Hosted Social Commerce Apps For Facebook

Just as e-commerce has become an established and accepted channel for business and shopping, the next wave of technology washes ashore. This is social commerce, an adjunct to and potentially more popular way to conduct business online. Social commerce is an outgrowth of social media, especially using the two most popular platforms, Facebook and Twitter. If social media is where people want to spend their time online, then social media is where you have to go to find customers.

The big challenge is how to you leverage the power of social media? You can flail around trying different approaches. Perhaps you can build a website, launch an e-mail campaign or write a blog. All of these do-it-yourself approaches are now old school as far as the Web is concerned. You won’t be need to be learning new software on your PC or deploying more of your own servers. What you need to be working with are hosted solutions. Facebook itself is a hosted solution, although it should be considered just the basic platform for your social commerce efforts. To get the social performance you are after, you’ll want to add some advanced apps to your Facebook page.

What sort of apps are we talking about? How about apps that give you the ability to create deal shares, fan offers, fund raising donations, viral messaging, photo showcases, RSS feeds, add Twitter feeds, recruit volunteers and so on. Can you build these apps yourself and have them work flawlessly on your Facebook page? Can you even find these functions here and there around the Web? Even if you could, they’ll never have a consistent look and feel.

What you need is an “app buffet” from North Social. The apps are part of a large collection that you choose from to power your Facebook page. Each app has its own content management system. You set preferences, upload images, links and text. No need to learn or write any code.

What kind of results can you get with the North Social app collection power your Facebook page? Here’s an example to give you an idea what’s possible:



Anxious to give this a try? You should know that every account comes with a 14 day free trial. Accounts range from starter to enterprise level. All of the apps are unlocked and ready to use for every account? What differentiates the account levels? It’s based on the number of fans you have. The starter account has a limit of 1,000 fans. The professional account moves that limit up to 50,000. The Enterprise account has unlimited fans and up to 5 Facebook pages. All other accounts are for a single page only, although you can always sign up for more accounts if you need them.

The future of social commerce is already here. Learn more, watch demo videos on each of the apps, and then pick the account appropriate for the size (and social popularity) of your business and start your 14 day free trial.

Backing Down In The Face of Twitter

The end of 2011 saw big reversals by major corporations in the face of public outcry. First was GoDaddy, who came out in favor of SOPA and was quickly persuaded by online outrage into switching positions. The second was an even faster about-face by Verizon Wireless. Verizon thought they’d quietly slip-in a $2 bill payment fee, only to find the public reaction so seething that they cancelled that bright idea before potential shaming by the FCC. Two up. Two down. Is there something to be learned here?

It might be possible to dismiss either or both of these incidents as the obvious corporate toe stubbing that occurs from time to time. But when you add them to a stack of other news stories this past year that fall into the same category, there’s a pretty obvious pattern that emerges.

What other stories? How about the “Arab Spring” demonstrations that swept many countries in the Middle East and prompted regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt & Libya and ongoing protests in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan? How about the “Occupy” movements that have been dubbed an “American Autumn” by some? How about 100,000 demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin that included tractor parades and farmers dressed as cows circling the Capitol last February? By this summer, it may culminate in recall of the state’s Governor.

How does all this disparate activity tie together? The common thread is the Internet. We are living in a new age of the empowered individual that is different from anything we’ve seen before in one important aspect. Thanks to technology, that empowerment is nearly instantaneous.

Time was, if you didn’t like something you always had the option to write your Congressman or the editor of your local paper. You could call or write a company to voice your disapproval. If the results weren’t satisfactory, you always could discuss matters with your friends, even escalating your group efforts into a demonstration or protest march. The civil rights movement and student protests of the 1960’s can certainly be said to have changed the course of American society over a period of turbulent years.

For those of us old enough to remember 1968, there is a certain resemblance to Zucotti Park and UC Davis. One difference is the way we hear about these things and see the images. In the 60’s, you tuned in Walter Cronkite from 5:30 to 6 PM or you went without video. There were always AP wirephotos in the Sunday newspaper or color pictures in next week’s Time magazine.

Compare that with watching the live feed from Tim Pool's cell phone as he walked through the crowd in New York City, interviewing people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests as he went. What’s it take to be such a citizen journalist with your own audio and video remote broadcast facility? In this case, a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone and an unlimited 4G broadband account from Sprint feeding into a Ustream account called “The Other 99.” Would you like to broadcast live video to a dozen friends or tens of thousands of interested onlookers worldwide? The Ustream.tv channels are free. You can feed them from your desktop, laptop or smartphone with wired or wireless broadband connection.

Social media is said to be a major theme for business in 2012. The social media revolution has already become mainstream activity for individuals everywhere. In WWII, desperate messages came out of countries under siege via Morse Code sent from hidden short wave transmitters. In 2012, that’s text messages and tweets from some of the billions of cell phones in service worldwide. Think this can be stopped? Just who is going to round up all those billions of phones or cut off the Internet or texting for very long? There are so many interconnections that if you need to send a message anywhere on Earth, you can probably find a path in short order.

