Matthew Pick is Catchfire Media’s summer intern who will be assisting with the firm’s strategic efforts on behalf of our clients.

Yesterday, Facebook reached 500 million users. Having doubled size in the past year alone, Facebook will keep growing, and continue to be the most-used social networking site. While Facebook was first created for college students to stay in touch, it eventually opened its doors to high school students and the rest of the world to stay in touch with people and organizations.

In high school, Facebook has been a way to pass time and IM friends, but I’ve realized how it will soon become something more when I ship off to college. I attended an engineering camp last week and met some new people, and I found myself “friending” them on my phone when I had free time. If I hadn’t, I know I would have forgotten their last names, and who knows, I may run into them in the future.

Facebook is still young. My older sister created an account her freshman year in college and soon connected with her high school friends that had spread across the country. How will this be different for those who have “grown up” using Facebook like me?

My parents still don’t know what Facebook really is, but that’s okay. If I can show my mom pictures from my sister’s account, that’s good enough for her! While my parents won’t be signing up for a Facebook account anytime soon, high school students will continue to seed the growing population of users on a global level.

What does this mean for the future? People will stay connected. Whether it be someone you met at camp, at school, or at work, Facebook will continue to keep us close with family and even people you just met.

My parents don’t use any form of online networking, which is becoming an exception to the rapidly spreading demographics. Facebook is no longer for students alone; parents of younger generations are using Facebook to keep in touch with their children and friends.

Before I started my internship with Catchfire Media, I honestly hadn’t used Facebook very much. I didn’t fully understand why people spent so much time on Facebook until I realized its power. A casual user may not pay attention or realize how much more is actually on Facebook than your friends. You can find anything from your favorite games, sports teams, or restaurants.  With a half billion users on Facebook, it makes sense to have a company page.

From my prospective, Facebook’s presence has set the standard for social networking. The number of users will continue to grow, as will the number of business and group Pages. Every organization can benefit from a Facebook Page, and will continue to provide unique access to over 500 million consumers.

[Photo from oversocialized on Flickr / CC BY 2.0]

Unless you have been lying on a beach for the last month or comatose on your couch watching the World Cup, you’ve at least heard rumblings of Foursquare’s phenomenal success.  Foursquare is a geolocation game screaming across the U.S., which most access on their smartphones.

At Catchfire Media, we prefer to look at Foursquare through the lens of a business application. What may have started off as a game only has legs if it is able to convert its fan base into revenue. Venture capital firms understand this social media platform’s pull, or they would not be dumping 20M bucks into the company.

We have been taking a hard look at how to extend Foursquare as a business application to our clients’ customer base. The potential beyond the current basic coupon offerings to location “mayors” is incredible (although, believe me I love those coupons; I am still desperately trying to become the mayor of my local Starbucks!)

One idea the Catchfire Media team dreamed up is a marketing campaign tied directly to Foursquare and Iowa’s 2010 gubernatorial race. What? That’s right, we have come up with a concept suited for our retail clients that integrates Foursquare into a state-wide competition for “mayor,” or in our case “governor.”

How it works

From the 10,000 foot view, our concept is a Foursquare competition based on the number of check-ins at retail chain locations. Implementing this campaign on behalf of clients with a large number of stores is key, as we want to ensure the state is represented as much as possible to ensure a “fair” election. Our idea includes a primary season during early fall, followed by the final race ending on election day. The primaries weed down the field by county, region, or city based on our clients’ geographic footprint and individual marketing plan. From the primaries we take the top mayors and pit them against each other for the governor’s race.

With the help of Clint Harvey, our lead developer, Catchfire is already working on customized mobile and web applications to manage the entire campaign for clients. We are encouraging  clients to combine this social media plan with their traditional marketing efforts to highlight and profile their mayors during the campaign. One of the best things about this campaign? There is no reason this it cannot be expanded to other states. In this economy, you can still count on elections happening every two to four years, and each has their own cycle.

As you can imagine, this idea has already created some serious interest by major regional retailers. If we’ve also captured your attention with the ideas behind this campaign and you think it is something that might drive value for your business or clients, give us a call. We are happy to help.

