Emerge Inc. Blog

Remember playing Risk as a kid? John Battelle of Federated Media and the people who organize Web 2.0 Summit have put together a Risk inspired (or for some people Stratego) interactive map of the current technology battlefield. Be sure to click the Movements link in the upper right corner.

Discussing Skype earlier this month, I thought it would be fitting to discuss the recent moves made by Google to take on the Internet communications company.

Last Wednesday, Google made the announcement that you’d be able to make phone calls right from your Gmail account. By Thursday morning, the feature was available across the United States to Gmail users. In simple terms, it allows you to call any phone number right from your computer. As of this writing, calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for the rest of 2010, and they have a full list of rates to other countries throughout the world. Also, you can integrate your Google Voice number to your gmail account to allow it to be the outbound number people see, or to receive calls from that number in your Gmail account.

I also don’t think it is farfetched to say that Google made this announcement strategically after Skype announced their long awaited IPO. But personally, I’m not sure it will be enough to disrupt what Skype is currently doing. In late 2009, Gmail had around 176 million users. Around that same time, Skype was at about 521 million users. Skype has been focusing on improving and making this technology as good as it can be, something Google did itself with Search. Because of that, I still think it will be the leader when push comes to shove in this Internet communications tug-of-war. It’s also important to remember that Google has had some misses lately. Buzz started off with a PR firestorm and Google Wave never seemed to be the game-changer they had promised.

It will be interesting to see when Skype’s IPO occurs to see what affect this may have on their value projections. If nothing else, I hope this helps users in the long-run by each company working to make the service as good as possible and keeping the costs down.

Foursquare, the location-based service whose name you may have heard over the last few weeks, passed the 3 million user mark according to TechCrunch over the weekend. Their growth has been something to watch, hitting 1 million users in a year, 2 million users 3 months later, and now passing 3 million just one-and-a-half months after that. But can it keep this pace up?

When Facebook announced it’s own location-based feature named Places earlier this month, many saw it as the death notice to sites like Foursquare. But maybe it will be just the opposite and push services like Foursquare to the next level. According to Foursquare’s co-founder Dennis Crowley, Foursquare had its biggest day of signups after Facebook made it’s announcement. Related to that, he also says that they are growing at a rate of around 180,000 new users each day.

With location-based services continuing to grow, the real question will come down to how many people will want to send out their locations in real-time? It makes the sustainability of the service a bit more murky in the long run.

*Information used from TechCrunch and PCWorld in this post.

Beginning in September, Emerge is launching four new email newsletters for clients, prospective clients, friends and anyone else interested. Each newsletter will based on Emerge’s current areas of focus:

Local Business & Non-profits – designed for owners, managers and marketers of locally focused businesses and organizations.

Parks Departments – focused on the usage of the Internet for County MetroParks and City Parks Departments

Education - with an emphasis on the use of Internet technology to connect school districts with parents and the community

Government - information for city and county government offices and departments

Each newsletter will evolve over time based on the interests of subscribers and the trends in technology. Some of the things that may be included are:

• Emerging Internet technology trends
• Using the Internet to reach customers
• Using the Internet to increase revenue
• Using the Internet to reduce operating costs
• Social Media
• Mobile Technology
• Analytics, Statistics and Data
• Best Practices
• Usability and Design
• Emerge Company News

If you would like to join the list, please complete the form below, don’t worry, we’ll include an opt-out link in every enewsletter. If you have any ideas for the newsletters, please let us know.

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Enter your e-mail address below to receive regular updates on emerging Internet technologies to reach customers, increase revenue and reduce operating costs.

I’m a huge fan of Skype, software that allows people to make free calls and instant message other users or low-cost calls to landlines and mobile devices.

It came to my attention around two and a half years ago, when during a get together with some friends over the holidays, we were able to “skype”, or call our friend also using skype, serving in the Army in the Middle East, absolutely free on a laptop. Each computer had a webcam so it gave us a chance to see him for the first time in many months, and gave him a chance to see all of us. I was sold from that moment on.

Earlier this year, Skype and Verizon struck a deal to allow Skype calls and messages on the Verizon network at no extra cost. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog post, I use the HTC Droid Incredible, a Verizon phone. I got the chance to test out the system, and I was more than impressed.

We tested the app using three Skype numbers, one locally, one on the west coast, and one in England. The results were nearly the same for the two stateside, with some issues to the call in England. The two here in the US had great call quality with very little lag. We did have some lag issue with the call to England, but we were also driving (I was in the passenger seat) so it’s hard to say where the lag issue was coming from. Even with the lag, it was still good quality for a free call “across the pond.”

I encourage others to check the service out and if you’re a Verizon customer with a 3G phone, definitely check out the app.

Update: I didn’t mention initially but Skype is available on the iPhone and Symbian phones, just not the same deal as for the Verizon phones.

Facebook Fan Pages are an interesting and unique way for businesses to reach their customers. It provides a “website-within-a-website” feel and allows for a specific type of interactivity between the organization and the user.

One question I hear is “How can I make my fan page better?” My initial answer is always that personalization can go a very long way.  Making the page your own and tying it to the identity of your company is key.

