Hat tip to Vincent Maher for this article on his blog. Seems a Standard Bank customer with an axe to grind has created an account on Twitter with the intention of embarrassing and exposing them.
The lesson here is that in it’s essence on-line social media is brilliant, but as with all things in life it can take a few to ruin it for many.
Also, consider visiting sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Zoopy and booking your brand name.
What do you do if you fly United Airlines, watch you guitar being treated roughly by baggage handling staff, alert flight attendants who do nothing about it, and upon arrival at your destination, discover that your guitar is broken, and United Airlines refuse to compensate?
The answer:
Write a song about it, get over 4 million people to watch it, and when United Airlines agree to do something, tell them to donate to charity.
Very cool.
Song can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo.
I read an interesting article by the analyst Jeremiah Owyang on his expected “awkwardness” for Facebook over the next few years.
It seems the key point is over the nature of public and private data, and Twitter has really turned this on its head with its public and fresh data stream, as opposed to Facebook’s traditionally private data stream.
The trend now seems to be moving towards data that is public – this increases it’s eyeball count, which effects sign up, publicity, advertising, marketing etc.
Now what really interested me was security – how safe is it to publically broadcast your teeth brushing or your enjoyment of a movie on Twitter? Pretty safe. And status updates and pictures on Facebook? Fairly safe.
But on The Grid, where their model revolves around geographically placing your position and your media, making this data public is going to be a hard sell. It has legal and ethical issues, so this will be a challenge for them in the light of the “public data” trend of social media websites.
Some interesting news in the African mobile space – Google have launched a suite of SMS products in Uganda, with the obvious intent of branching out into other African countries.
The key points of these services are that they are SMS based, and thus compatible with even the most basic cell phone, and that they are information and utility based.
Clever… Google cannot deliver their content over the internet to the majority of rural Africans, so they make use of the most popular and easy to use technology: the SMS.
The application of the technology itself is not new, but it promises to differentiate as it mines Google’s vast information and application reserves. The short codes that you need to SMS in to are also standard rate – and I must say this is great news as I feel premium short codes, especially those in the R5 and above bands, have been way over exploited.
All in all it seems to be a great service, ploughing the benefits of previously inaccessible internet information and facilities into rural communities, who are sure to reap the rewards.
This is a wakeup call to all… the future is mobile. No longer do you need a P.C or even internet access to participate.
As per their website:
””The grid is a mobile social network that allows you to chat to friends, see where they are on a map and share photos or videos with them. You also get to view photos and videos relevant to the area you’re in.””
and:
””The grid uses your cellphone’s position to locate you on a map to show you content that is relevant to that area. The grid can also show you where your friends are, if they choose to share their location with you. Once you are located, you can chat with friends who are on the map as well, and even share pictures and videos [called BLIPS] with each other.””
(See a cool video ad for it here.)
The website is very cool - definitely targeted at the Facebook and MXit generations. It allows you to firstly plot your location on a map, and to then have access to all the cool features:
(Definition of Blip - a way to share content - image, text and video - that is related to a geographical location.)
The Mobi site - it’s not that visually great to be honest. I know Mobi sites are restrictive, but you can only use that as an excuse so far. It does use LBS (Location Based Services - based on cellular tower triangulation) to do a location look up on you - although this is briefly mentioned in the T&C, there are no obvious warnings about this. Now this is where, in my opinion, the Grid is awesome - you can search for Blips in your area, while on your phone… and these Blips are not just personal, but include “points of interest” such as restaurants, night clubs etc. Very nice, and geographically relevant. I’m not sure about how pleased WASPS will be though, as WASPS are charged by the Networks to do LBS look-ups, while essentially in the Grids Model, the end user is not charged. So WASPS either have cause for complaint, or they need to be really clever with their billing models.
They do have a Facebook plugin, but it’s called “YouAreHere” and says it uses Google Maps (Not AfriGIS?) to plot your Facebook friends location. Pretty simply as well… a map with your contacts layered!
Their interface is great. Really clean, Web 2.0 feel with lots of space and nice colour shading. Perhaps even a nicer layout than Facebook, although they have less features so maybe not fair to compare. Fairly easy to navigate around.
The only things I did not enjoy are the small “page 1,2,3,4″ paging links, and the way it takes you to a new page and ONLY shows a confirmation of what you have done… so you have to navigate away from the confirmation to get back into things.
They use a lot of advertising - appended to the free SMS, banners at the top of the mobi site and web site, banner at the bottom. It’s different to how Google and Facebook approached advertising - they established a huge user base before.
I think it’s pretty cool that you can share your life, through personal media - photo’s, videos, twitter like updates - on a geographic level. It gives it a new kind of relevancy.
Although the maps are great - speed and detail are good - I felt they should be displayed bigger when integrated into the website. Possibly an option to make the map bigger with a grayout layer opening up on top, without the page refreshing. In general I felt the visual “friends on map” / “Blip on map” element was not prominent enough…
I would also make the “Buzz” page (where you are updated as to your friends recent activites) the default page. It worked for Facebook…
I also do not personally know a single person who uses The Grid… but I personally know around 150 people who use Facebook, from ages 12 up to 90. I think this will be The Grid’s biggest challenge going forward, and I’d re-look at getting some up to date Facebook plugins, and definitely look at integrating Facebook Connect, with the aim of bringing existing communities into it. That said, I’m sure they must have thought of this already…
All in all it’s an extremely cool application and one that can grow big time if they get it’s positioning right.
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