next2friendsblog.com

We’ve been having so much fun with all the videos that have been submitted that we’ve decided to extend the deadline for the Next2Friends Most Creative Video Contest! We are pushing the deadline to May 31st, 2008. That’s one more month to showcase the talents of the Next2Friends community. Here are a couple of videos that have been submitted so far. My including them here has no bearing on their prospects for winning. I am not a judge of the contest, I’m merely showing the diverse style of videos we have been receiving. We welcome any and all videos for our contest! So keep the submissions coming!

Here’s one from the Quizbowl team:

And here’s another one that is totally of a different style by Next2Friends user Naren:

Remember you could win the following prizes:The 1st place winner will receive an Apple iPod Touch, a $150 iTunes voucher and a Next2Friends T-Shirt.

The 2nd place winner will receive a $100 iTunes voucher and a Next2Friends T-Shirt.

The 3rd place winner will receive a $50 iTunes voucher and a Next2Friends T-Shirt.

For complete details visit this previous post:

The Next2Friends Most Creative Video Contest Details

Good luck and keep them coming!

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

A recent publication by Juniper Research asserts that Mobile Coupons will soon flood the wireless world, and that by 2011, 3 billion will have been issued with an estimated savings of nearly $7 billion.

The advantages to Mobile Coupons are quite clear. Digital Delivery makes them nearly free, greatly reducing the cost of advertising campaigns. They have a higher conversion rate due to the fact that they are delivered to, stored, and redeemed using a customer’s mobile phone, they show an increase in Average Revenue Per Unit, and they greatly reduce customer fraud.

Juniper also identifies some of the obstacles standing in the way of Mobile Coupon adoption. Some retailers have resisted the move because it would require that they update older laser scanner technology that doesn’t recognize the newer CCD codes delivered as Mobile Coupons.

What is notably absent from the report is any mention of the enormous possibilities that Proximity-Based Marketing will hold for the future of advertising and specifically Mobile Coupons. Real-Time Proximity awareness could allow retailers to broadcast Mobile Coupons to users when it matters most; when they are in the vicinity of their store. Further, Mobile Social Networks like Next2Friends can interface with user data so that the coupons sent are actually relevant to the likes and needs of the user. This will have far reaching implications in centers of dense retail space such as malls.

Mobile Coupons will surly revolutionize the concept of the coupon, but by failing to address the greater possibilities of Proximity-Based Marketing, Juniper may have underestimated their reach. Of course, time will tell.

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

China Mobile Ltd., the biggest wireless provider in China reported a surge in profits driven by a growing user base in rural areas. China has some 520 million mobile users currently and that number is expected to keep climbing. According to the announcement made today, China Mobile has seen a 37.2% increase in first quarter profits.

“Through our continuous expansion into the rural market, our subscriber growth maintains a strong growth momentum and the average monthly net additional subscribers for the first quarter reached 7.60 million, representing an increase of 33.9% compared to the average monthly net additional subscribers of 5.68 million of last year,” says the first quarter Operational Data sheet.

They go on to caution that the mainly rural users that this increase represents added up to a slight decrease in average revenue per minute due to the low-end nature of usage. Regardless, the growth in China’s mobile usage is only expected to rise as more robust networks come online. Beijing and seven other cities have been testing a 3G network that follows China’s own TD-SCDMA protocol. This will have far reaching ramifications for Mobile Social Networks such as Next2Friends which enable an ever growing array of options for mobile users like live streamed video from mobile devices.

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

Do we need any more evidence that cell phones are becoming the most important piece of technology today? The Federal Government has approved TracFone Inc. to supply cell phone service to low income people in 10 states. Commissioners approved the action on Wednesday and said that TracFone met the eligibility requirements needed to participate in it’s program to subsidize low income users.

TracFone will be reimbursed for the losses it incurs through the federal Universal Service Fund, which aids in providing telephone service to high-cost areas, such as rural and low-income urban communities.

TracFone will begin offering it’s discounted service to customers in NewYork, Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachuesettes, North Carolina, Deleware, New Hampshire, Tennesee, and Washington, D.C.

