furniture on the sidewalk.

Along with the pesky business of getting rid of bed bugs, companies are also wary of the strong stigma attached to those infested. As would be expected, many try to avoid making the news at all, opting instead to settle the matter quietly.

Eric Edge, global chief communications officer at the once-infested, now-treated Euro RSCG, recommends that bed bug-ridden companies fess up to the fact quickly. “In today’s age of social media, if you try to cover anything up, or spin or sugarcoat the situation, the public is going to see through it,” he said. He adds that these reactive PR efforts should be coupled with educational information to demonstrate that a business addressing the topic is knowleable about it.

 ”There’s a stigma, but there shouldn’t be,” said Glenn Waldorf, director of Bell Environmental Services, Inc. “It happens everywhere. The stigma should come from companies that do not take proactive action to deal with a situation.”

One of the companies that has publicly taken steps to avoid bed bugs is Bergdorf Goodman, who hired insect-sniffing dogs to investigate their still-uninfected stores, but this strategy has not been adopted by all. “It’s difficult for companies to be proactive because you don’t know when a bug will be carried in,” said Jeffrey White, a research entomologist at BedBugCentral.com. ”It’s really not feasible to be treating an entire movie theater every two weeks.”

Yet, with a bill that has passed the Legislature requiring “owners or lessors to provide bedbug infestation history for the previous year to any lessee of real property within New York city before the lease of such property,” I wonder: should businesses also be legally required to provide this information to its customers, or is “coming clean” just considered a “crisis comms plan” to be done only when absolutely necessary? Now that news has the potential to spread faster than ever before thanks to the Internet, is the collective intelligence (and criticism) of the public making businesses more transparant or less so?

New York City is a place to be enraged, especially because of the shoe-box shared space situation. Most of us do not cook or bake so we find use for the utilities given to us—storage. Polos go on the top rack of the oven, while ties and accessories go on the bottom rack of the oven. Cupboards are used for shoes and drawers are for socks and underwear. We create space because we want more things, we need more things.

No wonder people gave birth to the internet. Virtual space for realistic things. Imagine if the internet were as tangible as our clothes and shoes. Imagine that all the information available online can be seen and be felt. At this day and age, we need as much space as we can possibly have and all corners must be exhausted by information garnered in the online world. Offline space is expensive, but online space is priceless and here’s how the internet and social media is changing their services to meet our demanding needs for it.

“You Don’t Give Me Enough Space!!!”

I’m pretty sure you all have heard this before. Yes, it’s that line we all use, true and untrue, to get rid of someone for a short-while, or possibly, for good. Apparently, this speech is also used against the innocent internet services, especially on free e-mail providers. When one provider offers more space with more benefits, we tend to dispatch the not-so-mighty one who had served us good and say hello to the more polished and more fitting e-mail provider (with the benefit of giving us all the space we want and all the satisfaction we need). The truth is, even the claimed-to-be the most spacious e-mail provider is not as spacious as they say. Recently, Mike Monteiro has reached the bottom of the Gmail cave and the once thought impossible is now way too visibly possible.

So, what are the options now that free services have limits? Here in New York City, some of us, I know I do, rents storages that come with a price. In terms of the online world, extra space and features are available if one’s willing to pay extra bucks. Yahoo! offers Premium Service that gives extra space, live customer service care, security, and extra e-mail filters.

A Party of 5,000+ Friends

So now you got rid of the person you’re seeing because he or she doesn’t give you enough space, now what about your friends? Not as demanding Justin Bieber and not as talked about as Angelina Jolie, yet, you have thousands of friends on Facebook. Usually, one’s Facebook account will stop receiving friend requests after reaching its limit of 5,000 people. So, where does someone get more space for the ever-so-demanding friends? There are two options to choose from: creating a fan page AND creating a second profile.  At this point, I think a person who has more than 5,000 friends should hire Facebook as his personal event planner and scheduler and, more or less, his own Publicist. But, really? 5,000 friends? It is one thing to have more space in an address book, but it’s another to have more space to be real.

A Hundred-Forty Character Line. Space Much?

