Topic Walls

At Zipipop we are currently in the process of adding Topic Walls inside most of our apps. These walls allow for instant discussions on specific topics within the relevant contextual spaces.

See them in action inside our new release of Going for One (Mennäänkö yhdelle?) app, which makes it easier to get your friends together for a drink. No matter which city you find yourself in, the appropriate City and Bar Wall will appear automatically – allowing for non-stop bar banter.

We have added Eco Confession and Good Deed Walls to our Ecometer app and we will add Baby Topic Walls to our Baby Status Diary.

These walls should greatly enhance the campfire effect of our apps, since they provide on-the-spot communication channels. We will let you know how they work out in practice.

How to Make a Campfire

At the Helsinki Open Coffee with Arctic Startup Meetup a couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me to explain how to make a good 'social media' campfire – so here are some Zipipop suggestions.

CAMPFIRE CONSTRUCTION (implementation):

Wood: Social Object (the thing that people are discussing about, through or around, eg – product, application, cultural phenomenon, etc)

Place: Where best to attract the Target Audience, eg – social network site, standalone website, mobile)

Benches: Communication Channels (facilitate communication, eg – forums, walls, group discussions)

ATTRACTING PEOPLE (marketing):

Tinder/Lighter Fuel: Early Adopters (take them personally to the fire)

Paper: Advertising (guide them to the fire: ads, stickers, flyers, banners, etc.)

Matches: Publicity (blog reviews, news articles, seminars presentations, search engine optimization, etc)

Get the mix right and the flames should be roaring in no time; however, there are many campfires in the big internet forest – so the bigger your fire the more likely it is to attract those happy campers.

Updated: 26/03/08

Zuckerberg Slaves

Are you a Zuckerberg Slave?

We know of someone who has had a top 50 Facebook app for a considerable amount of time and, by all accounts, he is barely getting a sub-atomic sized crumb of that 15 billion dollar pie. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

Of course one needs to have an effective business model on top of a popular app; however, there still appears to be many willing slaves to row the mighty Facebook galley.

We have come to accept that, to some extent, we are indeed Zuckerberg slaves and we worship Master Mark most fervently. However, we are regularly looking out over Facebook's garden walls, keeping a close eye on the other gardens (Orkut, Bebo, etc.), as they proceed to take down their walls. And we are now planning an escapade to taste some of their delicious looking fruit.

Zipipop's ultimate aim is to focus on delivering interactive social media to mobile platforms, and in light of this Facebook has been a good playground for us: the discipline of delivering apps with a clear purpose inside a restricted screen space has prepared us well for small screen challenges. And we have now started developing our first mobile centered service that we hope to make work together with Facebook.

For the time being, however, we will fight courageously in the FB arena and win our place in the hearts of the people and one day gain our freedom to roam wherever the fancy takes us.

Why Campfires are better than Social Objects

The term Social Object—in the context of social media—is gaining popularity; however, the term still causes difficulties for the general public and many social media professionals.

Many of us have a basic understanding that a social object is something that gives a focus to social interaction, but the word object—in its everyday sense—obfuscates* the meaning and can even throw the uninitiated off the path completely.

Few have the time or inclination to delve deeply into the intricate work of John Searle or Bronisław Malinowski. And, even through the likes of Jyri Engström have done a sterling job in communicating the essential aspects, the inherent problems remain.

In order to overcome this we have chosen to use the campfire analogy instead. The concept is not entirely new, but for the purposes of explanation, it is much better. People can immediately grasp how an internet service can act as a campfire: bonding users together and giving a focus for communication and interaction.

So whenever we create a social media application, we are very concerned as to the nature of its campfire: how will the dancing flames attract users, keep them warm and encourage social interaction.

* Obfuscate is a great word that delightfully demonstrates its meaning: "to make something less clear and harder to understand, especially intentionally" (Cambridge Online Dictionary)