Ever since Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim created Youtube in 2005, it has been growing into the most powerful online video sharing site, enabling millions of people to share their stories with the world. The founders, who all met while working at Paypal, created Youtube because they wanted to share videos from a dinner party with friends and their email programs couldn’t handle the large size video files.

As with other successful tech stories, like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, the creation of the site came to life from a basic need as consumer and from when the site was launched, it was quickly turned into a big hit by simple word-of-mouth.

The first video featured on Youtube was uploaded by Jawed – a small clip showing him at the Zoo

I found this infographic compiled by Website Monitoring. It shows all the facts and information about Youtube into the five year old timeline:

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I came across a brilliant article by Mashable about 11 Ways to Speed Up WordPress.

It’s brilliant, because as a company working on your online profile, it is absolutely crucial that you set up the best platform for your blog as possible and take into consideration the following measurements when you set up or adjust your blog, so it suits the current and future traffic on your blog.

This article goes into details about:

• Using WordPresss object cache, where you can set WordPress to begin caching database queries rather than initiating new server requests on each load
• Choosing the right host
• Pruning your plugin list and removing the inactive ones
• Choosing the right theme
• Compressing images, and defining the layout for your blog
• Compressing your code (JavaScript, CSS Sprites)
• Choosing servers
• Reducing PHP and HTTP calls
• Keeping your code clean, through validation through W3C Validator
• Optimizing your database through using a database administration interface
• Adjusting your WordPress Settings

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On Friday, I am going to visit the SF New Tech – the Big Endless Summer Social event in Los Altos Hills, located in the San Francisco.

About SF New Tech

SF New Tech is the largest and longest running monthly technology event in San Francisco. Since forming in March 2006 more than 5,000 people have signed up to attend monthly standing room only events.

More than 2000 companies have attended  over the years, and more than 200 of them have been to the SF New Tech stage to demo their latest and greatest.

OliveWoo – location based date service

One of the demos that will be held  at tomorrow’s event is for the latest within location based services.

It’s the first location based application for couples that analyzes your interests and mood to find the perfect date idea for you and your significant other.

Basically OliveWoo is a place where you can create, discover, and share exciting date ideas.

On the latest SXSW conference location based services were called out to be the next big thing, and with the most successful location based application ‘Foursquare’ just turning their 100 millions check in, there is a good chance of success for an application combining the location based feature and something that have been driving humans since Adam and Eva: dating.

For a lot of restaurants and other service industries there are interesting business opportunities in OliveWoo when the service gets a large enough critical mass. Being recommended as a great dating venue can mean business.

I have made myself a profile and will pay good attention at the presentation, and do a follow up giving some more specifics to this new service.

What do you think – can you use an location based date service to enhance your dating life?

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Yesterday, the location-based network Foursquare hit the 100 million checkin threshold.

The news of the great milestone was tweeted by Foursquare’s head of business development, Tristan Walker.

The NYC-based startup is only about 1 1/2 year old and has been experiencing immense growth, especially since it was announced as the new dominating technology earlier this year on SXSW conference.

During the last year, Foursquare has experienced almost 1 million checkins taking place each day – so maybe location-based services is about to make it into the mainstream? One of the explanations of Foursquare’s growth may also be due to their partnerships with major brands like Bravo, Zagat and The New York Times, which undoubtedly has helped drive traffic and new users to the site.

I guess, location-based networks will continue to grow alongside the dissemination of smartphones. It doesn’t really make sense to be on board unless you have a smartphone to use it on. But if you have one, and are not already on Foursquare, then check it out.

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For many of us studying and working with social media the overall concept makes perfectly sense. How connectivity between vast amounts of people produces content through social interaction. However, it can be very difficult to share this understanding with nonbelievers. Especially in short sentences at social gatherings, in a bar or where you tend to speak about social media in looser terms. Even if we’re not Don Draper, everyone knows how important these conversations can be for business.

Personally I have been a fan of Jonathan Harris work for a long time. It all began with wefeelfine. WeFeelFine is the illustration I always turn to when talking to nonbelievers about the potential of social media. WeFeelFine is a mash-up algorithm fetching content from the blogosphere. In this particular case it is content related to the word feeling, but it could be anything. Your brand, your product, your euphorisme etc.

If you start out with ‘madness display’ on WeFeelFine the dots flow freely. It resembles randomly searching for something out there on the web. If what your looking for means something to someone, it is already out there. Then there is Murmurs, one of several different modes, where updates are listed chronologically. Murmurs resembles structured folksomomy searchs or search in tags or # on twitter. This is where the business perspective lies.

IBM have a B2B program called Intelligent Listening. It is a program that allows IBM to monitor social media for sales opportunities. They monitor conversations like “I’m looking to replace my old server” or “Does anyone have recommendations for what kind of storage device will work in this in type of situation?”