I had the pleasure of attending Big Omaha last weekend, a creative, technology, and entrepreneurial-themed conference devised by the bright minds at Silicon Prairie News in Omaha, Nebraska. It was an incredibly thought-provoking and motivational event, bolstered by presentations from the likes of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare. Over the next few posts, Mike Templeton and I will share our conference experiences and takeaways with you. Enjoy.

Scott Harrison, charity: water
Wow. Scott’s presentation about his personal journey and how it shaped the journey of his charity, charity: water, was unforgettable. The lights came down, Scott took the stage, and the audience became engrossed in the story of Scott’s unusual childhood. About an hour later, after choking back tears several times, the audience swelled into a standing ovation. As we adjourned for lunch, it was clear that Scott’s presentation had resonated deeply with attendees. I won’t try to reiterate Scott’s story here, but I will tell you that it’s full of glorious highs and lows, with an ending you’ll commit to memory. I highly recommend you visit charitywater.org and see it for yourself.

Although Scott’s cause is much larger than the messaging and media created to raise awareness, it’s clear that there were a few business decisions charity: water made early on that would work to drive and shape their success.

Design
Charity: water has a simple yet hard-hitting message. Scott wanted to ensure this was conveyed when building the charity’s brand, developing the website, and creating any advertisements, merchandise, etc. Good design matters. For most charities, the “brand” is often an afterthought; for charity: water, it was the essential building block in establishing a strong, unmistakable identity for the organization.

Transparency
Scott wanted to be completely transparent on how donation dollars are used for charity: water. To do this, he split the charity right down the middle—any donations would be used, 100 percent, for direct water project costs. The organization would raise money separately to handle all administrative and operating costs. This donor transparency is meticulous; the charity is currently working to break down the giving by “quarter, country, and partner.”

Storytelling
The organization currently utilizes a network of photographers to document the projects that donors support. They also use GPS and video to capture additional content, sharing how individual lives are affected by the work they do. I’ve talked about how important storytelling is and can be to any organization before—charity: water’s storytelling is rich, personal, and honest. Along with very cohesive and frank messaging and design, there is no mistaking the work at hand and the change effected by the organization (and accordingly, by the donators themselves).

Empower Advocates
In 2008, after more and more people began to champion the charity’s cause in personal ways (giving up a birthday, running a marathon), the organization developed “mycharity: water,” a site for advocates to build their own fundraising pages.  The progress of this site alone is momentous: 26,587 people have joined the site, raising a total of just under $2 million. Building the site has given advocates simple but robust tools to fundraise, resulting in a deepened sense of ownership for advocates, and, more donations.

How can the initiatives (design, transparency, storytelling, and empowering advocates) demonstrated by charity: water be applied to your organization?

Imagine sitting in the stands at a baseball game holding a device that allows you to predict the next play. Will the batter hit a home run? Will he ground into a 6-4-3 double play? You can earn points based on your accuracy and can compare your stats with others in the stadium playing along.

Before smart phones and their associated apps, this idea would have sounded pretty far-fetched. Rewind 17 years or so and there was such a device—rentable at the Oakland Coliseum during A’s games for $20 plus a deposit (if my memory serves me right). Unfortunately I can’t recall the name of this device, nor could I find anything on Google. If you remember anything about the device, let us know in the comments section, or even just your thoughts about this concept.

Is this social media? Well, not quite. Scores were the only information being shared. I’m sure someone could develop an iPhone app similar to the original, with the added bonus of social features, and make a killing off this today. If you are so inspired, please give me a cut of the proceeds. In both cases, we are dealing with back channel communications.

On the final day of South by Southwest Interactive, Abby and I attended a panel discussion called Sports Media Distribution: Beyond the TV, where the discussion about back channel communications caught my attention. Current examples of back channel communications in sports include: conversations on Twitter, chat rooms or hashtags affiliated with a specific game, and apps with mid-game instant replay capabilities and live stats.

Panelists included John Zehr, general manager of ESPN Mobile, who prophesied that the 2010 World Cup will be a watershed event in distributing mobile content, especially live mobile content.

“We’re going to use the World Cup to really educate people and let them know they can view online,” said Zehr.

I’m not sure how I feel about the World Cup being a watershed event—this is reminiscent of the predictions that soccer would become America’s pastime after the 1994 World Cup. Sharing mobile content seems to be happening on its own, and if any major sporting event had the opportunity to be the “watershed event,” it would have been the Vancouver Games. Do you think we are about to enter into the era of mobile video sharing for sports?