So you want more things to squeeze into your NY shoe-box apartment, but how? Let me introduce to you a product called, Spacebag. At the same time, you don’t want to hear your blabbering boyfriend blabber an hour long blabberlovathon, so you’d much rather have him tweet his sorrows. But how much information can one squeeze in a tweet? It seems that this 140 character tweet is enough to supply information by cutting down words, proper grammar, spelling, and URL. In fact, one can embed picture links on a tweet. And since humans are so obsessed with having more space possible, there is a URL shortener called “bit.” This service is a better bullet eater than PacMan. But let me warn you, when you drink and eat, there is no app that bites one’s stomach in order to create space for more incoming satisfaction.

Content now that you have more closet space and more tweet space? With the obsession of the social media generation to find space offline and online, has this era gone out of control? In the search of finding and creating room for information, with countless hours sitting and Google-ing through infinity, have we given up space to be humans? It seems that if there were a machine that would be able to transform us into virtual beings, we can probably fit pocket-sized lovers and take them out whenever we want them.

So go outside and play. I’m sure the internet can’t fit fresh air onto your computer. You’ve reached the end of internet anyway.

During my first visit to Shanghai, I was hounded by the extremely aggressive sales personnel at every store. With every turn and glance, there was someone at my side talking my head off in an attempt to get a sale. Along with being downright annoyed, I felt stalked and harassed. Tell them you don’t need help, and they only insist. Walk away, and they run after you yelling about “special prices” that only you will receive. It’s enough to give any girl a headache.

And yet, ironically, while I hated these sale-seeking stalkers, I actively volunteer to be tracked here in America. With Groupon, Foursquare, Scoutmob, LivingSocial, and more, the list goes on and on for the online services and mobile applications I subscribe to (and that are out there in general) which exist solely to monitor my shopping patterns and behaviors and offer me special deals and promotions.

The growing use of Web coupons, mobile coupons, and location-based apps has, in turn, created a new breed of plugged-in, hyper-informed, deal-seeking shoppers. Coining these consumers ”Xtreme Shoppers,” Future Buy, GfK Consumer’s integrated study of shopping behaviors, found that a whopping 31% of Americans fell into this descriptive category. As described in the Financial, Xtreme shoppers view the shopping experience in a game-like manner; they take advantage of new, emerging technologies and information in order to gain control over and personalize their shopping experience. Ultimately, they “regularly synergize” between in-store and online shopping in order to “maximizing shopping and purchase value” — thereby “winning” when they get what they feel to be the best overall deal.

In effect, these shoppers can be seen as the next iteration of the Social Researcher, identified in 2007 as the shopper who uses technology to seek out peer feedback and customer reviews about a product before making a purchasing decision. Either way, as Web and mobile coupons become more mainstream – with the demographic using them being the same as the ones most likely to clip off-line coupons – businesses are eager to find a way to capitalize on this deal-seeking behavior.

Thanks to sites like Groupon, SCVNGR, and Foursquare’s “Special Deals Nearby” feature, businesses have been focused on enticing Xtreme Shoppers to check out their stores by rewarding them when they check in. And now, with the new Shopkick application, shopping behavior reinforcement is getting even more specific:

Check-in to a store: get a kickbuck. Walk into a store: get even more kickbucks. Swipe through offers and products: kickbuck, kickbuck, kickbuck. Go into the dressing room: …well, you get the idea.

Ultimately, those that receive enough kickbucks will get special gift cards, credits for music downloads or Facebook games, and more. But along with the clear game-like aspect Shopkick brings to shopping, this strategy of reinforcing specific actions with a positive “kick” is also hauntingly similar to another behavior-shaping theory: Pavlov’s classical conditioning.

Are businesses simply making the shopper “salivate in response to the bell” or are they providing legitimate rewards and information that enhance the purchasing experience? By existing in the digital/mobile space, are companies being too passive aggressive with their in-store marketing? And at what point do web coupons and mobile applications that track our shopping behavior become too invasive of our personal privacy?

Is Xtreme Shopping smart decision-making or America’s new addiction?

Special thanks to Dave Cannon, who helped provide inspiration for this post. Be sure to check out his coverage of recent social media news at the Left Brain blog.

As far as I know, 10 years ago, when there weren’t any social media shenanigans happening, it was bad enough that a boyfriend or a girlfriend had asked friends of their lovers where their lovers were. Stalk-ish? Yes. Romantic? Not really.

