Want to show your support to your favourite brand, cause or event? Wish to reward your frequent customers and increase brand loyalty? Find a way to endorse your friends and colleaques?

Don’t worry, there’s a badge for that!

What Foursquare and Gowalla didn’t know, when they first created badges to reward user check-ins, was the massive snowball effect of badges they were about to start, now swiping over the social web like there’s no tomorrow. Everybody’s gotta have one.

Brand Awareness and Loyalty

As Loic Le Meur,  founder and CEO of Seesmic, reminds us, building your online brand is NOT about you, it’s about highlighting others. Badges work as a great vehicle for endorsing and highlighting others, while at the same time strengthening ones own online presence and brand.

Brands are quickly catching up on combining marketing efforts with game mechanics and social networking. One of the interesting companies in the space helping brands to achieve their goals is GetGlue, a social network for entertainment. Users can check-in and rate tv shows, movies, music and books to discover new favorites, see what friends are into, earn badges and even get a free copy of the sticker sent in the mail, for free. In September, over 500 000 users had created 10 million new unique ratings and check-ins, the official and authorized badges coming from major brands like HBO, FOX, Showtime and PBS.

As GetGlue explains it: It’s about emotions, enabling users connecting with the content. Check-in to Mad Men, anyone?

Connect with content, reward engagement and frequent users is also something CNN iReport aims to do by launching “On the campaign trail” badge for those participating in the iReport Election Challenge. More badges and surprises are reported to be released.

Even Q&A service Mahalo Answers has hopped on the train of badges, finding them a great and complementary way to engage and reward its frequent users.

Besides from encouraging user activity and increasing brand loyalty, badges can also be a way to create scarcity around, as to increase search engine ranking, of a brand, company or an organization.

Basno is a new platform that offers authenticated badges either to be sold or given away to users. With help of unique serial numbers, embedding unique invisible watermarks, and creating 2d bar codes for each instance of any badge on the platform, Basno aims to increase the value of digital goods through limited issuance of badges. The badges are stored in a vault, but can be shown on all major social networks.

Social recruiting

As many other industries, recruiting is also being disrupted by the social web, offering new ways to find, refer and match talent with job openings. In addition to competition from professional social network LinkedIn, now listing over 70 million members and one million company profiles, there is an increasing number of niched services like Endorse, helping people connect through friendly recommendations, and Twitter stream filling up with hashtags hunting for talent. How the yet to be launched Work Market, a marketplace for employers and workers with promise to make work work, is to disrupt the recruitment business, remains to be seen.

Founders of Estonian Emp.ly, a social recruiting service expanding the reach of job postings via social networks, are also creators of Talentag, your social CV online. Talentag makes it easy for people in your network, professional or private, to give you career boosting kudos in form of badges and thumbs up. By answering questions and giving thumbs up, or down, a chart with personality traits, such as cheerful, friendly, sophisticated, trustworthy, or giving, gets added to ones profile. Fast, easy, and yes, a playful way to endorse someone in your network. All endorsements can then be displayed and distributed on Facebook. Sign up with your Facebook or Linkedin account and see whether you also are to be endorsed as a Social Media Rockstar?

Talentag also offers event organizers a possibility to let event participants claim and display event badges on their profiles. A quick and visual way of listing my past events from Plancast or LinkedIn, for example.

As a good general rule of thumb when designing to include any type of social endorsements in your service, neither badges nor recommendations are simply just to be given away, they are to be earned.

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She is also a mentor for startups at Seedcamp. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn,
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

Flickr CC: Daniel Greene

When Foursquare, the coolest lbs kid in town, favourite of approx. 3 million users with 200 million check-ins, was down earlier this week, the social web reacted with frustration, sad tweets, and hunt for alternative check-in services.

Apparently, the most dedicated Foursquare users hooked on rewards and badges even chose to stay at home , until they were able to collect rewards of their check-ins.

“We are hearing from many users (they want to remain anonymous) that they are staying at home until the service is restored. One user called us on our tips hotline noting that it just “isn’t worth going out if you can’t get a badge”.”

The concept of check-in also continues to heat up among businesses, especially fashion industry going gaga over the new ways location based services allow brands to interact with, as monetize their customers. Good example of how hot it is, Swedish retailer giant H&M just launched their first Foursquare campaign in Sweden, regardless the fact, that use of location based services is still fairly moderate in Sweden. Gowalla holds the pole position with 35 000 users against Foursquare’s 9 000 users. The buzz and eyeballs around the campaign evidently are worth as much.

Sharing location was seemingly hot concept already back in 2007, when Facebook filed for a patent on general sharing location mechanisms. The patent was granted this week, adding an extra twist on the already competitive space.

Map.pr Finds You Interesting Places With Help Of Groups

The one not afraid of patents and competition is Swedish Map.pr. Map.pr is all about location around groups and interests, based on the idea that your friends make the best maps. Map.pr uses places from Foursquare, building enhanced search on top to let you find cool places nearby recommended by your group members. No need to trust the “Giraffe sign”  I’ve been one of the beta testers, and since its release in July, the app has already had thousands of downloads.