It’s more than the power of motivated individuals. Social media and the readily available tools that feed it allow those motivated individuals to quickly, almost instantly, join forces with others of the same mind. In hours, minutes, perhaps seconds, group efforts can be mounted to address nearly any issue. This is what doomed the ill-fated initiatives from GoDaddy and Verizon before they ever got solidified. One disgruntled customer on the toll-free service line can be placated or ignored. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand in concert bashing your business on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, YouTube, blogs and email are a force to be reckoned with. Once they get the attention of the mainstream media who monitor those social channels looking for newsworthy material, the game is over ... even if it only started a few hours or days ago.

FCC Confiscates Remaining TV Channels For Twitter

Shocked and horrified by the geometrically expanding demand for wireless broadband services, the Federal Commfiscation Commission exercised its powers of eminent domain today and confiscated the remaining broadcast television channels not already sold at auction. Most surprising of all was the declaration that this rare and important spectrum is going to be dedicated exclusively to the text messaging service, Twitter.

FCC Chairman Lowon B. Andwidth explained that the Commission just completed an intensive study of Internet usage and found that the Twitter service is growing at such an astonishing rate that it will soon devour all available bandwidth. “While it is bad enough that Twitter will bring web browsing, video streaming, text messaging and email to a halt,” said Mr. Andwidth, “a far worse situation will occur when Twitter users have to take a number and get in line to post their tweets. I don’t want to be in Washington when that mob of anti-social networkers descends on Capitol Hill.”

In shortest supply is wireless bandwidth. Apparently, the lion’s share of cellular phone activity involves posting messages to Twitter rather than the growth previously expected from mobile video and web browsing. One young smartphone user was heard to exclaim, “Does anyone actually surf the Web anymore? Who has the patience to read blogs and web pages? Anything worth saying can be said in 140 characters or less.”

Twitter itself issued a 130 character statement expressing delight at the government’s pre-emptive action to prevent a massive Fail Whale epidemic from sweeping the nation, and requesting re-tweets. They vowed to expand server capacity to match the new wireless bandwidth capacity as best they can. TV stations that follow Twitter have already been tweeted to cease broadcasting immediately and return their licenses. The remaining stations will be getting old school telegrams. “It’s unlikely anyone will be inconvenienced by this change,” explained Chairman Andwidth. “Everybody is on cable and satellite by now, anyway.”

Expectations are that a swift coordinated move by the public and private sectors can ensure adequate messaging capacity at least until after the fall elections. After that, the FCC will likely look at shutting down other less important uses of the electromagnetic spectrum including most AM and FM music stations. “We may even have to shut down microwave ovens and garage door openers if we can’t keep up with texting bandwidth demand,” exclaimed an obviously frustrated chairman.

Also making quick moves to protect its interests, Google announced that it is going to take over non-wireless Internet service by offering 1 Gbps fiber optic connections to every city that performed ridiculous stunts to try to win Google broadband service for its residents. “All other cities that didn’t make fools of themselves will be getting 10 Gbps Google Internet access free of charge,” according to an unofficial Google statement. It went on to say: “There is only one acceptable day for any foolishness and that is April 1.”

Is Twitter Really 75 Years Old?

Would you be surprised to know learn that Twitter is older than you, your parents and maybe your grandparents?

Well, not Twitter itself but the germ of the idea. BoingBoing published a report of a robot messenger called the Notificator that served a similar need in London in 1935. It was a type of vending machine installed in public places that let people leave notes for their friends. You walked up to this device, wrote your message on the next blank space of a continuous strip of paper, and then dropped a coin into the slot. With that, your message moved up one place on the list leaving a new blank area for the next message. After at least two hours, your message would roll off the top of the list so it couldn’t be seen anymore. But that assumes that by then your friends would have checked the messages and seen what you left for them.

Seems like a good implementation of the technology of the times to create a social networking system where people could follow their friends and leave messages that would be viewed by all users. Sounds a bit like “tweeting,” doesn’t it? How the Notificator would have evolved, we’ll never know. World War II moved the focus of inventing and manufacturing to military needs. From that conflict, the British gave us both radar and the jet aircraft.

We think we know the narrow class of genius geeks who are uniquely qualified to make major advances in technology today. But a lot of that is just stereotypes and popular culture. Would you believe that the basis of Bluetooth technology was patented by a gorgeous movie star of the 1930’s?

Yes, you can thank Hedy Lamarr for Bluetooth. Of course, there were no cell phone headsets or wireless computer mice in 1940. But WWII was already raging in Europe would soon engulf the United States. Hedy Lamarr, popular actress and former wife of an Austrian arms manufacturer, had an idea for an undetectable radio control scheme for torpedoes. She discussed it with her music composer neighbor and they created a scheme using player piano rolls to constantly shift the radio control frequency to keep it stealthy. The key was in synchronizing identical piano rolls at each end, so the transmitting and receiving frequencies would be coordinated only for that particular transmitter and receiver.

