Posts written by Chris Fohlin

• BU Wrangles SXSW28 March 2013

  

  • Chris Fohlin
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  • Tags: Brooklyn United, sxsw

  The Brooklyn United crew made its annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas earlier this month to attend SXSW. We brought our largest team yet consisting of Brian, John, Pritika, and myself. In the face of heavy demand for hotel rooms, we found refuge in a nearby house we snagged on Airbnb—a huge success and a great team experience. If your team is tight like ours, hanging around in a living room sipping beers at the end of the day sure beats meeting up in the hotel lobby.

  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be covering various topics that not only created buzz during this year’s festival, but have generated discussion across the industry.

  In addition to hitting panels by day and parties by night, we ate a lot of local cuisine guided by the fact both John and Brian have called Austin home in the past. Highlights included daily breakfast tacos at Taco Shack; dinner at Ruby’s BBQ and Perla’s, and nightly treks to Amy’s Ice Creams.

  We also had the pleasure of meeting part of the team from 10,000ft, a terrific project and resource planning tool we use to run our studio. We got to know more about the 10,000ft team, talked a bit about the festival, and were gifted with one of their beautiful bottle openers. Thank you!

  

  Our last night in Austin, we had the pleasure of catching an unannounced show by Reggie Watts at Hotel San Jose thanks to Brian obtaining some local intel.

  

  As a third-year attendee of SXSW, the big thing that stood out for me was the significant decrease in the number of marketing efforts (read: swag distribution). Anyone who knows me, especially the BU crew, knows I rock a lot of startup wear while I’m in the office including Foursquare, GroupMe, Foodspotting, Twilio, and of course our own. It’s less about a free wardrobe—I promise—and more about supporting the companies I stand behind and love.

  There was a big drop in the number of startup teams roaming the streets of Austin. And sadly, there was no Foursquare court. It seems to me the continuing transformation of Austin’s downtown is leaving less and less vacant space to be consumed by temporary installations, typically where the startups hangout. I’m sure, however, most people were glad there was a lighter marketing presence this year.

  Be sure to keep up with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ as we share our series of posts.

• Maximizing Brand Value on Foursquare06 March 2013

  

  • Chris Fohlin

  Foursquare started out as a way to keep tabs on friends with a heavy dose of gamification to foster participation. Slowly but surely, however, Foursquare is maturing into a leader in the discovery space—for users seeking places to eat, things to do, and discounts to redeem; and for businesses looking to entice new customers, learn the habits of repeat patrons, and keep in contact with their audience. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, but brands can actively engage Foursquare’s platform to extract even more value.

  Ranking Among Competitors

  Foursquare rolled out their take on place ratings in November, eschewing the typical 5-star rating seen on sites like Yelp and opting to rank places through an amalgam of influences. These factors include explicit actions such as likes and dislikes of business locations (known as a venue), sentiment detected in user tips, and pure traffic statistics including popularity and loyalty (repeat business). The result of Foursquare’s decision is a nearly frictionless rating system with a low likelihood of being influenced by emotional reviews and ratings. More later on what you can do to influence the rank of your venue(s).

  Venue Optimization

  If you’re responsible for a business with a physical location, it’s imperative to claim your venue on Foursquare and run through the process of venue optimization. This includes defining your business’ website, Twitter handle, and phone number to provide points of contact and helpful information for your customers. To increase discoverability on the platform, populate your venue’s description and define its category and tags. Finally, make things easy for your customers when they do find you on Foursquare and define the business hours for your venue.

  Connect with Your Audience

  Brand pages are a valuable way to connect with your audience with little to no effort, yet do so on one of the more intimate levels technology has intersected our lives—location. Brands, even those without physical locations, are able to leave tips across the globe for their fans to find and appreciate. Tips are surfaced to users when it’s deemed most valuable such as checking in at venues where a tip was left (something to do now) or when checking in near a tip (something to do later).

  The Corcoran Group is one of the more successful brands on Foursquare, flexing their knowledge of the neighborhoods home to their properties through explicit things to do or simply interesting facts. Corcoran isn’t pushing people to check-in at their offices, but is instead promoting their knowledge and staying on your mind. Other successful brands on Foursquare have come to include History Channel, ESPN, Time Out New York, and Major League Soccer. Our team has sprinkled tips across the city in an effort to share our interests and passions (mostly food). We’ve even provided a guide to Austin with SXSW attendees in mind.

  Encourage Interaction

  So what can you do to encourage audience interaction on Foursquare? If you have physical locations, encourage visitors to like your venue(s) and leave tips. Tips can suggest a favorite dish, give props to a favorite staff member, or recommend the best seat in the house. Do you have special events at certain times? Setup Foursquare events to raise awareness and allow visitors to share their experience and excitement. Remind fans on other social networks—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—to like your brand on Foursquare to stay connected. Track and analyze the trends of your visitors using Foursquare’s Business app (or web interface).

  Oh, and if you’re looking for new things in your own city or are traveling to a new one, check out Foursquare’s new Best Of lists powered by nearly three billion check-ins.

• Clear To-Do App: Rethinking the User Interface23 February 2012

  

  • Chris Fohlin
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  • Tags: Brooklyn United

  Last week the blogosphere was set ablaze by the debut of the Clear to-do list app for the iPhone. There was little to no talk of the app pre-launch; the press that it has quickly garnered speaks to its shake-up of not only the task-list app category, but the appspace at large.

  Gone are the standard UI elements we have come to expect from iPhone apps. There is no set of icons along the bottom of the screen for task views, lists, or settings. Calls to add, sort, and filter tasks are noticeably absent. This is one of the few apps to rely solely on gestures and to do it well. You know, the gestures we have been told touch devices are all about but could stand to use more — pull, push, spread, and pinch.

  Understandably, the Clear app starts off with a short tutorial to lay down the ground rules of the app but from there everything feels natural and is fun and engaging. Each interaction triggers audio and vibratory feedback — I suggest disabling the vibrations. Tasks are created and shuffled with the subtle sound of a pop and completed with a celebratory chime. I catch myself thinking of things to do, excited to add tasks, shuffle my priorities, and knock ‘em out.

  The one major knock on Clear has been its perceived lack of functionality and structure. Tasks can be organized into lists and prioritized among their peers but that is where it stops. There are no due dates, no reminders, no tags, and that may bother some people. Those rating Clear poorly in Apple’s App Store are missing the point. Clear differentiates itself from similar apps with not only its user interface but its simplicity. Heck, somebody (@youyuxi) has already replicated the app using HTML5.

  Clear’s simplicity is perfect for many situations whether it is a quick grocery list, logging to-dos before you forget, or just taking a no-BS approach to getting things done. I have found Clear most useful in jotting things down that pop into my head while lying in bed or walking around the New York Digital District. Clear will not replace my go-to app for task lists with reminders, Remember the Milk, but it does fit the niche of quickly logging and prioritizing things — goodbye to Apple’s Notes app.

  Have you already downloaded and tried out Clear? What are your thoughts so far? Leave them in the comments or discuss with us on Google+.