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The 2008 Crunchie Awards are open for nominations. If you’re a fan of Next2Friends drop by the TechCrunch Crunchie nomination page and cast a ballot for us!  The Crunchies is a kitchy and slightly irreverent awards ceremony for new companies, such as Next2Friends, who have been innovating over the past year.  In their second year, the awards will be hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, and TechCrunch on Friday January 9, 2009 at 7:30 pm the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

To nominate Next2Friends in the Best Mobile category go here:

To nominate Next2Friends in the Best Technology Innovation/Achievement category go here:

To nominate Next2Friends in the Best Design category go here:

And, of course, feel free to nominate us for whatever you like at the Crunchie 2008 nomination page!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

This weekend the makers and marketers of Motrin saw the power of Social Media…but not in a positive way.  The whole mishap began when Motrin released a new commercial aimed at mothers who carry their babies in slings and harnesses.

The commercial, which was attempting to be light-hearted, ended up offending mothers by insinuating that, among other things, they’re doing it because it’s fashionable.  It’s easy to see why some would be offended, it is a poorly crafted message that seems condescending.  And, as Jeremiah Owyang states, it is hard to imagine that Motrin tested this message before pushing this ad out.

But by Saturday it was the most Tweeted subject on Twitter. By Sunday there was a video up on YouTube highlighting the angry Tweets along with photos of mothers and their babies.  And by Monday the issue had made it to the New York Times blog.  Around that same time an apology had been issued by Motrin along with a promise to pull the offensive ad.

Now, many top marketers and social media thinkers have spoken on the things Motrin did wrong.  Jeremiah Owyang’s “Lessons” are well put:

Lessons Learned

• Always test your campaign with a small segment first

• Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend

• Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond

• The participants have the power, so participate

• For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

All is Not Lost

There are a couple of winners in this scenario.  The biggest is Social Media.  You can bet that if companies didn’t consider Social Media in their campaigns before, many will now.  And ultimately Motrin wins something for the added bump in brand awareness, regardless of the negative nature.  That’s one small step for Motrin and one giant leap for Social Media.  Thanks Motrin!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

There is no doubt that technology can greatly influence society and thereby politics.  Consider how greatly the printing press came to effected Europe’s Reformation, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, or the American Revolution and Civil War. Then fast forward to the effect of the telegraph or the first televised presidential debates. With the use of the internet and particularly Social Media  we are seeing yet another sea change in the way people gather information and are influenced by technology.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project conducted research in June that outline this shift.  In 2008, nearly half of Americans (46%) used the internet, email or a text messaging to get news about the presidential campaign, share their views, or mobilize others. Further, the most common online activities were watching online videos, social networking and making campaign donations.  In many cases use of these technologies have doubled or tripled since just 2004.

• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos - nearly triple the level of the 2004 race.
• 10% say they have used social-networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social-networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns.
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online, compared with 2% who did during the entire 2004 campaign.

Jeremiah Owyang did some quick election day social networking number crunching as well.  He found that in nearly all instances Barack Obama has far outpaced John McCain in the use of Social Media.  Barack Obama has 380% more Facebook and Myspace friends, almost a 1000% more Youtube views and 240 times the number of Twitter followers.  Will this mean that he will be the next President of the United States?  Not necessarily, but you can be sure that future elections will have a growing Social Media component. Good luck to both candidates and regardless of who wins, it will be interesting to see how our new leader deals with the difficult times ahead.

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

A handful of announcements this week regarding the Android OS add momentum to the uptake of Google’s nascent mobile platform.  First, ASUS, the well known computer hardware manufacturer, has announced it’s intention to create Android based handsets for release by mid year 2009.  Looks like they will be testing the models in the Taiwanese market first then bringing them to the west.

Asustek’s 3.5G P552w PDA phonePhoto: CJ Liu, Digitimes, October 2008

Second, Motorola has announced that it will be using the Android platform for nearly ALL  of it’s mid-level phones.  This was an even greater pledge than was first thought a few weeks ago. Motorola also announced that they will be cutting the number of operating systems that they build for from six to three.

Android is very much in it’s infancy.  It is only availble on one handset, the G1 by HTC, but there is very serious work being done to ensure its spread.  Google has begun talking to some of the leading universities in the US about building curriculum around Android.  Universities like Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon.  And companies such as Motorola are using Android in products other than mobile phones such as set top boxes for TV.

Add to all this that just this week WalMart and T-Mobile announced they will be offering the HTC G1 at all WalMart stores for $148.88.  Putting an Android phone into one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked chains is definitely a good idea.  It will be interesting to watch the sales numbers.

The future could be bright for this open source platform.  As many others have predicted, we may be set to watch a showdown between an “open” model (Android) and a “closed” model (Apple OS).  This could very well be the Apple verses PC struggle of the new millennium.

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

We’ve been hard at work lately developing all sorts of new features and improvements.  The biggest of which was our development of Next2Friends Live for RIM’s BlackBerry Curve and Pearl.  But something slipped by virtually unnoticed lately (except by our members) and that is the launch of the Next2Friends Live embeddable widget.

Essentially it is a widget that displays your live videos.  You can embed it into anywhere that will let you use HTML code, like Myspace or a personal website.  It’s quite simple to use, just copy the embed code from the landing page of your (or anyone’s) Next2Friends Profile, paste it and away you go:

Already members are jumping on this new tool.  Have a look at how new member and active blogger dotlizard has utilized the widget on her website.  It’s also great for musicians, lifecasters, and anyone with something to promote.  It’s pretty clear that fans of virtually anything appreciate the intimacy of live broadcasts from artists and personalities.  But that is not to count out how families and friends are using it to offer a window into their life’s little happenings for one another.  All great stuff, we’re quite pleased with the response so far and ask that you stay tuned for even more features in the coming weeks!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

Next2Friends has developed the world’s first live video streaming for BlackBerry devices!  It was a long and difficult process but we stayed committed to bringing live mobile streaming to this segment of the smartphone market and are elated and humbled by the response so far.

Next2Friends Live now works on the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl, some of the hottest selling smartphones today.  Here is a demonstration:

To start streaming from your Pearl or Curve all you have to do is head over to Next2Friends, complete the 60 second free signup and install the application!  Happy streaming and join us in welcoming the potentially millions of new live mobile broadcasters!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

ABI Research recently released a report that is being echoed far and wide in the blogosphere and we wanted to highlight some of the chatter and throw out a few thoughts of our own.  They surveyed 500 people and found that 46% access a social network with their mobile phone.  And it turns out that Myspace and Facebook command the lion’s share of activity, with 70% and 67% respectively.  Other Mobile Social Networks, like Next2Friends, only command 15% according to their research. It went on to say that the primary uses of Mobile Social Networks (or web-based social networks that are extended to mobile) are commenting, responding to friends and giving status updates.

Read Write Web had some interesting commentary on the subject.  They noted that only 1% of Mobile Social Networks exist exclusively on mobile phones, the rest are extensions of some sort of web presence.  They further say that this does not speak well to the adoption of Mobile Social Networks. On the surface it doesn’t.

Perhaps more telling is a quote from the ABI Research site itself:

“The mobile social networking market is best described as emerging. With a very large number of startups and unformed business models shaped loosely around Internet-based equivalents, the mobile social networking industry has a long way to go before it reaches maturity and mass adoption.”

This is very much an emerging market with no clear winners or losers yet.  On the one hand you have such phenomonally powerful tools like live video streaming from mobile or instantly uploaded photos from mobile and on the other hand you have most people merely commenting and messaging back and forth using social networking giants as a courier.  Indeed, there hasn’t been a clear added social value that mobile necessitates.

Some point to Location Based Services, GPS Obsessed makes the argument rather well that if an already established platform like Facebook could integrate Location Based awareness into its mobile app, perhaps services like Geo Messaging could really take off.  Here’s an interesting graph they cite to support their argument:

Ultimately it could simply come down to accessibility.  We are still on the beginning curve of smartphone adoption with smartphones only commanding 15% of the US market (this is higher in many other countries).  We think we will see an ever growing base of people with high powered computers in their palm, and as that happens, so will the market grow for more heftier apps such as some of the cornerstones that Next2Friends is built on.  Either way it will be fun to see what the future holds!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!