10 years later, with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, blogs, and a lot more, it has become a very easy access for people to get information about other people whom they want to get to know… personally. Nowadays, it’s “normal” to get info about someone online, which brings me to question: What drives people to advertise themselves in the virtual world?

Look at me! I’m fabulous!

A decade ago, I was living a disconnected life from the wide-webbed-world. To attract attention, one had to be superbly stunning and one-of-a-kind-looking just like Hollywood Stars (and Hollywood Falling Stars). But what about the “regular” people? How can they get the same self-esteem booster for a much lower price and less work? There must be a way.

Minus the overly-priced make-up products and taking the time learning how to wink, there is only one thing someone needs in order to garner the attention of the world: the internet. With all types of social media platforms that we have today, it only takes one click to let the whole world knows what we look like, what our interests are, what we are doing, and where we are. And the best part is, most of these social media platforms are FREE! 

How much is too much?

Free food tastes way better than paid food, well, at least for me, because of the satisfying indulgence of not paying for something that elevates the pleasure of my palate (and grumbling stomach). In the same vein, free subscriptions of social media induce people to sign-up and, viola! they are now included to the list of socialite wannabes. The question, how much is too much, pertains to how much information one wants the world to know. Does the world need to know what you had for lunch and what you think I should have for lunch? Does this generation really have ADD, Attention Demanding Disorder?

Jeepers Creepers

So we’re all famous in our own ways, in our own little virtual social groups and the number of fans is just increasing incredibly. Virtual “fame” has been achieved, so now what? Chances are, this fame has become Hollywood’s upcoming hit movie: He’s Just Really Into You. From a Facebook profile to a blog-site, it’s very easy to stalk someone without being physically present, but visibly online, 24/7. Personally, there is nothing bad about publishing one’s self online. It’s fun and it is becoming a part of contemporary American culture. However, just remember when you tweet more than a bird, don’t be surprised if you find yourself covered with cranberry sauce for someone’s dinner.

All in all, it’s not bad to be a part of this social media generation. Just be careful on what you put out there. Also, be mindful on the type of social media platform you use. If you don’t want people to know exactly where you are, then do not use FourSquare. If you don’t want people to know what’s on your mind, don’t tweet about it. If you don’t want people to know what you look like, use a doppelganger.

Now, let me get out of here as I have to go to the city hall and file a restraining order.

Every so often, somebody does something that resonates with the public and inspires the masses. Yesterday, that person was Steve Slater, a 38-year-old JetBlue flight attendant.

It all started when a particularly uncooperative passenger gave Slater sass, refusing to sit down when he asked her to. Determined to reach her things from the storage compartment above the seat, she then hit Slater in the head with her luggage (accidentally, it seems) as he tried to intervene.

And after 20 years of service, Slater had had it.

Going over the in-flight PA system, he cussed out the passenger and then grabbed two beers before sliding his way down the exit chute, out of the plane and away from his high-stress job. Though potentially endangering those around him, his actions are representative of what several of those working in customer service probably have at least at one point in their lives wished they too could do.

Who knows how many other people quit their jobs in style yesterday, but let’s just say that between the Facebook pages and wide coverage of the event, something about Slater struck a cord with people. And in the midst of all this news flurry, one organization for a long time stayed noticeably silent: JetBlue.

As an Advertising Age article published yesterday specifically highlighted, JetBlue has been slow in updating its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Even as of noon today, its Facebook wall still had no trace of the Slater incident. The same was true for its Twitter.

Then, this afternoon a link was finally posted on both these social media sites to a blog post: “Sometimes the Weird News Is About Us.” And interestingly, it was a post about… staying quiet. In a surprisingly short note, Jet Blue writes:

It wouldn’t be fair for us to point out absurdities in other corners of the industry without acknowledging when it’s about us. Well, this week’s news certainly falls into that category. Perhaps you heard a little story about one of our flight attendants? While we can’t discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet. (The reason we’re not commenting is that we respect the privacy of the individual. People can speak on their own behalf; we won’t do it for them.)

While this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,100 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you’ve come to expect of us.