There is growing concern that the poor are at a considerable disadvantage because of their lack of access to the internet. With the cost of owning a computer and an internet connection still too high for most of America’s poor it looks as though access to cellular technology could be a step in the right direction. Cell phone technology is improving at break-neck speeds and could possibly be an alternative way for people to gain valuable access to the internet.

TracFone currently has 9.5 million customers in the U.S. but with the announcement of their participation in the FCC’s program, I’m sure they can expect to see quite a bump in usage. I hope this program helps the disadvantaged. It looks to be a great start!

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.next2friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

I recently returned to my hometown of Minneapolis and had a few thoughts on the word ‘home’. I’ve been living in New York City now for about 8 months. It has been a wonderful experience overall, but the journey has definitely been pocked with difficulty. The biggest difficulties for me have been adjusting to the cultural differences between the Midwest and the East Coast. There is a term in Psychology called code-switching where, typically, minorities will speak differently when dealing with the majority population as a way to ease the interaction. They sort of wear a “face” to get by and then show a different “face” to people of their own culture. I think I’ve experienced a faint glimmer of this being a Midwesterner on the East Coast. It’s a little different in that I don’t actually speak differently out here, but I am constantly being reminded that the social norms and graces that I was so used to and navigated unconsciously are quite different here. An example might be how people out here seem to more openly discuss intimate details about their life much quicker than in the Midwest.

But what I’d really like to focus on are some of the thoughts and feelings I had upon returning ‘home’. What struck me as I deplaned and walked amongst my fellow Minnesotans was that there wasn’t a person I saw who I didn’t feel I sort of ‘knew’. I saw a Hmong family saying goodbye to each other. I went to school with many Hmong, worked in a kitchen for two years with almost exclusively Hmong and even learned to speak a little Hmong. Even though I didn’t know them specifically, I at least have an idea about what it means to be Hmong. I saw various young white kids walking around. I was young and white in Minneapolis, I felt I understood their awkwardness, the sort of blank looks on their faces and the difficulty of growing up in the slightly suppressed Northern European cultural tradition that seems to dominate Minnesota. And the list went on, everywhere I looked, any cross-section or ‘grouping’ of people you could identify I felt like I had some connection to, some understanding of where they were coming from, because I did, I’d lived and worked and grown in and amongst Minnesotans nearly all my life.

Now, I know this can sound a bit like stereotyping, if you say I didn’t really ‘know’ any of the people I saw, you’d be right. They each are individuals with a unique combination of likes and dislikes and particular characteristics. But if every individual is an intersection of hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of variables then I felt I shared more of those variables in common with Minnesotans than New Yorkers. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in Staten Island as opposed to Bed-Stuy Brooklyn or upstate New York. I didn’t do any of those things nor do I know anyone who did. And the list goes on there as well, thousands of variables that make up a life living in and growing up in New York.

That said, I am constantly meeting and getting to know more New Yorkers (and transplant New Yorkers) and am broadening my knowledge of different people and the cultures they come from. In fact, my interest in meetings different people and broadening my experiences drove my interest in moving here. I am getting exactly what I was after. And it feels great sometimes. But sometimes I long for things to be a little easier, for my experiences to be validated and just understood, and thus far, Minnesotans still hold that for me. It’s a double edged sword. Comforting and somehow boring at the same time. Weird, huh? I think for now I’m happy to have less comfort and more excitement. Who knows, that may change. But what if I one day return ‘home’ only to find that it isn’t ‘home’ anymore? Hmm…sounds like a song, or a theme for a book or movie, in fact I think that might be one of the archetypal stories we tell ourselves again and again. I love those pesky universal human themes!

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

Next2Friends has been rated #12 on CommandShift3.com by users around the world in the category of Best Designed Social Networking Sites. Next2Friends also rates in the top 10% of all websites and categories on CommandShift3.com.

CommandShift3.com is a ratings site where users are presented with two websites side-by-side in the form of “battles”. Users then can navigate the two sites and award the “win” to their favorite of the two. Next2Friends beat out Social Networking giants MeetUp.com, which came in at number 16, LinkedIn.com, which came in at number 32 and Friendster.com, which came in at a distant 36.

Next2Friends is an exciting take on Social Networking that incorporates Mobile Technology in some revolutionary new ways including intelligent Proximity-Based Tagging and Profile Matching, seamless integration between a users mobile phone and their profile and Live-Streamed Video from virtually anywhere.

