Social Media Buzz: March 2014

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

It's going down, I'm yelling TINDER!

The newest social media dating app craze amongst the younger crowd is called Tinder. It finally gives college kids an easy way to find an quick hook up for the night. Personally I do not have the app but from what I can see from roommates and other friends it has become quite popular in the past couple months in Athens, GA. The app is a dating website that creates matches with other people solely based on looks. All you have to do to get a Tinder profile is log in with your Facebook, download three or four pictures and fill in your name and gender and you are done. It uses your location to find people in the area that could be available for possible matches. When you search for matches all that shows up is the person's first name and the pictures that they downloaded. When you click the picture you can scroll through the pictures that they have and see whether or not you are attracted to them. If you are attracted to the other person you swipe right and a green check pops up that indicates you liked them, however they have no idea. If the other person ends up liking you back then Tinder will notify you that you two are a match. Thats when the fun begins! You can now message this person anything you want and see if they respond. You can hear anything from pick up lines right off the bat or just a simple hello. Some people are very up front about their purposes on Tinder and why they messaged you, others will beat around the bush a little at first. Either way the only thing I have seen come out of Tinder are late night downtown hookups and some pretty funny conversations.

Tinder has become the new social media "dating" craze throughout young adults, but I don't see this app lasting very long. I think people (girls mostly) will realize how creepy it is and the fad will slowly subside when some new app pops up. But for now Tinder is on fire through out college towns and spring break destinations so have fun everybody! Happy Tindering!

Here's a list of "The Unwritten Rules of Tinder" written by Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/unwritten-rules-tinder_n_3689441.html

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

SXSW

Earlier this month the South by Southwest festival happened in Austin, Texas and boy was it a great one. For those of you who do not know what South by Southwest (or SXSW for short) is, it is a festival that happens once annually that celebrates the best and newest trends in music, film, and interactive technology. They have everything from guest speakers, trade shows, and mentor programs, to games, awards, and comedy performances. The one downfall of this event is that it is QUITE expensive to attend. The cheapest badges are around $500 and that only gets you into a limited amount of events. Some badges can even go all the way up to $1695. Seeing as how I am a broke college kid I did not have that amount of cash to dole out for this event (although I image it will be worth the money someday). So instead I had to hear about the festival second hand through a mentor of mine, Todd Copilevitz. He is a partner at J. Walter Thompson in Atlanta, GA and specializes in Digital Strategy. Todd has been coaching a group project that I am currently working on for the UGA Digital Marketing Competition and has been a tremendous aid and has given us insights into the industry that I had never known before. I had the opportunity this Monday to go into the JWT office in Atlanta and sat down with Todd and an associate of his, Breanna Rotell, and spoke with them a little about the SXSW festival. The story that he told me that I found most interesting was about the game that Pennzoil had set up this year in Austin. Pennzoil had teamed up with Nintendo and created a go kart track in order to set up their own real life Mario Kart game. What they did was hook up GoPro cameras to the top of the go karts along with attaching an RFID sensors to each kart so that when they drove over markers on the track it gave them power ups or hurt the speed of their kart. I found this to be a great marketing event because it got people engaged with things that almost everybody loves ( go karting and Mario Kart). It also allowed people to upload their videos of them racing from the GoPro and share them with their friends. I know I would have loved to have raced around on that track with my friends and definitely would have shared the video afterwards through Facebook or Instagram.

Here's the SXSW article on the event:

http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/2014/dont-miss-pennzoils-mario-karting-reimagined

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRmqlrlP2m4

Sunday, March 2, 2014

What's Up with WhatsApp

About two weeks ago Facebook acquired WhatsApp in a block buster deal. The app allows users to communicate with people all over the world for very limited charges ($1 a year). It's also the only widely used app that has more engagement and a higher percentage of people using it daily than Facebook, according to Mark Zuckerberg. This was probably motivation enough for the Facebook creator to acquire the app and add it to his portfolio of potential cash cows. However, WhatsApp currently is mostly used internationally and is much less known here in the United States. It is going to be tricky to try and increase usage in the U.S. where we seem to be more cut off from other countries. The EU creates a need and a natural market for Europe, because people are able to travel and communicate more easily than we are able to in North America. Another problem that might arise is that WhatsApp currently does not have ads and the CEO says that he is happy with the current subscription model and that "monetizing is not going to be a priority for us". We'll see what Zuckerberg has to say about that. The Zuck bought WhatsApp for $4 billion in cash, $12 billion worth in shares for WhatsApp, and $3 billion in restricted stock units for employees and founders. I would assume he would like to see some cash flow come in from that kind of an investment. I know I'm anxious to see what he has in store for his newest acquisition.

Here are the founders of WhatsApp enjoying the fruits of their labor: