Rajat Paharia, founder and Chief Production Officer of Bunchball, explains why game dynamics and behavioral economics are important for choice architects. Rajat includes some of the fundamental principles of behavioral economics in the second half of the presentation.

Source: http://www.stanford.edu/

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The Fun Theory is a VW (Volkswagen) sponsored project dedicated to bring some fun into every day’s tasks. See how people’s behavior changes when some fun and play elements are incorporated in such ordinary tasks as walking up the stairs

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Source: www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

Interesting, isn’t it? Over 100 million new Twitter user in one year is a stunning fact. Or 91 million photos uploaded to Flickr in a month versus 2,541 million photos uploaded to Facebook!

Enjoy.

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Source: todayifoundout.com

The new year just started, I know. However, let’s get going with a new one by quickly reviewing some of the hard facts regarding the development of social media last year. Visit http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/12/50-fascinating-social-media-facts-stats-of-2010 for the big picture.

I’ll be back this week with my forecast for 2011. One thing is for sure: Facebook will be our best friend, become the main social hub, and Zuckerberg boy will be even more everybody’s darling.

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Screenshot GroupMe

GroupMe lets users create a group and then add other members in order to send messages and pictures to all of them. Groups have a unique phone number, allowing instant conference calls to all members. The app is available for iPhone and Android, however, you do not need a phone to participate in a group, every phone that can send and receive text messages is supported.

Unfortunately, the service only works in the U.S.—for now. Can someone please take the lead to bring it to Europe?

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This video shows how KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline, uses social media to surprise customers that subscribed to KLM’s Facebook and Twitter pages. What looks like an approach that only generates happy faces, might comes with some pitfalls for the airline. I’m not in the position to judge their initiative as I do not know how the Dutch airline handles social media strategically, however, it might be important to highlight the importance of an holistic, all embracing approach to social media.

Only when the marketing department’s social media activities team up with the engagements of all other departments, they will cultivate a sustainable positive brand atmosphere in social communities. Too many companies—at least that is still the case in Switzerland—pitch their first steps in social media management to one department without working it bottom up to make sure that magic of social media becomes a corporate discipline rather than a snapshot.

Not to mention that they need to be very clear in their terms of use about what they do with the data that they collect from their users. Otherwise some customers might not be really pleased, but rather shocked when they show up at the gate.

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Screenshot Waze

Waze is a community GPS navigation system that has the potential to make our daily traffic crusade much easier. The idea is simple: Waze tracks drivers and collects the live conditions of the road. Waze just started in Switzerland and you cannot really expect accurate navigation or traffic information yet. However, if the social media buzz (Waze connects to Facebook and Twitter) takes on, Waze could rapidly become a source of valuable traffic information in populated areas and a valuable alternative to your GPS. Here are some thoughts that I would like to highlight after having tested the application for a couple of days.

Traffic Alert

Waze bases the route calculation on actual average speed as reported by other users. If you and some other users drive the same route every morning at an average speed way below the legal speed limit, Waze will be able to make very reliable ETAs for you.

The traffic reports from other users are killer! Whom do you trust more? The alerts heard on your favorite radio channel or the user that drove your destination route 5 minutes earlier and reports heavy traffic (see screenshot)?

Waze includes, of course, alerts for speed cameras (see Screen shot below).

Waze outbeats Google’s navigation as Waze is available on all platforms (including Windows Mobile and Symbian for Nokia). Remember: it’s free, however, make sure that you are running on a flat fee for data download.

Speed Trap Alert in Waze

Waze is not only notable for our own benefit, but puts a serious threat on companies that are engaged in GPS and traffic information services to automobilsts. The crowd’s knowledge is almost always more accurate and reliable. If Waze picks up and finds enough users to form that crowd (I’m positive it will do so in urban eras in Switzerland), the service will make seem those traffic messages coming from services that aggregate and process traffic alerts from various sources even more anonymous and unusable (i.e. tardy).

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I’m somewhat disappointed, not only that I’ve lost my bet that I’ve made yesterday, but that I DO think that a cloud service would be the important asset we were looking for in iTunes.

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