When you check in with Map.pr, you still check-in with Foursquare, so you don’t miss out on any badges or mayorships. But what’s unique to Map.pr, with any check-in, one can also check-in with a group one belongs to. To give a sense of a venue’s popularity, unlike Foursquare, Map.pr iPhone app also shows how many individual and team check-ins a venue has. Anyone can create its own group, and the possibility to create and add venues via Map.pr is being added in the next coming update. Until now, it’s only been possible to check-in to already existing venues.

There’s no native Android app on the roadmap, instead an updated mobile web version with check-in functionality is round the corner. Check-ins with Facebook Places, which hasn’t reached Nordics yet, aren’t yet allowed by Facebook API, but instead Map.pr is about to integrate with new Facebook Groups, released earlier this week with both privacy blunders as upsides, to let you share check-ins within a group, private or open. As before, one can share check-ins to both Facebook and Twitter. Gowalla users have, for now, been left out of the service.

Map.pr White Label To Boost Businesses’ Customer Engagement

Cartomapic, the startup behind Map.pr, was founded early 2010 by a team with backgrounds in Google Maps and Spotify, surely qualifing regarding domain competence within location and app design. But, as all social check-in services, they’re about understanding and triggering human behaviour. Since grouping and categorizing venues as function isn’t considered a long term competitive advantage, Map.pr needs to do something else differently. One way is to monetize by competing with a more attractive price model on partnerships than its established competitors. It also plans to offer its solution as a white label, letting businesses create their own branded check-in services around events, releases etc. I find the idea of focusing on aggregating check-ins and information from several location based services, e.g. like Buzzd does with hottest venues nearby right now, compelling. By also aggregating check-in info into a comprehensive recommendation system for groups, I could see how Map.pr just might find its way to the end of the rainbow.

Paula is online strategist and startup evangelist. She blogs at paulamarttila.com and here at Bub.blicio.us.
Connect with her on Twitter, LinkedIn,
Drop her email at paula.marttila[at]gmail[dot]com

RateItAll’s new geolocation solution, Double Dutch, promises to be the Ning of location-based social networks

By Marissa Louie, March 25

RateItAll, a top consumer ratings site headquartered in San Francisco, recently launched its white label  location-based mobile social network platform, Double Dutch (http://doubledutch.me). It received noteworthy coverage and rave reviews at SXSW in Austin. And it’s a blast to test drive.

The premise: Imagine if you were to take an app like Foursquare or Gowalla and limit the audience to a specific niche, like pick-up basketball players or attendees of the World Cup. That’s what Double Dutch promises with its white label solution, specifically for B2B customers including conference and events organizers, companies that work in multiple locations, and more.

Essentially, it is the Ning of location-based social networks.

CEO of RateItAll, Lawrence Coburn, emphasizes, “Double Dutch is exciting because it allows any company, community, or organization to get up and running with a best in class geolocation app in a matter of weeks.”

RateItAll is wise to enter this space since it can augment the geolocation service with over 5 million consumer ratings native to RateItAll, collected over the past 10 years. Think of it as importing Yelp ratings into Foursquare.

This is powerful because it provides the extra edge of consumer validation for almost any given location – if you check in somewhere, you can see what RateItAll users have rated the site. With Foursquare and Gowalla, you cannot view historical reviews of a location.

Additionally, the lack of privacy on Foursquare and Gowalla have caused concerns and unwanted implications. Lawrence Coburn says, “Location data is very useful, but it’s also very personal. The private label nature of Double Dutch allows communities to enjoy this functionality, but within the safer confines of a smaller, more trusted group.”

Double Dutch offers both a standard app for the consumer market (non-customized) and a customizable white label application.

Some product feature candy that Double Dutch offers:

Non-customized features:

-Social check-in
-Friending
-Friends view
-Search and venue discovery
-Locals view
-Venue information
-Ratings/reviews
-Venue photos
-Rockstardom
-Achievement stickers
-Point system
-Leaderboards
-Facebook integration
-Twitter integration
-Push notifications

Customization options (white-label basis only):

-App Name
-Logo and iPhone artwork
-Venue data
-Custom tab
-Custom achievement stickers (coming soon)
-Color scheme (coming soon)

Given the heated tee-off between Foursquare and Gowalla at SXSW, Double Dutch has great market timing. Lawrence Coburn tells us, “As smartphone usage continues to spike, I expect to see more and more demand for location-based services. The timing for a customizable, white-label app like Double Dutch couldn’t be better.”

We agree wholeheartedly.

Get the free Double Dutch iPhone app at the App store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doubledutch/id336955484?mt=8

To request your own location-based network, contact CEO Lawrence Coburn at lawrence@doubledutch.me

About the Author:

Marissa is a contributor to Adotas and BusinessWeek. Follow her on Twitter: @malouie

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of HeroEx, San Francisco’s affordable 1 hour delivery service.

