The next best thing to an Oscar is an Oscar Party!
Okay, not really. But, it’s the closest I’m ever going to come to holding one of those golden gentlemen in my hand. It just so happened last year that my dad & step-mom were visiting from South Carolina over Oscar Sunday, so I decided to throw a party. It was lots of fun with them, my step-sister & her fiancé, their baby (who was 3 months old at the time), and a few friends. As my friends left for the evening, they said “That was fun… can’t wait for next year’s party!”
Read MoreFoursquare, Gowalla, Scoville – Geolocation Roundup
Back in January I was at a crossroads with Foursquare. I know I’ve mentioned this to people here and there, but the lack of cultivation was really getting on my nerves. It seemed that there were no moderators over there. For example, there’s a Walmart 2 minutes from my house. I go there frequently due to the convenience, and get my prescriptions there. So checking in often, I was mayor. After some time using Foursquare, and I guess with wider adoption of the service on this side of the Bay Area, I noticed it was harder to find the “right” Walmart in Foursquare as there were eventually 5 different check-in locations for the same physical Walmart.
From everything I could tell at the time, there was nowhere within the service to flag duplicate locations. Being slightly OCD, this bugged me to no end. I’d complain, attempt to contact them, no response.
Well, of course this is mostly a useless game with some potential for local businesses to market to me by offering coupons when I check in or something. So I couldn’t get too irritated.
At my wits end with Foursquare, I used it while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West and then said sayonara. I used Facebook Places for awhile, then after learning that Gowalla would kill two birds with one stone and integrate with Facebook, I jumped on it.
I quite like Gowalla now and have been using it since January. There’s no mayorships, but you can “find” amusing little items at different locations. Like I’ve received Cowboy Boots at two different steakhouses. Gowalla has better graphics and I really dig it’s Android app better than the newest versions of Foursquare. From what I can tell, their service is growing as well and has frequent updates. Every time it updates, I like the functionality of the app better. One of my favorite features of Gowalla is that some businesses have made their little icons graphics of their locations or logos. It helps me find the right place. Best of all, there’s very very FEW duplicates!
One of the greatest features of Gowalla is that you have to actually be in a geographic proximity to the location in order to check in. So you don’t have a bunch of people jokingly checking into your house from thousands of miles away. Gowalla has excellent GPS technology. Most of the time once I enter a business and start the app, it suggests where you want to check in and knows exactly where I am, despite having checked in nearby elsewhere. For example… I went into my doctor’s office last week, opened the app, and it suggested the office right off the bat – despite having not been there since February.
Lately I’ve received a few invites to Scoville, which is currently in private beta. The idea behind Scoville is that it collects local recommendations based on your check ins. I liken it to Yelp Lists, where you can collect your check ins into recommendations. The theory, I suppose, is that not all the places you check into you’d necessarily want to recommend and evangelize. I signed up and I’m interested in participating, but there’s a problem – it integrates with Foursquare.
So what to do? I certainly don’t want to check in to both Gowalla AND Foursquare everywhere I go. I updated my Foursquare app so I can check in and test out Scoville, but I’m still at a crossroads. Are there business uses for Scoville? I hope to find out & report back! What are your thoughts on the geolocation check in services?
Read MoreAdvertiser-Sponsored Online Game Tournaments on PCHGames.com
While this is nothing new (ad-sponsored games), this tournament is an exciting twist on the old idea.
Publishers Clearing House (PCH) today announced at Ad-Tech San Francisco the introduction of advertiser-sponsored tournaments for free online games on PCHGames.com. Sponsorship exposes a brand to more than eight million targeted loyal PCH site visitors and drives an estimated 200,000 potential customers per tournament to an advertiser’s Web site. Tournament games include Mahjongg and Solitaire, which are two of the most popular games online and on PCHGames.com. In February 2010 PCHGames.com had 16 million game plays, 1.6 million unique visitors, 5 million visits and 28.8 million page views. Tournaments are developed in conjunction with casual game developer Arkadium.
The next tournament, Mom-Jongg, a Mother’s Day inspired version of the popular Mah-Jongg classic tile game, is taking place on April 28th and includes cash prizes of $1,000, $500 and $250. In addition, the top 25 scorers will earn 1,000 tokens, which can be used to win prizes including Amazon and Walmart gift cards or entries into PCH sweepstakes.
“PCHGames.com site visitors are highly motivated and engaged, especially when they have a chance to win cash just for logging on and playing their favorite games,” said Josh Glantz, vice president and general manager of PCH Online. “During the last tournament there were more than 540,000 games played in 24 hours. As the popularity of these tournaments increases the number of free online game plays continues to rise and ultimately makes this a very successful program for sponsoring advertisers.”
The advertiser-sponsored tournaments present a number of opportunities for brand messages and offers to be communicated throughout PCH’s stable portfolio of online properties, as well as through the company’s opt-in database of email subscribers. In addition to the customized tournament landing page sponsors also receive takeover ads, featured placement on the homepage of PCHGames.com, banner ads throughout the network, pre-roll and post-roll ads before the game begins and when it ends, custom tournament and partner emails and much more.
“Our online game tournaments provide a great way for advertisers to reach a targeted audience with multiple touch points at a time when they are engaged and hoping to win big,” said Michael Zane, director of online marketing at Publishers Clearing House. “Our team at PCHGames.com works closely with participating advertisers to obtain artwork and messaging, and then manages the tournament in its entirety. It’s a simple process that results in an entertaining and rewarding experience for those who play, as well as a great marketing success story for participating brands.”
Read MoreContest Soon
That’s right, I’m gearing up for my first ever contest here at TrishaLyn.com. I’m not really going to make people
jump through a million hoops with some complicated point structure system to win – but I won’t lie, it will have to benefit me in some way of course.
Prizes are being compiled, details and rules drawn up, and everything should be ready soon. So in the meantime, stay tuned!
Oh, and a Free Toolsday post obviously didn’t happen this week…mostly because yesterday felt like Monday and it slipped my mind. So a really good one will be coming next week to make up for it, I promise!
Want to donate a prize for the contest? E-mail me at Contests@TrishaLyn.com! For those of you interested in donating, the audience is readers of my blog… so businesses, performance marketers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc.
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