Today we know that technology as FHSS or Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum transmission. It traces its lineage to patent number 2,292,387, “Secret Communication System,” awarded to George Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey. Markey is the remarried name of Hedy Lamarr.

So, is everything old new again? Could be that those steampunks are sensing some hidden truth when they build modern computers and related technology that have the appearance of something Jules Verne would have cooked up. By the way, Verne had the basics of the moon landing worked out in 1865 and we still haven’t mastered time travel.

The Internet Launches Into Space

Now that the Internet has dominated Earth, it is moving out into space. It’s a little early to talk about Google ET browsers, but there are moves afoot to take the Internet out there into the vast unknown.

Well, these initial efforts are really about using Internet technologies within the Earth orbits we’re already so familiar with. Someday, though, we may be establishing planet codes and galaxy codes to complement today’s country codes. Let’s see what the first baby steps are all about.

The first endeavor is by Cisco to establish routers in orbit. In fact, the defense department has an entire program known as IRIS or Internet Routing In Space. The idea is to route IP packets between satellites without first having to beam them to Earth. Because of the long distances involved in any transmissions to and from space, it make sense to avoid the round trip to Earth whenever possible. This will also have the advantage of making space networks more autonomous and not subject to interruptions caused by problems on the ground.

The military gets first crack at using the prototype router aboard the Intelsat IS-14 satellite that was launched last year. After an exclusive 3 month DOD test program, the router will be turned over to Cisco for a year long period of commercial tests. After that, who knows? If things work out, there may be all sorts of routers buzzing overhead in the coming years. Some will be used to provide wireless broadband services to Earthlings. Others will be up to who knows what in the deep dark void.

On another front, Twitter has gone into orbit on the International Space Station. Last week, astronaut T. J. Creamer sent the first tweet from space. His first words? “Hello Twitterverse!”

Actually, the astronauts have been able to use email for some time. But this is the first availability of Twitter, the embodiment of Web 2.0, at the Space Station. Perhaps if NASA started monetizing the station as a reality show, they might be able to generate the funding that Congress is so stingy with. They need to launch something called the “Big Brother Module” and start doing kinky things in zero-g. That might be just the ticket to recovering public interest in the space program.

How about the Moon and Mars? It’s technically feasible to have live webcams on those rovers. Now, add the ability of people on Earth to issue rover commands and you’d have a sure-fire killer app. Of course, the fun would be over just as soon as some smart aleck send one of the vehicles over a cliff. Maybe you could have them draw your name in the Martian soil or something equally benign.

We’re just getting started exploring the final frontier that is outer space. Clearly, the Internet will have a big role in “space exploration, the home game.” Scientists may be interested in downloading all sorts of arcane data from spacecraft. The rest of us will just want to drive rovers, spy on astronauts, and tweet with ETs.

Integrating Social Media And Reality

We live in two separate worlds, with one foot in each. There’s the virtual world of texting, email, online shopping, Internet search, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN. Then there’s the real world of food, shelter, family, friends, and work. The two intersect, but they’re not tied together in any robust way. Well, at least until now.

It only makes sense that someone would come up with a solution to link the virtual and physical worlds we live in. That solution is something called Poken. As you might suspect, it has both physical and virtual components.

The physical component is called a Poken. It’s an electronic gadget packaged to look like an avatar or a flash memory device. The business end of the device is encapsulated in a white four fingered hand that has a button in the palm and lights that glow from within. What you can’t see is a coil antenna, microprocessor, USB drivers and a watch style battery.

The way you use Poken is to carry the device on a lanyard around your neck or clipped to your jacket, backpack, or bag. When you encounter someone else with a Poken you can request an exchange of contact data, much the same as requesting or offering a business card. Touch the hands of the Poken together and they’ll sense each other’s presence. After a wireless exchange of links, both hands will pulsate with a green glow to announce their success in the encounter.

Now for the virtual component. You plug the USB connector of your Poken into your computer and automatically upload the day’s contacts to your Poken Hub, a personalized online portal. After entering your ID and password, you can see your contacts organized in lists or displayed as virtual business cards along a timeline. Unlike paper cards or scraps of paper that you’ve used to jot down names and phone numbers, the Poken Cards show a photo of your contact.

Being able to see pictures of the people you’ve met displayed along a timeline makes it easy to remember where you met someone and who else you met at the same time. But that’s just the half of it. Those Poken Cards, the virtual representation of a business card or address book entry, have names, phone numbers, addresses and website links. It’s whatever information you and those you meet have chosen to share. The popular social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN have familiar link icons on the card. There’s also room for hyperlinks to other sites, such as your blog or business website.

This is how Poken tightly integrates the process of meeting people in person with meeting them again online at the familiar social networking sites. You don’t have to think about who goes with what site, because it’s all tied together on the Poken cards you’ve collected.