Contact her at (510) 375-1941, or email marissa@heroex.com.

Do you use an app like FourSquare or GoWalla to tweet out your location? I’m guilty of this – I’m Mayor of both my favorite bar and coffee shop. When I visit a new location, that information gets sent to Twitter. I’m a little different from most people – since I am twittering my location, I send it to my private and locked Twitter account. Since I approve all of my followers at that account, I’m minimizing the risk of unwanted stalking.

Do you list your home on FourSquare? I have to admit I’m always a little bit amazed by the people who list “Jones Home” and then their address. Really? I work out of my home, but my mailing address is a PO Box. I will occasionally use FourSquare to show I’m at my office, but the location that shows up is the PO Box, not my house. Again, I’m minimizing the unwanted stalking.

Today on Twitter, there’s been a lot of buzz (forgive the pun) about PleaseRobMe.com. The site wants you to be aware of what you’re doing when you tweet to the world that you’re not home.

According to the site creators,

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

So the message here is think before you tweet. After all, do you really want to be featured in the stream on PleaseRobMe?

__

Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

In September, we covered the latest investment in FourSquare, a popular mobile app that fuses geo-location, micro updates, outside social networks such as Twitter, and social gaming into one, very social and addictive platform for the iPhone and Google Android phones.

Initially O’Reilly AlphaTech and UnionSquare Ventures were identified as investors. However, behind the veil, FourSquare also aligned an all-star list of investors and advisors. Yesterday, the company finally revealed the names behind the mystery…(descriptions amended)

Let’s play…

Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter.
Twitter has changed the way a lot of us think about things – presence, status, search.  Jack’s advice and feedback have already proven to be invaluable as the team hustles to improve and grow foursquare.

Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.
A day after FourSquare launched at SXSW, Kevin tracked us down and bullied them into making a badge for Digg’s party.  Since then he’s been one of their biggest supporters and a great source of advice and product ideas.

Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious.
Since FourSquare launched, people have been describing parts of it as “Delicious for places”.  Obviously, they love this comparison and have been thrilled to have Joshua’s feedback and insight into their product goals.

Alex Rainert, co-founder of Dodgeball.
Very few people understand the mobile/social space as well as Alex.  Since their very first iPhone build, he’s been throwing feedback and product suggestions at us. Karen Bonna-Rainert, Alex’s wife and a good friend from Dennis’ grad school days at ITP @ NYU is also actively involved.

SV Angels LLC
The angel group founded and backed by Ron Conway is a major player in seed-stage tech investments since the early days of Google.

Chad Stoller, NYC branding/advertising/interactive superstar.
You can thank Chad for the “mayor” idea – which he demanded that the tream build so he could flaunt his loyalty to Think Coffee.  FourSquare sold out and wrote the code in exchange for two beers.  :)

Sergio Salvatore, long-time music / technology entrepreneur.
A long-time friend of Naveen’s, Sergio’s been advising the team on scaling and technical architecture issues since the early days of foursquare.

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Dodgeball 2.0 a.k.a. FourSquare may soon announce a seed round of $1.35 million according to a new SEC document reported by PaidContent and a direct company confirmation given to TechCrunch.

According to the stories, UnionSquare Ventures and O’ Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, as well as unnamed angels, have invested $1.35 million as a seed round.

FourSquare is a popular iPhone app that fuses geo-location, micro updates in the FourSquare network as well as other social networks such as Twitter, and social gaming into one mobile app for the iPhone and Google Android phones. Versions are imminent for Blackberry and Windows Mobile (courtesy of Anand Iyer).

When Twitter hit SXSW in 2007, it was primarily used as a source for sharing and finding friends as they scoured the streets and events strewn about Austin, Texas. In 2009, it was all about FourSquare.

The company was founded by Dennis Crowley, the creator of Dodgeball, which was eventually sold to Google where it was slowly forgotten and subsequently terminated. The team working on Dodgeball at Google have left to join FourSquare.

Similar to Twitter and other mobile location apps such as BrightKite, FourSquare provides you with an integrated activity stream of friends based on where they are and what they’re doing. In addition, FourSquare introduces points, the ability to earn badges, to do lists and tips, among other interactive, social, and competitive aspects. Each time that someone checks into a location, for example, it not only updates the stream, they also earn points. Users accumulate points the more they check into particular locations, contributing to an ever-changing leaderboard determined by locale. The more a player checks into an establishment, they can earn “mayorship” until someone else assumes the role by visiting the location more often than the other. Local businesses are picking up on this activity and offering free food and drinks to the mayor of the proprietorship.

I firmly believe that Yelp should take a serious look at FourSquare as it can bridge mobile reviews with local commerce and promotions tied together by a portable, mobile social graph. Robert Scoble agrees.

Loopt, an officially Apple-endorsed location-based network for the iphone and other mobile platforms, announced that it has solidified a partnership with AT&T that allows iPhone users to run the application in the background to automatically update their location and be alerted to when their friends are nearby.

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