Simple, clear, and professional, the post focuses on highlighting the positives of their other flight attendants and, by keeping mum, inadvertently acknowledges the sticky situation that JetBlue is in. While many find Slater’s actions funny, the blog post demonstrates how taking the situation too lightly as a corporation could make things complicated legally and potentially even reduce trust in their in-flight personnel. Furthermore, it is consistent with an official statement released to the press, which said the airline company was working with both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in investigating the situation. This previous statement also made to sure to include how “at no time was the security or safety of our customers or crew members at risk.”

“Usually when a flight attendant gets called out it’s for something they have done wrong that pissed off passengers,” said Jonathan Bellinger, the vice president of social media strategy at Ketchum, in AdAge. “But when an attendant does something where passengers say they wish they would do the same thing at their own job, that’s great. It’s a net positive story for the brand.”

So what took so long for JetBlue to respond on the social media front if all they had to do was repeat what they had already told traditional media outlets?

For the most part, this seems less like neglect than underestimating the importance of their social media reach. It’s been “about an hour” since the link to the blog was posted on JetBlue’s Facebook site and already there are 139 comments–and with 301,305 Facebook fans of the page itself, that isn’t a surprise. Marty St. George, the head of JetBlue marketing, alone has 1,958 followers for his personal Twitter, while JetBlue’s corporate handle has 1,595,120. Staying consistent in a message means updating all channels of communication, including social media, and especially social media if you are, as St. George described it, “a brand with a customer base that skews young and affluent; they are on social media, and we want to be where our customers are.”

[Photo credit: Lost Magazine]

Back in elementary school, library trips were awesome because they always meant one thing: playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab. Who knew a game that teaches kids how to buy too many things at the General Store, shoot more buffalo than they can carry back, and write funny epitaphs for poor friends who have passed away from dysentery could be so much fun.

Open up my Macbook today though and you won’t find any trace of my sharp-shooting past. Instead, tabs for Gmail, Facebook, The New York Times, Tumblr, and a probably some recently-discovered hilarious website (New Yorker Cartoons Captioned By Kanye West Tweets, anyone?) will most likely be sitting pretty on my desktop. The luxury of being able to access multiple streams of information simultaneously makes me wonder how I ever stayed entertained during the days of dial-up. And what does all this say about me?

Well, that I’m actually pretty much totally average.

While The New York Times earlier this summer took an in-depth look at the Internet’s effect on our brains, a recent study by Nielson Internet Research on top of that found that Internet users spend almost one-fourth of their time on social networking sites, shifting their attention away from more traditional online tasks like checking their email. The second most common use of the Internet, though, was playing social games like Farmville.

Which in a way makes sense: these games didn’t stop being fun. We just started being told it wasn’t socially acceptable to play them all the time anymore.

“Games have always faced a sort of puritanical challenge in this country, that they are okay to play as kids but weird as adults,” said Mia Consalvo, a visiting associate professor at MIT, in a recent article by The Washington Post. “But play is a fundamental part of our lives. And now, with these social games, many people who weren’t gamers have an outlet again to play games as adults.”

What is it that makes these games so addictive for everyone? The fact that they thrive with an already-established social network. This answer may seem obvious, but the idea of having a game community exist within a social network rather than having a a social network result from a game community (in which all members of that social network therefore play a game) is an interesting (and entirely logical) phenomenon. While the second scenario often is filled with individuals stigmatized as “gamers,” the first situation involves a wide spectrum of personality, gender, and age groups. And this fact has large business consequences.

Mainly, the proliferation of social games attests to the influence friends have on one another online. Unlike in the Oregon Trail of my childhood, social games normally require collaboration in order for players to stay interested and achieve success in a game. Yet, similar to Oregon Trail versus games like Halo, these social games can be “crude to the point of being almost retro,” according to MediaPost, with simple objectives and basic features. By supplying the element of entertainment, surprise, and competition, these games provide a heightened level of interaction between an individual and his/her social network, making it a popular way of meeting new friends while keeping in touch with old ones.

For businesses then, social games become an added arena wherein they can reach customers and establish brand salience. In an interview at MIT, Consalvo said, “There’s all this spillover right now as people are trying to figure things out, like what’s a casual game versus what’s a social game. There’s a lot of interest and excitement and people aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen or how they’re going to make money.”