Next2Friends was added to CommandShift3.com in mid-October and quickly rose to it’s current position of number 12. As voting is ongoing there is the continued possibility that Next2Friends could rise higher still. Thanks to all who participated and if you haven’t already, head on over to CommandShift3.com and cast your vote!

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

So the rumors are flying today about the possibility that Apple may adopt a model similar to Nokia, where purchasers of an iPod or iPhone would have unlimited access and downloads to the iTunes catalog. The idea is that the cost of an iPhone or iPod would have a built-in “fee” that allows users to download songs to their device. Of course Apple, being the biggest boy on the “legal digital downloads” playground, is trying to negotiate a much lower rate per unit sold than Nokia, offering to pay half of what Nokia is paying the labels whose music they offer. But this could be a huge shift in the current battle to define how people will “consume” music in the future.

The Good and the Bad

For artists and labels this move could have an enormous effect on revenue, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the”per song” model offered labels and artists a much greater amount of money on songs that sold legitimately. But most of the songs by labels and artists the public was “consuming” were not obtained by paying. They were gotten off of Peer-to-Peer file sharing sites. The 6 million dollar question (or billion or trillion) has been, “in the face of free music downloads, how do we (artists and labels) make money?”

Make Way for the Format Shift!

I think they’ve finally found the answer. Now, this blanket fee model will mean drastically less money for artists and labels per song, BUT, if it’s as easy (and “free”) to just download a song you like legitimately, I can’t help but think that people will prefer to get their music this way. And let’s not forget that EVERY time there is a format shift in an industry, the industry almost always wins. Think of when CD’s came out. I can’t tell you how many albums I re-bought just to own the CD of the music instead of the clunky, worn out tape or record I already had. A lot of money was made this way and that meant profits for record labels and artist. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if the mechanism is easy enough, most people will prefer to just download their favorite albums instead of going through the trouble of transferring and converting their CD’s into MP3’s.

So, yes, the artists and labels that were making lots of money on legal per-track downloads are probably lobbying pretty hard against this, but I can’t help but feel that this is a pretty good compromise to the digital conundrum we find ourselves in right now. Yes, some people stand to make less money, but MORE people stand to make SOME money. And I think there will be a lot more winners than losers. Hey, find me someone in business who doesn’t love a good “format shift” now and then. In fact, I think you could typify our entire economy on “format shifts”. Capitalism at it’s best, bringing you the next best thing you already had or didn’t need:)

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

Lately I’ve been thinking about how to live a less environmentally impact-full life. Part of what has driven this is that I’ve been reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse, which is about how societies choose to either fail or succeed through the decisions they collectively make on how to manage their use of the environment. (Here he is outlining the premises of the book in a lecture: Jared Diamond Speaking for the LongNow.org)

Anyhow, so when my wife brought to my attention this article published in the New York Times about NYC’s attempt to curb plastic bag use I was hopeful. New York City uses some 1 billion plastic bags a year that each take nearly 500 years to deteriorate. When you add it up, that’s a lot of plastic bags hanging around for dozens of generations to come. And I’ve commented many times since living here on the sheer number of plastic bags one can accumulate throughout a day. So it was with some enthusiasm that I read that the New York City Council had a plan for all those bags! That enthusiasm quickly turned to frustration however. Here’s why:

The Plan

The plan is to have all plastic bags given to consumers (in stores with either 5,000 sq feet or at least 5 stores in NYC) printed with a paragraph urging the user to recycle. Then the stores (again, ones with either 5,000 sq feet or at least 5 locations) will have to collect the bags at their stores in “easily accessible bins”. The stores will then be responsible for recording, weighing, transporting and reporting to the Sanitation Department their activities. Non-compliers will face steep fines, something like $2,000 a day.

Why It Won’t Work

First off, in my short span of time here there is a consistent theme I stumble across daily. Most problems I encounter here are ones of volume. It’s not that people are not trying their hardest (some aren’t, no more less than anywhere else), it’s more just a factor of there being so many people here, any little problem or inefficiency or chink in the armor gets magnified many fold because of the sheer number of people streaming through. So why create a scenario which requires A) the creation and management of an entirely new bureaucracy B) which is going to require MORE on the part of already taxed institutions?