Zehr also brought up the recent contract Verizon signed to be the NFL’s exclusive mobile content provider. I consider myself to be an average NFL fan, so I don’t see myself switching contracts from AT&T just to have access. A few people tweeted during the panel discussion to the same effect. Do you think super fans on other networks will switch just for this access, or is there enough other data out there on other networks to support their needs?

ESPN’s Zehr made an outstanding point regarding which sports stand to gain the most from mobile—those that tend to be highlight-driven. Baseball fits this mold perfectly, and I could definitely see myself pulling up a customized reel of last night’s video highlights while chowing down on my lunch. To make this really cool, and to give it a social edge, I want the opportunity to share the best clips with participants in my fantasy baseball league. How would you implement social media with sports and video content?

We obviously live in a world inundated with technology—phones, video, chat, text messaging, net books, and more. My takeaway from the sports distribution panel is that we are just starting to figure out what useful things we can do when you integrate consumer electronics, mobile technology, social platforms, and people. Just like the early adopters renting the stat predictor game at the Oakland Coliseum, you have the opportunity to share information in new ways. What will you do with it?

In addition to experiencing the nation-wide beard trend, our two days at the South by Southwest Interactive conference allowed us to see the latest in social web innovation and gave us the opportunity to hear from some major thought leaders in the space. We sat through presentations from such luminaries as Twitter CEO Evan Williams and social media wine celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk. More importantly, we met potential future stars developing exciting social platforms and technologies. What follows is a list of key takeaways, many of which we, Senior Analyst Jarad Bernstein and Analyst Abby Harvey, will be expanding upon in future posts.

Every guy is growing a beard these days
From interesting mustaches to completely-covered faces, there was no shortage of facial hair at SXSW Interactive. What does this say about the direction we are heading? We’ll leave that to a later post, but regardless we think you should be aware of this trend.

Customer service rules the world
Gary Vaynerchuk couldn’t talk enough about the importance of caring for and about your customer. Customer service’s importance should be obvious to end users (which we all are), but why doesn’t every company get this? Simply put, everyone wants to be treated like a human being. In Gary’s words, “You can’t scale caring . . . you can’t scale authenticity.” Gary told the crowd that you need to start caring about your customers, or you will lose. Of course, he made this point more passionately—it wouldn’t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk show without a few hundred expletives sprinkled in. In Gary’s world caring is swearing, and Gary cares more than most.

Another main takeaway from Gary’s performance: utilizing social media and the web is a must, and do it now! “This platform [the internet] is a BABY!” he proclaimed. “You [SXSW Interactive attendees] have no idea how ahead of the rest of the world you are; there’s a massive amount of low-hanging fruit, and people are starting to eat the grapes.” Effectively incorporating a web presence hinges on every part of today’s business model—marketing, advertising, sales, and customer service.

Being CEO of Twitter doesn’t mean you are a good public speaker
The hype for Monday’s keynote presentation was palpable. Overflow rooms with giant projection screens filled up equally as fast as the cavernous main hall. We were all anticipating an announcement on the scale of Steve Jobs letting the world in on the next big thing; instead, we bore witness to a dull conversation with Twitter CEO Evan Williams about one of the most exciting technologies Twitter has developed to date—At Anywhere (@anywhere).

Geolocation is more than just Foursquare and similar services
We’ve come a long way from the original Magellan in-car navigation device—a topic expanded upon in two sessions we attended. Geolocation and Location-Based Services (LBS) are growing rapidly; in fact, we learned that global LBS-spending is forecasted to exceed $7 billion by 2013 (yes, that’s less than three years away!). In one session, speaker Jason Finkelstein of WaveMarket, Inc. talked about mobile geolocation developments and shared one of his favorite quotes from Google: “The future of mobile is local.” One interesting stat he shared with us, which we are still thinking about: 55 percent of all text messages ask some form of the question “where r u?” That’s 650 billion location-based texts in the U.S. last year alone. Look at your text message log in your cell phone and we think you’ll realize the truth in these numbers. What are WaveMarket and its competitors planning to do about this? Nothing earth-shattering was shared, but we certainly look forward to their innovations.