Here is what Mr. Linde had to say about the program in an interview with eMarketer magazine:

“I would say Listening for Leads has been our best initiative so far. We have uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads through our intelligent listening program and we’ve closed a lot of business and we expect to do more. That’s going to be a big growth area”

If we go back to WeFeelFine and look at what happen when we went from Madness to murmur. It is the same thing. And with this picture in everyone’s head it should be easier to explain the enormous potential of social media. What it is today and what it can be tomorrow.

The thing is, if you are able to share your enthusiasm in a fully understandable way, the chances are better that your client will integrate social media into their business. Not just add it. And that is a big difference.

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For some time, the rumour has been that Facebook will soon launch a geolocation to their service. According to Mashable and Advertising Age, the location service can be rolled out any day now. It was expected that Facebook would present it at the F8 Developers Conference, where they against odds only spoke of the social web.

The new service is going to be a serious threat to Foursquare and Gowalla, which are gaining foothold as location-based services with a gaming element added to them. Facebook plan to offer their new service to marketers and McDonald’s will be the first to make use of the service. The fast food chain is building an application that allows users to check in at their restaurants with a featured product to appear in the post. I guess several enterprises are already planning and preparing on how to make use of the new functionality.

With Facebook’s huge extent of users it will be interesting to see what impact it will have on the users. The potentials are certainly promising solely because of the scope of Facebook. But will people see the real value of keeping track of where their friends are? I don’t necessarily think that the average Facebook user feels inclined to check in at every venue the go to. People who are using for instance Foursquare have chosen to get on board the service themselves, but this is not the case for Facebook users. As with any other new technology it will probably take some time for people to adapt and make use of it.

Nonetheless, the marketing possibilities are hard to escape and I think it is just a matter of time before we see other initiatives like the one McDonald’s is rolling out.

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Just a few days after Facebook implemented their new feature of social plugins that will connect Facebook with content all around the web, the first mashup has appeared.

LikeButton.me is a website that uses Facebook’s feeds to show what your friends and other people like on different web pages. Like buttons have been incorporated on different pages such as The Huffington Post, CNN, YouTube, TechCrunch. When people read content on those pages and push the Like button it will appear in their Facebook feeds and be collected into LikeButton.me.

Through Facebooks new social plugins, you will be updated on what your friends like and recommend – not of what they have seen and share inside Facebook but also what they like on other websites.

For brands who want to spread their content and create awareness of themselves, the advantages are hard to miss. By adding the social plugins to your page, you provide your users with the opportunity to like and recommend your content, which is instantly shared with their Facebook friends in their feed.

It is actually fairly simple to use. If for instance you want to add an Activity Feed to your page, just go to Facebook’s Developers page and grab the code and embed it.

TechCrunch

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I just watched a live stream from F8, which is a Facebook developers conference held in San Francisco.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, and his crew enrolled some of the coming features on the Facebook platform.  A lot of it is pretty technical in a nerdy way, but on the other hand it also influences how Facebook looks like for the common user as well as how Facebook will be incorporated on the web in the future.

With the new development, Facebook is really taking a step further and starting to build a social web. Zuckerberg presented the idea of an open graph meaning that networks such as Facebook, Yelp, Pandora etc. will no longer be separate closed graphs but all be connected into one open graph that makes the web more social. As Zuckerberg expressed it, the open graph means that people can have “instantly social and personalized experiences on the web”.

This puts people at the centre, so that the connections you make with friends, events, brands and things no longer just occur inside the Facebook platform, but also other places on the web. Thereby all the activities you do on the web can become part of your online Facebook identity.

Three core technologies was introduced to make this happen:

1. OPEN GRAPH: Connecting websites with Facebook so that you can connect content outside of Facebook with your personal profile. This will instantly be added to your news feed and your Likes and Interests will be build from the activities you do around the web.

2. SOCIAL PLUGINS: Consists of easy-to-use widgets to incorporate on your website with a simple code to provide the user with a more personal experience. The new plugins include ‘Like’ buttons, activity stream plugins that transfers your news stream, a Recommendations plugin, a ‘Sign In’ plugin, and a Social Bar that will appear as a dock at the bottom of your site. This way you have socially enabled you site with some simple html.

3. GRAPH API: A more open platform for developers to work with, so that Facebook will be easier to build around. This will entail new tools and services to incorporate on your own website. For instance developers can search on updates on public Facebook pages and develop services that may tell what people are saying about your brand.

A lot of people have expected Facebook to have a location-based tool up their sleeve, but none of that was on the agenda of this F8.

Facebook is still growing by the minute and now has 400 million people. So from a business point of view, most of your users are probably already using Facebook. As of now, Facebook is already working with several websites where the open graph is made a reality. Check out for instance IMDB, Levi’s or Microsoft’s new docs.com and have an instantly social experience

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Here is a follow up on some of my previous writing about geolocation. It seems to be the great talk of the  – at least in the social media sphere.

