Darby Sieben -

Well it is Friday night and I had another week of travelling. This week I was down at the Chirp Conference (first developers conference for Twitter) in San Francisco. The team at TechCrunch did a great job of covering the conference, here are some articles to check out if you have not already:

– Twitter has 105,779,710 Registered Users, Adding 300K A Day
- Twitter Adds Places To Its Geo-Tweets, Just Don’t Call It A Check-In
- Live From Chirp: Twitter’s Platform Roadmap
- Ev Explains Twitter’s Move Into Mobile Apps: “Otherwise We Are Failing Users”

So enough about Chirp, this has been covered extensively this week.

While I am waiting for my wife I was playing with my iPhone, actually wishing I had an iPad (after the Chirp conference and speaking to a number of people about their iPads, I am convinced that I need to buy one, but that for another day). Back to my iPhone – I was playing with Mobile Web, not iPhone applications and I got to wondering about the Mobile Web experiences for Canadians?

So here is what I did.

I visited the following sites through my Safari browser on my phone. Google.ca, YellowPages.ca, Yahoo.ca, and 411.ca. I tried to visit yelp.ca, but it gave me their actual website, not their mobile enhanced so they are not included.

I then entered the exact search term “restaurants toronto” for each site and was presented with their results. The screenshots below are the results page for each of the above websites. Check them out yourself.

So here is what I want to know? Based on the screenshots below for the search “restaurants toronto” and nothing but the screenshots below, which mobile application provides the best results? I am going to leave it as best results, you decide whether best results mean content, look and feel or brand loyalty.

In alphabetical order:

411.ca

Google Web

Yahoo Web

YellowPages.ca

One more screenshot from an application that I am testing on my iPhone (it is not available to the general public yet) called Urbanizer, mood based searching. This application is going to rock. You can subscribe to get notified when it is available in the app store.

Urbanizer

If we are missing your favorite mobile web application, put the URL in the comments, I would be happy to add it to this post.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Through Facebook.com (my profile) we decided to share who we were, where we went school, our personal photos and more. Using LinkedIn.com (my profile) we decided to share everything about our business life and business connections. Twitter (my profile) allows us to share our 140 character thoughts. With FourSquare (my profile) we now check-in everywhere and share our location with our friends.

Now there is Blippy.com – the service that allows you to share your purchases. On the Blippy.com website the tagline is simple : Blippy is a fun and easy way to see and discuss what everyone is buying.

Here is a screenshot from my Blippy.com Feed:

At this point I am only sharing my purchased from iTunes. But if you want to share more of your purchases you have the following options:

Most of these services are not available in Canada but you have the option of sharing your credit card or banking transactions. As a Canadian you have the following financial institution support on Blippy.com – American Express, ING Bank, and Capital One (although it does not explicitly say Canada). Here is a screenshot of the financial institutions supported by Blippy.com:

This past week I was forwarded this site to my colleagues and friends asking for their feedback. Some of them thought it was quite innovative in terms of asking your friends for feedback on whether they liked or disliked a movie or song. Others thought it was inappropriate to share this information on the web and flat-out told me they never would post their purchases online. Other thought it was completely stupid that somebody who post this info and that others would actually want to read it. One thing for sure is that Blippy.com evoked a reaction.

I actually think this concept is interesting. Think about it – everybody shares with their friends and family what they like and dislike. Did you see that movie? What did you think of it? When people come over to my house, they ask us how do you like your massage chair or your 4-door fridge (these are 2 common questions we get from most people). You can read about my Inada Massage Chair purchase.

Does Blippy.com allow people from long distances participate in those discussions?

Could Blippy.com help you make better decisions by asking people in your network about a product or service?

What about asking a total stranger on Blippy.com what he thought of a restaurant you have not been to before?

Is this so different than facebook, twitter, foursquare or linkedin?

Could Blippy.com be the next social phenomena?

Will You Share What You Buy?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Twitter has been all the rage lately getting lots of coverage by bloggers and traditional media outlets. I too have been active on Twitter @darbysieben as well as contributing to @yellowpages_ca.

What I wanted to know is whether tweeting can actually drive Google search volume in the same way that traditional media campaigns can increase search volumes. My experiment is very limited in time and scope, so not scientific at all, however, I wanted to share my early results.

What I did was set-up a Google Adwords campaign specifically for the exact match keyword “darby sieben”. On a side note, I encourage everybody I meet to do the following; a) register your own name as a domain name, and b) set-up a google alert on your name. I believe that personal reputation management will be a big trend in the next few years.

Second, I added no new blog posts for the first 20-days of May, my online communication was limited to Twitter only. I have actually run my Google Adwords campaign on my name for some time and see a correlation between blog posts and the increase in ad impressions. So for my experiment, I did not want to introduce the variable of a blog post into the equation.

Third, I tracked my posts on Twitter and the ad impression count through Google Adwords. Here is the chart for the first 20-days of May.

It would appear that there is a correlation between Tweeting and increasing search volumes. That said, this experiment is too limited to make any concrete conclusions, but directionally would seem to make sense if I view Twitter in the same way as traditional media. What I believe this does demonstrate is that viewing search volumes alone is not sufficient in and of itself for measuring ROI, rather a more holistic view of what causes search volumes may be more of an indicator of what actually drives usage.

Popularity: 1% [?]