Guimikko

Social has been hyped about in the past year so much that I don't always know whether to laugh or cry, or should I get the popcorn. Among experts and experts it has started showing signs of toning down already with rationalization emerging on the scene in my opinion. However, the Facebook mobile event probably added fuel to the fire in the mobile realm. I admit that this seems to have a lot of potential too, but somehow I can't help to think about the WAP and mobile service hype of the early millennium, albeit with the exception that now there are data networks and devices better suited for the job.

Facebook Places and Foursquare earlier have both been in the "yeah, quite nice, but what do you, like, do with it" depart and have strengthened my view that at least some part of the hype and Facebook in itself have been kind of like a playground for middle-aged boomers, into where they have rushed in like enthusiastic children. Earlier I already blogged about, how I myself have experienced internet and the web for years already and what social in the web means to me, so I won't go into that anymore.

So I haven't fully understood those location services thus far (Places, Foursquare and so on), and I'm not quite the only one among my friends, but on the other hand I've expected something actually utilisable to develop around them. Now there would be something like that in the horizon, when they are combined with a service like Groupon's Citydeal, meaning, when you check-in to a place, café, store or similar, you get a special deal on your phone like three special coffees for the price of one. Then again, I remember things like this being envisioned already in the distant past with WAP. Back then the problem probably was to get both the people and the businesses inspired, now I'd see this would take more inspired businesses to get onboard anymore.

There's apparently still hype in store, but who knows whether it is a good or a bad thing. Will heads be banged against the wall in a similar fashion as in the social marketing hype, and it will be understood and handled through older structures and will it be understood to be an advertisement media more like the old medias? In which case, in my opinion, we'll be getting lost in the woods. And not so that it is a marketing platform that works in the way of the oldest marketing channel, word of mouth and at the same time in my opinion the only honest marketing channel. Or maybe I'd be better off leaving this topic for marketing professionals to ponder upon more profoundly, or maybe psychologists after all? In any case, there's nothing wrong in hype itself. Generally, during it, directions are being sought and the biggest goings overboard made, which hopefully are things to be learned from. While waiting for that, I think I'll get some pop corn and feel Jimi Hendrix and Public Enemy.