The Solution

It seems pretty simple to me. Tax plastic bag usage. Tax it as heavily as you need to stem it’s usage. Make the price of a plastic bag the same as a reusable bag. The one thing the city council’s plan has right is that they are going to require these stores to sell reusable bags. I applaud this move. But in the highest populated city in the nation to try to create an entire program to manage, collect, and police the use of plastic bags (at a considerable cost to tax payers) seems asinine. Why not just MAKE some money and charge the users of plastic bags. Have the store owners just keep track of how much money they made “selling” plastic bags instead of going through the whole process of collecting, weighing and recycling bags. Not to mention the cost in energy to process and recycle them. In numerous countries throughout the world it has been demonstrated time and time again that all it takes to change people’s behavior is sometimes just a few cents. Some argue that people don’t want to have to haul around a reusable bag with them all the time. Ok, don’t, then just pay the tax that will go to the recycling program. But I’ve been carrying around several reusable bags for months and it is not a problem. One collapses down to easily fit in my pocket. Frustrating times. We need to be using less energy and resources, especially in this mega-opolis called New York City. I wish the New York City Council would wake up.

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

It was a bit eerie reading Suzanne Choney’s MSNBC article entitled Thousands of New iPhone Programs? Maybe So. No, it wasn’t surprising that 100,000 people have downloaded Apple’s Software Developer’s Kit for the iPhone. The iPhone has got to be one of the most talked about pieces of technology available today.

No, what left me feeling strange were some quotes by Charlene Li, the Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Under the heading “Think Social Networking” she says,

“One of the applications that hasn’t been developed yet is related to shopping.”

“When people are out shopping now, they’ll call their friends and say, ‘What should I get — the blue one or the green one?’ and they’ll take a picture with their phone and send it to their friends using SMS,” text messaging.

Li goes on to say that the next step in this evolution would be to have a way to snap and send a picture to a network of friends on a social networking site.

Now let’s quick switch over to the Next2Friends FAQ section, particularly the service called Ask-A-Friend:

“Ask-A-Friend is a dynamic new way to get instant feedback from all your friends, or if you choose, the entire Next2Friends community. It works like this: You snap photos to create an instant opinion poll to send to whomever you choose for a vote. Your friends will receive notification via their mobile device or their Next2Friends profile that an opinion poll has been created. They choose their favorites among the pictures and the results are then sent directly back to you. Ask-A-Friend gives you real time results when you need them the most; in the real world!”

Eerie! Something is going on, either Charlene Li has been perusing Next2Friends in her sleep or she has some kind of creepy Vulcan mind-meld going on with the visionaries of Next2Friends. She basically described Ask-A-Friend to a tee! And Next2Friends is already working on porting the platform over to the iPhone. This should be accomplished within about two months. What Charlene Li may not know (at least consciously…remember, I’m still working off of the mind-meld theory) is that once Next2Friends works on the iPhone users will not only be able to seek and receive instant advice from friends, they’ll be able to Stream Live Video to friends and even make and meet new friends from their iPhone! And Next2Friends has even more unreleased features in the works that truly make it one of the most ambitious Mobile-Social platforms available! So hold on Charlene, it’s all coming soon! It’s funny how much you can accomplish with just one mission:

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com

Sprint Nextel Corporation is upgrading their smart phone called the Mogul to take advantage of a faster data network. The change will allow the Mogul to connect to the internet at greatly improved speeds, twice as fast for downloading and eight times as fast for uploading.

The new download speed should be in the range of 600-1400 kilobytes per second up from the current range of 400-700 kilobytes a second. The upload speed will be in the range of 300-500 kilobytes per second up from the current 50-70 kilobytes per second.

This has particular ramifications for mobile social networks such as Next2Friend that allow intensive uploading and downloading from mobile technology. The Mogul currently runs on Windows Mobile which Next2Friends is slated to be compatible with in the coming weeks. At that time users should be see greatly improved Live-Video-Streaming from their Mogul as well as much faster Snap-Ups to their profile.

Sprint’s has said that the majority of it’s broadband network, covering 234 million people, has been upgraded to allow the greater upload and download speeds.

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans at Next2Friends dot com