But that’s not to say social games are not lucrative. While most games are free to play, many include different levels or add-ons that users can purchase at a low cost. For instance, based off of the recently-popular ”Double Rainbow” video  that became a bonafide Internet meme, Frontierville (a new game from the makers of Farmville) added a “Double Rainbow” decoration that players can purchase with in-game currency. It is estimated that $835 million worth of game-based purchases are made every year.

Furthermore, games have the ability to exist across platforms, from laptops to iPhones. The appeal of reaching large audiences who are actively and often engaged in a game has caused game developer and entrepreneur Jon Radoff to call social games “the most viable business model that has come along for social networks, even better than advertising.”

It also makes predicting how businesses will leverage this potential fairly complicated. Expectedly, it has been observed that more and more brands and companies are either building games themselves or providing advertising or product placements within already-established social games. In an interesting twist, however, some have also speculated that Google hopes to enter the social network by reversing the entire social-to-game process by building a social game site that has networking capabilities.

To me, this seems like a simple isolation of the social game trend, which raises a few questions as to its potential success. Namely, I wonder whether or not this would only create a new gaming community (thus, losing the mass appeal social games currently rely and thrive on), and if current social game players value a game more/find it more convenient to play if it exists within a social network that they have already established.

Either way, the build-up and rumors surrounding the release of GoogleMe is reminiscent of the anticipation and expectations that enveloped two other recent Google products–Google Buzz and Google Wave, eventually making both underwhelming. Hopefully, in this case, third time’s the charm.

Inspired by my experience last night on the launching event of Alikewise.com (an online dating website that matches people by the books that they read), I couldn’t help but wonder how convenient it is, nowadays, to find a date… anywhere! Has pop-culture made online dating too pop? I decided to “experiment” and go undercover to find out what it is about online dating that attracts millions of people worldwide.

Dating on the Fast Track

During the event, I got on the “Speed Dating Couch,” where I got to sit and talk to random people, telling them things about myself: what I like, what I do, and some “blahs.” Suddenly, I realized that within the span of ten years, looking for someone to date has actually become way too easy.

Cupid Goes Online!

Ten years ago, probably even more, people were buzzing about blind-dates, how intriguing it was, how fun it was, and how terrible it was. Then came speed-dating events at local bars and hotels, which was shortly followed by online dating. When people started creating MySpace profiles, they didn’t know if it were “a place for friends,” or an innovative start-up dating website. Soon after, online-dating websites such as match.com, eharmony.com, chemistry.com, and many more started popping on every corner of the world-wide-web.

Later that night, the founder of Alikewise.com was persuading me to have an online account with them, not only to up the number of members, but for me to also, “get someone to date!” he says.

Doing the (Dating) Math

I pondered my concerns on online-dating. For one, there are risks involved in meeting someone online, but I was also curious about how rapidly the population of people turning to the internet to find someone to go out with was growing. Study shows that “In the first half of 2003, consumers spent over $214 million for online-dating services. This number is 76% higher than the same time last year.” And this was back in 2003! Imagine how much people have already spent, both time and money, on dating websites seven years later. Online-dating websites have become multi-million dollar businesses that attract all types of people all over the world. And, since online-dating has become the new “it” thing, different online-dating websites are now even more tailored to cater to specific interests or preferences: Alikewise.com for book lovers, Tastebuds.com for music lovers, Christiansingles.com for, well, Christians, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

There’s an App for that!

With the influx of online dating sites, people can actually vent and share not-so-stellar experiences—as seen on BadOnlineDates.com. With this, I guess it is most definitely true that “There’s an app for that!”

Interestingly, there’s an app for online-mobile dating too! StreetSpark is considerably the FourSquare of online-dating. This is a mobile app that lets one find people nearby who share the same interests and are compatible with his or her external social networking behavior.

Here’s how it works:

I guess it has become too tiring for some to browse through thousands of profiles online and have decided to take it on the go.

I’m sure most of you have seen Lady GaGa’s Telephone video. You’ll notice that one of the key advertising companies includes PlentyOfFish.com This is, yet, another dating website now being included in a music video! Lady GaGa=Pop-Culture, hence, Pop-Culture=Online-Dating.

All’s Well that Ends Not So Well

With online-dating, comes real-world counterparts and consequences. Have you ever heard of online-break-up? Yes, apparently, this has become as convenient and mainstream as looking for someone online. Read and absorb, my dear friends: “Almost 25% of respondents found out their own relationship was over by seeing it on Facebook first.” And I thought Carrie Bradshaw’s Post-It break-up was bad! In some cases, Mark Zuckerberg finds out first that someone’s been dumped even before the who got dumped finds out.

Granted that through online-dating, people can find others instantaneously for prospective relationships. There’s a 50% chance that online-dating will turn out bad and the other half will turn out good. But, after all, doesn’t this system work the same way as meeting someone at a bar and then meet-up for a first date? Bottom line is, online-dating is worth giving a shot. It’s available for everybody, but it’s not really for everybody.

Now, excuse me while I fill out this form. Hrmmmm. About Me…

Remember when a show would leave you such a cliffhanger you couldn’t wait to get to work and chat around the water cooler recapping last night’s events? For some shows this post-episode chatter still exists; for other shows this conversation is happening immediately online. Every week after a new episode of Lost airs, millions of fans online gather online to analyze the minutest details of each scene. I was late to the Lost phenomenon, but now I am in so deep I don’t remember what a Wednesday (or Thursday or Friday) was like without immediately checking my favorite sites for new theories on what could happen next.

These top communities, such as Lost.tv, Lostepedia and Dark UFO, have influenced this show in a way we haven’t seen before. The producers and writers admit to keeping a close eye on the forums and monitoring what fans are saying:

“To that end, Lindelof and fellow executive producer Carlton Cuse say other Lost writers more closely monitor message boards, which attract some of the most devoted fans. Those writers act as a filter, relaying the interests of online fans while reducing the chances that they would overly influence the show’s direction.” (source: USAToday.com)

Viewers have a power over TV that we’ve never seen before. Betty White appearing on Saturday Night Live is another great example of how social media can change the course of a show’s programming. After 500,000 fans advocated for Mrs. White to make her SNL debut Lorne Michaels listened and she will be hosting this weekend.

What do you think about viewers having more of a say on what appears on TV? Do you think executives really listen?

Gotta Catch ’Em All! This well known mantra of the Pokémon fanatic became fever pitch in the late 1990s as legions of U.S children delved into their Pokémon Nintendo Gameboys to travel to far away islands and battle different Pokémon. Months were spent trying to collect badges and all 300+ Pokémons, which were in a sense badges themselves.

Fast forward to today, and we know that Pokémon was pretty much a fad—a sorry part of our history like the Macarena. When ex-Pokémon fiends are pressured to talk about their Poké past, most offer a sheepish grin and say “It was the thing to do back then”.

Well the thing to do nowadays is to collect a whole new set of badges. Foursquare badges. And instead of children, it’s adults that are clamoring to Catch’Em All! These badges instead of being gained by battling creatures are earned through usually mundane task: To gain the Barista Badge…go to Starbucks. Get the Gym Rat Badge…by going to the Gym… a lot.

My main question on all this excitement over Foursquare is: Is Foursquare sustainable? Specifically, is their “badge as a reward” system sustainable?

History says no.

Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Ho! and any other highly structured games that involved collecting badges, etc. enjoyed tremendous engagement and buzz, but eventually went away like the dinosaurs.

So how long will it take for Foursquare fanatics to lose interest in collecting badges? All it takes is for one person to realize the cost-benefit analysis of hoofing it to a location for a jpeg.

As a social media account executive, one of my main responsibilities is to keep a tab on the pulse of social media news and trends. That usually means scouring the internet for social media case studies and slideshare presentations. Usually, its pretty fun work. I get the opportunity to see other digital agency flex their social media insights and capabilities, and examples of how brands are using Facebook or Twitter in innovative ways to connect with their audience.

However, I realized there is a set pattern to the information on “social media” that I find on the web. I realized there are two things you can expect on a majority of presentations about social media…

1)      The information is generic    “…it’s all about community”

2)      Abuse of industry buzzwords   “integration” “communication”

In other words social media “talking points”..[Examples of some of the slideshares I come across]

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