Amer Iqbal and Chris Crammond: Deepend's Business Directors Feature In The Latest B&T
In The May edition of B&T Magazine, Deepend's Chris Crammond and Amer Iqbal share their industry insights on the top ten rising platforms that are about to shake the digital world. Original post on the Deepend Digital Blog.
Consmr // Yelp for the supermarket
This mobile app lets you scan a product in the supermarket aisle, read reviews and ratings, see product suggestions and unlock special offers. If you submit enough reviews you can become a category expert, which opens you up to rewards and events.
Read the full article here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/09/consmr-iphone-app/
Continuous Improvement for your life
What if data collection was fun?
You’re probably sick of hearing about “gamification”, but if we stop to think for a minute, the core concept is interesting: data collection doesn’t have to be a chore. Data can lead to insights, and insights provide us with useful or fun information that can influence our lives. We’re seeing an increase in the amount of data that our devices can collect about us, either through automated methods or methods that make data entry easy. Until now the data has mostly been used for earning badges and other seemingly trivial goals, but the data itself is valuable – we just need to think more broadly about how we can apply it.
Beyond badges: The future of healthcare
As an example, let’s think about the future of healthcare: imagine if our digital devices could measure data on various health indicators in your life. If this were all stored on a central database, you could sign up for a service where analysts go through your data each month and draw out insights on your health. Based on this, they can make recommendations on small changes you can make to improve your health, and even catch health warning signs before they develop into real problems. These analysts could also provide the data and insights to your doctor, taking the guesswork out of diagnosis and treatment.
A lot of the technology required to achieve this already exists: there are wristwatches that can measure heartrate, blood pressure etc. and your smartphone can tell where you are, how fast you’re moving, how many steps you take, how you sleep etc.
Think of it as Continuous Improvement for your life.
Of course, healthcare is just the tip of the iceberg – we can use data driven insights to influence many other parts of our lives. Check out this video: Tim Chang talks about data and how analytics will change our lives over the next few years.
Imagine an app that improves who you are
What if we could use an app to configure our life goals?
What if I told an app that I want to be healthier, smarter, funnier and more cultured?
The same app could create a shopping list for me when I’m in the grocery store, and recipes to cook when I’m in the kitchen. It could tell me when, where and how to exercise. It could tell me when I’m near a book shop that has a copy of a particular book. It could tell me when there’s a comedy show or a great play in town that I should catch. Heck it could even pull in my Facebook check-ins, analyse who I’ve been hanging out with and tell me when I need to catch up with particular friends (or avoid certain others!)
Of course it should measure whether I followed the recommendations and in some cases even measure the resulting uplift (eg. telling me how much I’ve lowered my blood pressure in the past 3 months).
Then it can give me a score on how well I’m living my life.
“Amer scored 3,426 points this week and has jumped to no. 1 on the leaderboard - #Winning@Life!”
Most of the technology already exists to collect this data, and in fact a lot of apps already exist that can perform a lot of these actions in isolation. The core ingredient that is missing is the understanding (or imagination) required to make this data useful enough to make a real difference in our lives.
Stay tuned: it’s only a matter of time until we’ll stop vying to be the mayor of the local coffee shop and start competing to win @ life. Game on.
Now you can track actual conversions with Facebook ads
Marketers don’t actually want clicks, they want the downstream conversions and the return on investment that follow. So today Facebook begins allowing advertisers using its API to ask it to show their ads to people most likely to take any specific post-click action on the social network, such as sharing a brand’s content to the news feed, buying virtual goods in their apps, or redeeming one of the new Facebook Offers at a local brick-and-mortar store.
Rather than having to deduce what demographics are most likely to convert, and being unable to tell if those conversions came straight from ads, today’s improvements give advertisers more transparency, and will make it easier for a much wider range of businesses like social games, local businesses, and big brands to earn money from Facebook marketing.
Read the full article on TechCrunch.
Location based service // find where to eat and drink
Wondering where to grab a bite? Don’t mind a bit of profanity?
http://www.wherethefuckshouldigotoeat.com/
Or if you’re thirsty:
Feed.us // Funny take on the startup intro video
Ahh intro videos – the staple of any self-respecting startup’s home page. Gone are the days when it was enough to just have a product demo, intro videos now need to be an engaging piece of content in their own right.
This sample from cloud based CMS service feed.us demonstrates the benefits of the product via a cheesy comedy sketch featuring some weird and wacky potential customers including a suicidal designer, a clingy end client and even a zombie.
Check it out: http://feed.us/
On a side note, feed.us has gained a lot of attention today due to Facebook suing one of its founders for commenting on a Techcrunch article. Wow.
UTS Guest Lecture: Strategic insights in the campaign planning process // Amer Iqbal, Business Director, Deepend
Guest lecture delivered this morning to a final year Integrated Communications class at University of Technology, Sydney.
The lecture focuses on the importance of strategic insights in the campaign planning process.
Facebook's Google Maps trick // QR code
Many years ago when Google announced they would be introducing satellite images to Google Maps, a group of Deependers decided to have fun with it and painted a huge Deepend logo on the roof of the office that could be seen from space (and hence seen by people looking for our office on Google Maps). You can still see a (faded) picture of it here.
This week, Facebook took this trick to the next level: to celebrate their brand new headquarters, they have painted a huge 42 foot QR code on the roof of 1 Hacker Way.
Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/25/facebook-rooftop-qr-code/
