Blue Bottle Cafe & Restaurants using Twitter & Facebook

If you live in San Francisco and love coffee, you likely know about Blue Bottle Cafe - it is arguably the best coffee in the city, has a rabid fanbase and was made famous by the New York Times piece, "At last, a $20,000 cup of coffee". Blue Bottle has started dipping its toes in social media - and why not? On any given morning, half of the shop is seen huddling over a mobile device or laptop.

It is an interesting example because social media is a natural, ideal fit for restaurants (great imagery, food is often social, and people talk about their experiences). It is also interesting because:

- Blue Bottle has a newly started presence on both Twitter and Facebook

- Facebook is about 3x as popular as Twitter: 600 fans vs. 200 followers

- Blue Bottle routinely posts to Twitter, including great photos and interesting updates... but they have not yet posted to the Facebook stream (despite having 3x the fans and Facebook being better suited for visual posts / sharing)

- Blue Bottle Cafe is actively being talked about on both Twitter and Facebook (on Twitter, there are dozens of mentions each day)

Blue Bottle is clearly experimenting with social media and, as an onlooker and a fan of their coffee / food, I find it both interesting and helpful. If I were a restaurateur, I would be watching closely and experimenting on my own. Both Twitter and Facebook are effective ways to showcase new menu items, specials / sales and interact with customers.

Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and other large chains have found success through social media (and are among the best social marketers)... local shops are starting to figure it out as well. And as mobile continues to play a growing, important role both in restaurant discovery and communication, there will be a stronger opportunity to engage with customers.

Rails Rumble 09 Kicks Off... Sneak Peak

Tonight, Rails Rumble 2009 kicked off. Here is a sneak peak of what is being worked on at the Dog Patch Lab:

"Still Think Social Media is a Fad?"

Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has put together a great video called "Social Media Revolution". Worth watching and then checking his datapoints and footnotes (a couple of which I included below): A couple interesting footnotes from Socialnomics:

#1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network #10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80% #13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences? #31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone #32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available

iPhone is Flickr's #1 Camera; Soon to be Facebook's #1 Video

Mashable is reporting tonight that the iPhone is set to replace the Canon Rebel XTi as the #1 source of photographs on Flickr:

That smartphone, with its weak 2 MP camera and its lack of zoom, is now set to overtake Canon Rebel XTi as the #1 camera on Flickr. This is according to Flickr’s Camera Finder graphs. Actually, as the LA Times has already caught, the iPhone has already passed the Rebel XTi on a few occasions as the two duke it out for the top spot.

This shouldn't come as a surprise (price differential, convenience and ease of mobile uploading) - but it is noteworthy. As an owner of both the iPhone 3GS and the Canon Rebel - I can say that I too have found myself opting for convenience and mobility over artistic and picture quality.

As we all await Facebook's new iPhone App (which is setting in Apple's approval queue and enables mobile video uploads), we should expect the iPhone to quickly become the #1 source of video on Facebook - which is currently the tenth largest video provider on the web. It will be interesting to see just how much activity the iPhone / video integration produces and whether it is enough to advance Facebook beyond #10 (#9 AOL is 50% larger and #8 Hulu is over 2x).

My Blog Has Moved to Media Temple (mt)

Goodbye Dotster. Hello Media Temple (mt).

Over the last few weeks, you may have noticed slowness (to put it lightly) on this blog. It was being hosted on Dotster with a shared server (that they repeated swore was never close to capacity). After wasting way too much time reviewing my Wordpress installation, blog code, plugins, etc - it was apparent that the blog itself was not the issue...

So I decided to migrate everything to a dedicated server using Media Temple (mt). Things are now lightning fast and mt's customer support and responsiveness have been outstanding. The blog should be running faster than ever and it should be entirely stable. Thanks for your patience and big thanks to Danny Leffel (of InGameNow) and Russell Cook (of beRecruited) for all of the assistance.