But there are apps that are built into the system that can also help to make your page better. Here are a few of my favorites below:

1. Static FBML – The FBML stands for FaceBook Markup Language. It is designed to add functionality to your page for added customization.
2. Promotions – This app will allow you to create contests and giveaways for your users, a great way to help people engage in your brand.
3. Social RSS – This allows you to automatically pull in any ATOM or RSS feeds, directly to your Facebook Fan page.
4. Poll – This one is just what it sounds like, gives you the chance to have a poll on your page. Great way to keep users coming back to your page, find out information directly from your consumers and to create an engaging place for your users to go.
5. Youtube for Pages – If you are creating videos for your business (and if you aren’t you should think about it), you can use this app to connect to your Youtube channel (or someone else’s) and pull the videos right to your Fan Page.

Try these options out to see if they help your Facebook Fan page and create a new experience for your customers.

Twitter is something I admittedly never saw coming. When I did see it, I never saw it reaching the heights that it has. I wasn’t sure that little 140 character messages would satisfy people, but boy was I wrong.

I find myself using Twitter a lot to search, especially current events and products I’m interested in. More often than not, I find myself with more information than I imagined I would ever find.

One of the other things I love is finding companies who are using the technology in an interesting fashion. Enter Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream from San Francisco, California. With an ever changing menu of flavors offered, they would tweet their loyal customers what flavors they’d have, among other tweets, and do it in a style of “ice cream with attitude.”

The article I found this information lists six great recommendations for those starting to use Twitter as well.

• First of all, listen
• Do not be boring
• A live version of a FAQ
• Create a focus group
• Soapbox for thinkers
• Starting small is fine

This all comes from a great article with even more great stories from the New York Times. Click here to read the full article.

The World Cup made its month long appearance this Summer to record interest here in the United States. While soccer has never caught on entirely here, it still is considered “The World’s Game.” With ESPN paying a lot of money ($100 million for English speaking rights through 2014), they tried to take full advantage by offering the games not just on television, but online and on mobile devices. Now to watch online, you did need to have an Internet Service Provider that had an agreement for their service and to watch on your mobile device, you needed to pay a fee for their App. In total, nearly 8.5 million unique users (7.4 million online over 1 million by mobile) accessed the World Cup streams during the tournament They consumed 17.2 million hours of coverage.

The only comparable sporting event to try this was CBS during the March Madness tournament. This past year, they streamed 11.7 million hours of coverage, a 36% growth from the previous year. With their success and ESPN’s success during the World Cup, it will be interesting to see how the networks begin to utilize the online medium more and more to bring users new content.

I’ve had my Verizon HTC Incredible, an Android device, for just over 2 months. In that time, it’s really changed the way I utilize the Internet and how I find information I need. It’s made it much simpler to consume information and gives me a new ability to find what I am searching for.

Below are a few ways I’ve been using my phone and some thoughts on how you might take advantage of the fast growing market.

Directions

I use an App that gives me turn-by-turn directions directly from Google. The great thing about this App, I don’t always need to know the address. If I know I’m going to a specific restaurant, I can speak or type the name and city, and it searches for the address automatically. It then gives me directions from wherever I am at that moment.

How to Take Advantage: Always make sure your public information is accurate in search engines, directories, and anywhere else you have it listed. Manage your Google or Yahoo directory listings to maximize the information people can quickly see about you. Be aware of the ways people are finding information out about you.

Surfing the Web

Depending on where I am, I’ll find myself searching websites to find information on something I’m searching for or just to keep up with what is going on. This has gotten easier on Smart Phones as Mobile Websites have become more popular. Mobile Websites will utilize the phone’s technology, which helps to enhance the user’s experience.

How to Take Advantage: Speak with your Web Developer to see if your website is optimized for a Mobile Site. See if it makes sense for you to have one set-up. Smart phones are getting better at reading full websites, but for your organization it might be best to have an optimized version for your potential users.

Search

The way I search on my phone is much different than on a regular computer. Searching on a desktop/laptop computer gives me time to go through multiple pages to find the best piece of information for my search. On my phone, I always gravitate to the first few listings of my search. I don’t dig as deep for the information so I look for the quality at the top.

How to Take Advantage: Search Engine Optimization. It’s a term you’ve probably heard but may not know what it means. In a nutshell, it focuses on getting the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) to rank you higher on their list during relevant searches. Speak to your Web Development team about putting a SEO plan together that makes sense for you in the long run.

As the technology continues to evolve and grow even more popular, people will consume more and more information on their phones than ever before.

Companies are always looking for the best way to deliver an excellent product while using less time and money to produce that product.  In order to save time and money while producing great results, companies that provide internet solutions and software are looking for the most efficient ways to develop these products.  On Thursday, Mike and I went to “The Path to Agility” conference which covered methodologies, structural changes, and tools that can be used to increase efficiency in that development process.

One of the focuses of the conference was a framework called Scrum.   Scrum was introduced in the 1990’s but hasn’t been widely implemented until recently. It is a framework designed to increase the speed, efficiency, and quality of project development while minimizing the cost and risk. This framework is vastly different than the traditional development frameworks. Scrum realizes that the development process is complicated and unpredictable and its focus is on flexibility and productivity over linear development. The project is broken down into smaller iterations known as sprints, where the team plans, builds, tests, reviews, then deploys after each sprint.  When a sprint is finished, the project is reviewed to see what adjustments need to be made which gives the project added flexibility.

Other than Scrum, the conference also covered topics such as agile testing, transferring the company to use agile, and ways to attract and hire agile developers.  I learned why some companies have not dedicated themselves to switching to the agile way, and what challenges exist in this transition. This conference also exposed me to a number of different practices and ideas being used throughout other companies.  When a company changes to agile, many areas of the company from management methods down to the production environment are altered in order to have a truly agile development process.  When viewing the results of companies that have made this change, it is apparent that the rewards far outweigh the risk.