While in some cases geolocation rears its head as creepy, clearly causing negative sentiment, it’s hard to deny its importance. Geolocation takes the guesswork out of all those inquisitive, location-based text messages. The company that creates a solution that is both secure and useful will likely profit quite well.

Coming soon
Want to learn more about our takeaways? Our next few posts will focus on the future of open APIs, music sharing, digital magazines, social media in health care, and more. Every session had a hash tag assigned to it, and we have linked to the search results for those hashtags so you can learn from other attendees, as well. One final statistic for this post: registration was up substantially at SXSW Interactive compared to 2009. One rumor even has it that the interactive festival outdrew the music festival for the first time ever. With social media playing a central role in the festival and its growth, we know that social media is not done growing and changing the way we view communications.

The Red Cross is stunned by the amount of money digital fundraising has garnered in response to Haiti’s earthquake Wednesday. In just 48 hours, the text message campaign calling for donations went viral via Facebook and Twitter to raise over $9 million so far—a figure more than double the $4 million donated to all charities by mobile texts in 2009.

“It’s shattered any record that we’ve seen with mobile giving before,” the Red Cross’s social media manager told CNN.

These statistics don’t surprise me one bit—when breaking news happens, most people turn to the internet for answers. On Friday morning, “Red Cross” was among the 10 most popular topics on Twitter. Every minute, people have been posting more than 1,500 status updates on Facebook that contained the word “Haiti.” Social networking’s viral nature made it possible for answers, photos, prayers, and information to be quickly spread all over the globe; thus, the chain of donations and relief efforts rapidly initiated.

Here’s a list of noteworthy donations and efforts made possible by social media:

• GoDaddy, a leading internet domain registrar, donated $500,000 to relief efforts.

• Google announced on its blog that it is donating $1 million.

• Zynga, the social gaming company that owns Facebook’s popular FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker, has raised over $1.2 million for Haiti relief.

• Facebook started a Disaster Relief page meant to spotlight efforts to help respond to disasters around the globe. Randi Zuckerberg wrote on the Facebook blog yesterday that people have contributed “thousands of dollars through the Causes application on Facebook.” This post alone elicited 4,398 “likes” and 564 comments.

• Lance Armstrong (an active Twitter user with more than 2.4 million followers) announced that the Livestrong foundation would be donating $250,000 to humanitarian aid groups.

These are just a sampling of the amazing social media initiatives launched on the social web to benefit Haitian disaster relief.

What other impressive efforts have you seen? Who else should be on this list?

Most of us can recall Cindy Crawford’s jean-shorted, thirst-quenching saunter in 1997 and, in 2001, Britney Spears’ “Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba, The Joy of Pepsi” rendition—both were multi-million dollar soft drink television commercials featured on the illustrious Superbowl Sunday. Over the past ten years, Pepsi has spent over $142 million (second only to Anheuser-Busch) on Super Bowl advertisements alone. However, the new decade marks a monumental shift for this corporate giant; for the first time in 23 years, Pepsi is pulling the annual commercial in favor of a $20 million social media campaign.

The Pepsi Refresh Project launches on January 13, 2010, and will sponsor (in $5K to $25K increments) individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations that hope to get their ideas off the ground and make a positive difference in the world. Anyone can enter, and people can vote online for who they feel best deserves the money.

DMNews.com does a great job explaining PepsiCo’s logic:

“Pepsi has always positioned itself as being about the youth market of America, and young people now are inundated with social media,” said Nicole Bradley, spokesperson for PepsiCo. ” . . . Pepsi is making a big statement that they want to be about all of those things that their target [audience] is about.”

“We are always looking to further develop our two-way conversation with consumers,” she added.

The PepsiCo team clearly gets it. They understand that to market effectively to audiences today, brands need to interact, share, and listen to their consumers. Talk about a step in the right direction!

PepsiCo is one of the first mainstream corporate giants to pull millions from traditional marketing—Super Bowl commercials, nonetheless!—and transfer those funds to social. On the fashion/retail side, we’ve seen the international label Lacoste cease all print advertisement in an all-digital effort. According to a December eMarketer article, advertisers will spend 7.1 percent more on social network marketing in 2010 than the $1,210 million spent in 2009, and these numbers don’t seem to be going down anytime soon.

How do you think this campaign will fare for PepsiCo? Do you think other companies will follow suit?