Are There Too Many Social Media Apps & Tools?

SmartPhone growth is increasing rapidly and the adoption of tablets like the iPad and Galaxy are keeping apace. But these are the gadgets themselves, not the apps. And we’re starting to see some decline of levelling off on the adoption and use of a number of social media tools. Most notably with geolocation services and augmented reality apps.

A recent study by Forrestor Research indicates that 70% of American adults don’t even know what a geolocation service (e.g. Yelp and FourSquare) is…that’s slightly better than the 85% just over a year ago. While that may give someone some heart (if you’re in sector) that there is hope, our research shows a decline in use of these tools across the U.S. and Canada as well. Less often do we see services like Yelp come up in our research and when we do, it’s mostly the under 30 age group using them. The +30 segment seems to prefer Yelp over FourSquare which we find lands, well, squarely, in the 19-29 demographic.

When it comes to Augmented Reality tools, they too have grown in use, but not significantly. In two research projects for clients in the marketing sector we found a decrease in mentions of Augmented Reality in the US and parts of Canada and negative sentiment was still fairly high on average. Most common was the complaint of using the tools to be clunky and often not working even after a software download. We don’t see significant adoption of AR until it becomes as easy to use as QR codes and doesn’t require all kinds of software to download.

Speaking of QR Codes. A recent study by Archrival in the U.S. showed that 80% of university students found using QR codes difficult and awkward. We’ve seen similar statements of confusion or non-interest in Canada in some of our research for clients.

Are We Saturated?
With over 300 blogging platforms, 200+ social networks, over 80 microblog platforms (no, Twitter is not the only one), and thousands of other services and tools along with the ecosystem support tools (e.g. Twitter clients like HootSuite or Seesmic) and plug-ins, well, perhaps it’s a little crowded. In our research, we are seeing that the majority of the market is using an average of 3 services regularly (social network, microblog and one other) and 2-3 additional in an irregular basis (bi-monthly or quarterly.) We see this indicating that we may be seeing consumer fatigue over the volume of technologies and apps rolling out. A lot of new technologies are just not seeing mass adoption anymore. For them to be successful, these tools and apps have to move out of the echo chamber of the Technocrats and techy pundits into mainstream. When Twitter found its way onto CNN and Fox News it grew significantly.

So What Does This Mean? The Bar Is Raised!
For marketers it creates a nightmare of channel fragmentation which means more up front research and constantly re-evaluating where to put the chopped up marketing budget. For developers of new apps and services they will need to significantly raise the bar into 2012 or face slow or no adoption. For investors and VC’s, they’ll likely see more failures unless they do good due diligence up front to determine the significant difference and value. Consumers only want to use so many tools. Civil society from that context is the same.

Innovation is vital to a good economy and we have no doubt these innovations will continue, but it will be even harder into 2012 for new services to get adopted. We may also see QR codes fall increasingly by the way-side. That’s okay. It’s all part of the evolution of this fascinating period in time where humanity and technology intersect.

Social Media Tools of the Future

Just for fun, I was pondering what types of Social Media services there might be 5-10 years. So here’s some and maybe you’ve got one or two to add?

Privacy Chip: This will be a “chip” or chunk of software that automatically defines your privacy settings with any new Social Media service you sign up for, like the Disqus system for comment moderation on blogs. You pre-program your settings and it ensures only certain information is public.

Social Chip: Embedded data on your Social Networks and services, with privacy info defined by type of service (kind of like the Poken now, but embedded into your mobile and credit/debit cards with permission marketing levels.)

The Permission Card: Maybe it’s same size as a credit card, or maybe it’s loaded into your mobile device – essentially, it details what marketers can and can’t do with your contact info. You set the preferences on how marketers communicate with you, if they behave you can “rate” their behaviour.

The Anonomator: A little piece of bot software you control. It can go out and destroy any content across the web or a connected device that is negative about you. It coincides with your Privacy Chip for validation and Social Media services must comply….so when you discover those pics of you drunk at the party…

The One Device: It’s your mobile phone, includes your social chip and privacy chip data and can allow you to connect to publicly available terminals anywhere and has all your data there – text, audio, video, pics. It has your credit and debit card data, even your ability to vote in elections…everything digital.

Insta-Rater: Having lunch at a decent place and want to rate it? Aim your One Device at the code on the wall, rate it by stars, add a text note if you like…voila! all done, no registration process, your device handles all the validation, and it works with AR (Augmented Reality) services as well.

Have any ideas for the future of social technologies

(Author: G. Crouch)

The Biggest Challenge for Augmented Reality

I admit I love all kinds of new technologies and Augmented Reality (AR) is interesting to say the least. It will further blur the lines between Cyburbia and the physical world with how we interact with things. It will also futher expand the wealth of information and increase the scarcity of attention. In a post today on GigaOm they had some great pics showing how AR might work. That got me thinking of what will be a barrier to entry.

To me, that would seem to be “geolocation” by a user. Research has shown that less than 0.23% of smart phone users willingly enable themselves to be known in their mobile use. We’re increasingly becoming aware of our privacy.

Many AR apps will require that you allow the device to show the world where you are. Certainly if you’re having an affair on a supposed “business trip” you’re not going to want that feature enabled. Personally, I don’t enable that level of connecting.

We’ve not seen any major Web/Mobile app that enables geolocation for the service to work really take off and be mainstream accepted. Perhaps the under 20 age group will enable such services?

But right now, the one major hurdle for AR acceptance to really go mainstream is people allowing themselves to be known to their mobile character and everyone else when they engage in AR apps.

What do you think? Will you enable geolocating when AR becomes more available?

Will There Be Too Many Media Channels?

What’s “new media” now? We’ve hit the “500 channel universe” on the telly, the Web has become truly “interactive”, smart phones are ramping up for mobile use. We’re texting, tweeting, calling, voice mailing, videoing, gaming in vast virtual realities; creating and sharing content like never before in the history of mankind.

And now on the bleeding edge is “Augmented Reality” (AR) technologies. Think of it as your personal digital butler (see a video of Yelp’s Monocle in use here) using your smart phone to find out information about the real-world objects around you. Add in the ability to instantly add your 2 cents on a restaurant you just ate at or a coffee buying experience – well, you get the idea. We’ve added a whole new media channel. And as McLuhan said, the medium is shaped by how we use it. Will people use it and shape it? It’s simple enough to use. We’re already commenting on things. Then there’s Microsoft’s Natal project for the xbox.

My one area of concern over AR technologies is that studies have already shown people are reticent to use geo-location in their smart phones (less than .23% of mobile users in UK & USA). Using AR technologies requires some loss of privacy; are consumers willing to give more up?

More than anything, I just wonder, how many channels can we as citizens deal with and how many channels can marketers, PR pro’s etc., manage effectively? A lot of our research helps guide companies more effectively, but going from budgeting for 20 channels to 180 and then measuring effectiveness? When many metrics are still being debated and are yet to be defined?

What do you think? When is enough enough? At what point do we see channel decay in media formats? Or will we change?