During the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference last month, location based services was announced to become the new dominating technology in 2010. SXSW is a five day long festival covering the development within web and digital media. Four years ago it was Twitter that was predicted a great future in the digital world.

Two location based services have been dominating the market: Gowalla and Foursquare and lately they have been growing rapidly. On SXSW Gowalla took the lead whereas in Denmark, Foursquare seems to have gotten the most users. I have been using Foursquare for some time now, and will let you in on the basics.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare is a social network that you use from your mobile GPS device (Android, iPhone, Blackberry). Foursquare locates where you are, and you can check-in to the different places you visit. You can share your check-ins with your connections or connect Foursquare with Facebook and Twitter to update your online network.

When you add connections, you can follow their check-ins or see who else is checked in at the places you visit. You can then add tips for different places like “try out their homemade cake” or add other tips to a to-do list. Leave a ’shout’ and Foursquare functions like a location based microblogging tool.

Foursquare has added a gaming feature to spice up the experience. The person who has checked in the most at a place is awarded mayor of the place. Also you can earn badges for doing different activities. For instance you earn the ’swarm’ badge if you have checked in together with more than 50 people or you get the ‘Zoetrope’ badge once you have checked in to 10 cinemas.

Real Time Social Networking

What probably puzzles the most is: “what can I use it for?”. Well, in my opinion, location based services is still at an early stage, but I find the potentials of it promising. The idea of bringing social media with us as we go just paves the way for how digital media can be used in our everyday lives. Instead of sitting in front of the computer at home or at the office, we now connect our online activities to our real-life activites.

Foursquare prompts spontaneous meetings between people to occur and keeps you updated. For instance, you’ll know that one of your friends is busy because he just checked in at a venue or maybe you can meet up because you just saw one of your friends checking in around the corner. And the feature of seeing who else is checked in is a good opportunity to strike up a conversation with new people. What is really useful is the possibility to check out nearby tips from people who have been visiting the places close to you. It’s basically about exploring the world and the people around you.

Foursquare For Businesses

So as a social tool, the advantages of using Foursquare is pretty obvious. But what is even more relevant is probably how businesses and brands can make use of it.

Right now, shops, restaurants or other services with a real location receive free publicity when people check in at their place and share it with the connections. If a restaurant is really good, it will probably get good reviews from its visitors. This is in itself of great value, since user-driven content is generally more trusted.

But places and brands are also starting to take advantage of this offering discounts or special offers for the one who holds the mayorship. This inclines people to check in more often in the running to become mayor. A place will thus get more mention while rewarding loyal customers. In the end, it’s all about getting that extra value.

One of the most prominent brands adopting this is Starbucks which runs a customer loyalty programme where customers earn a ‘barista’ badge after 5 check ins. Some brands are already mastering the game of Foursquare by being present and tapping into its functions.

It usually takes a couple of years until businesses and enterprises have adapted to a media trend. So probably we will see location based services expanding within the next couple of years along with the spread of smartphones.

Check out this clip about Foursquare:

You may also feel like reading: 

» The Marketing Potential of Geotagging and Geolocation
» Foursquare vs. Gowalla

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More and more online services add the feature of geotagging what you post on the web. Geotagging means that your physical location is registered from your mobile GPS tool or your computer’s IP address. This means that if you upload a photo to Flickr, the location from when the photo was taking is registered and people can see this on a map.

Where you tweet
Twitter is also featuring geotagging. This means that a tweet will be connected to where you are when you tweet. This makes a lot of sense if you tweet about a certain place and this will give your readers a feeling of what is taking place right now where you are.

For now, geotagging in Twitter is only available in the US, but Twitter will let you know once the service is also available in other countries. You can see how to tweet your location here.

The great potential of this is the value that brands can get from having people around them make tweets, share photos, and in general start online conversations. The power is really in the hands of the customers, but on the other hand, this only makes it even more authentic.

Foursquare expands their service
I’m also looking forward to see how geolocation-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla will develop in the future. Take a look at for instance the mashup between Foursquare and Google: Fourwhere. In a google map, Fourwhere lets you explore an area with Foursquare venues and comments. This allows you to get a buzz of what is happening around you and you can check out the venues and ‘to dos’ recommended by others. The geotagging really makes sense when everything is displayed in a map.

One of the brands that really knows how to make a positive use of geolocation is Starbucks, who has launched a customer rewards programme on Foursquare. The programme is still being tested, but is all about involving customers in building the brand. People share  where they are with their network and get rewarded for it, on the other hand, the brand gets publicity and exposure from customers.

According to New York Times, Foursquare will let business owners have the possibility of getting access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments and this really opens up for a lot of possibilities in Foursquare.

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