As always, subscribing to the blog via RSS or email is a fail-proof solution! Enter your email below and you will get a daily email with full posts from the previous 24 hours. Thanks:

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Google Labels Gmail "The Iterative Web App"

I love this email from Google (full screenshot below and their blog post is here): On April 7th, we announced a new version of Gmail for mobile for iPhone and Android-powered devices. Among the improvements was a complete redesign of the web application's underlying code which allows us to more rapidly develop and release new features that users have been asking for, as explained in our first post. We'd like to introduce The Iterative Webapp, a series where we will continue to release features for Gmail for mobile. Today: Outbox.

First, I love the term "iterative web app". It's not entirely new - but it is a powerful way to express ongoing advancements and innovation. It also allows Google to then message users on an ongoing basis... and it gets users excited about the forthcoming changes and communications.

It is a more digestable, interesting way to engage with users from a product and communications experience. And it positions Google nicely as an innovator committed to improving their products and interacting with their users along the way.

Amazon's Email Marketing: Relevant, Timely & Includes Special Offers

I have written a fair amount about email marketing campaigns - pointing out effective ones and confusing ones (sorry Apple). I often point to Amazon as a best-in-class marketer on many fronts... and here is another great example.

As a gift, I purchased an item in their kitchen department and matched it with a cooking book (that they recommended). Within a week, I have an email from Amazon that is:

- Pertinent: it is clearly relevant to my recent order (I have no reason to ask "why I am receiving this?") - Enticing: the email is positioned as a reward (now whether it actually is a special discount, I don't know... but 50% off is always attractive) - Simple: the email is three sentences long. I know instantly whether I want to take action. - Good looking: the focus on the special 50% offer / button is clear and the email's layout is attractive

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Your recent purchase at Amazon's Cookbooks store qualifies you for an extra 50% off select bestselling magazines, including Food Network Magazine, Vegetarian Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, and EatingWell.

You can use this offer to start a new subscription or renew an existing one. The extra 50% discount will be automatically applied at Checkout for each eligible subscription.

Madden 10 Launch Brings Interactive Ads to ESPN & YouTube

For video game and sports enthuiasts, Madden Football's release day is the equivalent of a major Hollywood blockbuster. In Madden 2009's first month, it did $133.5 million in retail sales. Today, Madden 10 arrives and the presales estimates were ahead of the 2009 numbers and many major retailers opened their doors at midnight last night.

Madden is taking to the ESPN.com and YouTube's homepage to promote the game's launch. Both units feature players from the Pittsburgh Steelers attacking the screen (the EA Sports Logo and Youtube videos respectively).

The Youtube unit expands and disrupts the homepage (much like the iPhone and Nintendo Wii ads of past). The ESPN unit does not expand - but it does take over with an extra-tall header (with video) and the square side unit to match.

Hosting Rails Rumble 2009 Competitors at Dog Patch Lab on Pier 38 (San Francisco)

Rails Rumble 2009 will be kicking off in a little more than a week: August 22nd and 23rd. The Rails Rumble is a 48 hour web application development competition. Contestants and teams get one weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web property that you can, using Ruby and Rails.

Polaris will be hosting San Francisco and Bay Area teams at the Dog Patch Lab off of Pier 38. It will be a fun, exciting environment - and hopefully with a healthy mix of collaboration and competition.

If you are participating in the Rails Rumble and, along with your team, would like to spend the weekend at the Dog Patch Lab - rsvp either directly to me (rspoon at gmail.com) or on the Rumble Wiki. More about Rails Rumble 2009:

In 2007, the Tasty Planner team took home the first-ever Rumble championship belt for the initial version of their popular recipe sharing website. Since then, they've continued to develop the site, attracting an extensive community of web-savvy cooks as well as the attention of commercial outlets.

In 2008, our friends at MeetInBetween.us edged out the competition with their innovative meeting place mashup. By calculating common meeting points for groups of people and allowing users to pinpoint locations such as cafes and restaurants, the site is a truly useful, truly minimalist micro-app with obvious appeal.

Other 2008 award winners: