Shops both on and offline have a lot of information on us, no-one would argue with that. Loyalty cards store our shopping preferences, and virtual shopping baskets and wishlists are digital records of our past and potential future purchases. They know how much we’re prepared to spend on certain items, our preferred brands, our favoured method of payment, and when we’re most likely to splash the cash. Factor in the increasing marketability of Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter mentions, and it’s no surprise that a computer is able to make a more fitting gift suggestion for you than your other half.

Ramping up this Orwellian reality is a proposed 2012 ‘trend’ set to completely revolutionise (for better or worse) the F-commerce landscape: behavioural pricing, the idea that through analysis of your on- (and off-) line shopping habits, brands and companies can determine exactly how much they can get away with charging you for a product.

Scare-mongering UK tabloid the Daily Mail has gotten wind of this, and is purporting a range of startling conspiracy theories, noting that “The idea has already started raising privacy alarm bells”, and quoting Alex Gannett, founder of CampusSplash: “This year will mark the end of static pricing. The use of your tweets, credit score, and web history in e-commerce pricing is frightening – but ultimately unavoidable.”

Yet behavioural pricing has existed (albeit in more simple forms) for hundreds of years: physical stores will alter their prices based on the demographic of its patrons; seasonal items are priced according to demand, and sales and offers are designed to appeal to certain markets.

In the Daily Mail article, Gannett describes behavioural pricing as a “consumer’s worst nightmare, a merchant’s dream”. Well of course it’s a merchant’s dream – social networks offer brands phenomenally-detailed insight into the wallets of their customers – but is ‘worst nightmare’ a little strong? Could your personal data really work against you in such a fiendish fashion?

No. It is likely that companies will try to capitalise on the behavioural pricing bandwagon – making money is their end goal, obviously – but the existence of hundreds of price comparison sites, coupled with many brands pushing the ‘lower price/more sales’ mantra means that the idea that consumers will be forced into paying higher prices, because of a single Facebook ‘like’, is absurd.

After all, these scare stories work on the assumption that online shoppers are simply heteronomous droids. The reality is that consumers perpetuate the F-commerce machine, and if they feel they’re being cheated they’ll simply go elsewhere.

Matt McAlister, Director of Digital Strategy at Guardian Media Group, spoke at the SMI11 conference about the future of social, mobile and local targeting – or “SoMoLo” for short – and its impact on communities a few months back. We caught up with McAlister again this week to discuss the beta launch of n0tice, which The Guardian itself calls a type of online community noticeboard, a hyper-local forum where you can “post details about forthcoming events or let people know you have something to sell or share.”

Think of it as Twitter meets Craigslist meets Patch.com, except that the content comes from switched-on locals. And from the looks of it, n0tice.com will be in your neighborhood long before Patch. It’s steadily growing in the UK, but also has outposts in places like Moscow too. Bobbie Johnson at Gigaom notes, “it’s certainly a departure for The Guardian, which has largely focused on content over platforms — and the end result is a hybrid with some serious potential.”

Here’s McAlister to explain its origins and that potential:

McAlister: The idea came out of a Guardian hack day.  I just wanted to know how location worked on th e phone.  It turns out that the modern browser has location-aware features in it whether that’s on a phone or desktop.  It’s really easy to work with.

So, I immediately started thinking about the impact of this technology on news with an eye toward openness and participation and all the things we’ve been trying to do at the Guardian. The more I worked on it the more my head started spinning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  I realized that this could be the way to make citizen journalism come alive, finally.  And I also knew that the classifieds business model could be reimagined to work side-by-side with it.

Then last spring while domain hunting we found the name n0tice.  Everything just fell into place after that.  We started looking at the role of the noticeboard in the real world, the way they just naturally work, and how everyone just understands them.  That was a big turning point for us…we wanted to reimagine how a noticeboard would work in a SoLoMo world.

From here I can imagine that a large collaborative network starts to form where all kinds of interesting noticeboards appear.  Some will be location-based like we’ve already seen in many places in the UK and now globally like Moscow, Pakistan and Brazil..  Some will be interest based like birdwatching and music.  Some will be used for organizations like schools and mother’s groups.

But one of the strengths of the platform is that we can help each of these things feed each other.  So, the more noticeboards and participants in the network, the stronger every other noticeboard will get. Then if we can make it easy for noticeboard owners to make money as hosts of their community then things will get really interesting.

SMI: How many participants are there at the moment? In your estimation, is their a “magic number” of participants that you need to achieve a kind of network effect with a platform like this?

McAlister: We obviously hope it grows really big, but it doesn’t need huge numbers to work. The white label hosted versions of n0tice that we call noticeboards make it easy to provide n0tice in niche communities.  And the user experience starts to feel useful even with just a handful of participants in a local area.  Because of those 2 things, the noticeboards and local UX, n0tice can work as a mainstream, generalist service while still feeling like a personally relevant, niche-level service.

McAlister: The problem is that the social networks are so dependent on personal contacts that local issues get lost in the noise.  Local media has been innovating around citizen journalism with many successes, but their discoveries rarely get amplified beyond the project participants.  n0tice can join up both local media and people interested in participating in covering stories wherever they are in the world regardless of the social platform.

McAlister: If the technologies and user experiences of today’s SoLoMo world are all about Who, What, Where and When, then the commerce and advertising models that win in the new world are going to optimize for Who, What, Where and When.  We’ll certainly see many current and old models refactored before the SoLoMo-native services emerge and define the new landscape. The n0tice advertising model, featured classified listings based on space and time, may fit more in the former camp at the moment, but we should be in a good position to evolve that idea.

For some, their local barista is a lifeline into a busy day. Without the perfectly-poured coffee, stuff just doesn’t get done, days are spent in a fog of sleepiness and Monday mornings feel like black holes of stress and woe. For facilitating your amazing transformation from gibbering idiot to fully-functioning achiever, the person behind the counter at your regular coffee haunt deserves a medal.

In absence of a government-sanctioned barista recognition system, though, and where a hefty tip and big beaming ‘thank you’ just isn’t enough, there’s We&Co, a new iPhone app soft-launched last month that allows customers to provide thanks to service staff, individually by name.

Built on the Foursquare API, profiles are portable from job to job or among current jobs, so service staff can build up their personal ‘brands’. If they’re customer service heroes then they, their employers and everyone frequenting their place of employment will know it – no doubt very welcome news to service staff, who can often feel taken for granted or irrelevant.

With the strap line ‘Thank different’, We&Co aims to enhance the relationship between customers and service employees, and allow people to build a ‘little black book’ of great servers, as well as discovering their friends’ favorites. It adds a long-term benefit to the simple act of purchasing goods, too, as this post notes on We&Co’s Facebook page:

The coolest thing has started to organically happen using We&Co. When I ask service professionals for their names they’ll innately ask me for mine. Now, when I walk into my ‘regular spots’ they actually welcome me by MY name! It’s like we’re old pals! I now want to tip them more, learn more about them, and continue to want to come back.

Like Foursquare, there are a number of achievements to be unlocked and perks gained, too. Employees can become the ‘boss’ of their business if they receive the most thanks over a 30-day period, and users can receive personalized perks from their favorite employees.

But it’s not just about coffee and sandwiches. We&Co has opened its platform up to Thank911Heroes, so that users may individually thank the people that displayed truly selfless, heroic behaviour during the September 11 attacks – an innovative way for people to display their gratitude for actions during this horrendous period, and one which also depicts the expansion potential of the We&Co model.

In its first month, 6,000 users signed up to We&Co and by all accounts the model has some substantial marketing backing. A web-version is on the cards, as is an Android model, and the brand plans to hit 100,000 downloads in the next couple of months.

The potential for We&Co to integrate social media and real life relationships is huge, and if it takes off your morning coffee experience will leave you full of warm fuzzy feelings, as well as that much-need caffeine boost.

As London descended into chaos last night, social media became the focus for following the riots’ latest developments.

The medium came under attack for propagating false rumours and as such helping to incite further waves of violence, but nonetheless remained crucial in delivering immediate updates where many other resource-stretched news sources fell behind. Shocking footage depicting violence and looting in the south west district of Clapham appeared on Youtube and was circulated around the internet nearly an hour and a half before BBC news was able to verify events in the area:

However, while Twitter has been used as a vehicle for organizing the riots, it’s also been used by communities desperate to put an end to the violence and reclaim their city, usually known for its tolerance, creativity and spirit.

#riotcleanup appeared around 12.45am in a tweet from @BenDylan, which was retweeted over 100 times. Use of the hashtag increased overnight, with tweeters organising to meet in fire-torn Clapham the following morning. Over 200 people, ‘armed with brooms’, arrived at 9am to begin cleaning up Clapham’s wrecked streets:

But it wasn’t just Clapham that saw this astounding display of community. Shortly after the #riotcleanup hashtag appeared, @riotcleanup went live and a website detailing clean up efforts around affected areas of London followed shortly thereafter. In just over 13 hours, @riotcleanup has amassed 73,000 followers, all of which are sharing clean up stories, photographs and, crucially, a much-needed sense of spirit and positivity at this dark time:

Picture by @Rickontour

London is currently bracing itself for a fresh wave of riots; police have been drafted in from as far afield as Yorkshire and people are being warned to stay indoors this evening. These are some of the worst riots the capital has seen since the 1980s – the difference is that this time around, thanks to social media, communities are able to mobilise quickly against the terrible impact of the actions of a relative few.

Despite the recent sale of MySpace for a meager $35 million and LinkedIn’s rocky ride so far on the stock market, search engine giant Google has decided it wants a piece of the lucrative social networking pie, and last week launched Google+ to much fanfare. Oh, it’s also made a big green announcement last week that’s gone lost in all the geeky “Plus” buzz.

Like the most popular social networks out there, Google+ (in limited trials on an invite-basis only) allows you to share timely updates with friends, and you can post videos of amusing cat antics (and other relevant, topical content) to select groups of friends, rather than having all your friends seeing all your activity, which is a 1-up on Facebook. With areas of the platform named things like ‘+Spark’ and ‘+Circles’, it’s a little difficult to comprehend (and of course that innocuous ‘+’ has devout hashtaggers banging their fists on the table), but talk of the site has dominated online chit chat since its launch.

And Google has been busy, it would seem, as it also recently made a hugely important announcement about its research into energy innovation and climate change. Already major investors in solar energy, Google, as dot-coms go, excels in the environmental arena, and as such its revelation that transitioning to more climate-friendly policies could lower carbon emissions by 21 percent by 2030 should have been big news. But it wasn’t, because Google made the announcement, via its philanthropic Google.org, on the same day that it launched Google+. On the same day.

In addition to that substantial slash in carbon emissions, Google found that with the right policy implementation:

• The US could increase its GDP by $244 billion a year
• Nearly 2 million new jobs a year until 2030 would be created
• The US could save $3.2 trillion in total by 2050
• Oil consumption could be lowered by 1.1 billion barrels of oil per year

In order to come to these conclusions, Google has made some fairly substantial assumptions about energy costs, and agrees that some ‘aggressive’ action is required, but these are big, big numbers which deserve at least to share the spotlight with a piece of software that only select technology big-wigs can play with.

As such, a few dozen eco-related publications, such as the New York Times’ Green blog, picked up on the planet-saving news while virtually every tech and business publication in the world wrote about Google+.  It’s a shame as there’s a cool, interactive calculator that launched alongside the news that allows individuals to test various carbon impacts. Alas, there’s been very little buzz for anything other than Google+ so it’s unclear if anyone’s running the numbers on their own. (If they are, they certainly aren’t talking about it.)

Of course, it makes sense for a business of Google’s nature to play the cards that will bump up the bottom line, but what use is that when – as Google itself illustrates through its environmental work – planet Earth is quickly facing the same fate as MySpace?

Google’s complete report, Clean Energy Innovation, is available here.

Venture capitalists are back, funding privately-held firms in the United States alone to a tune of $5.9 billion in first quarter of 2011.

That’s the highest Q1 rate of investment in start-ups in the past three years, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers Money Tree report. The big winners are the usual suspects: software, energy, biotech and media & entertainment.

But what about social media, we wondered? To be sure, SM is a hybrid that is heavily invested in the sectors above, along with recruitment, retail, marketing, and, through the burgeoning social business sector, professional services. We couldn’t find a definitive report on social media funding so we decided to put together our own. That’s what this report, SMI Guide to Social Media Funding, endeavours to show: where the money is flowing in social.

Download the full SMI Social Funding Guide

We tallied:
•    56 deals in the U.S., Europe and Asia during the first quarter of 2011.
•    These social media companies raised $2.52 billion in funding in Q1. We looked at April, 2011 monthly funding levels ($1.35 billion) and from that it seems that Q2 is on pace to out-gain Q1.
•    The biggest deal? Yep, Facebook at $1.5 billion. The smallest: $1 million to Backtype.com.

We’ve broken up the social media universe into seven categories and in this report will be exploring each, sector-by-sector, pointing out which investment trends are hot with investors right now and which companies are hot in those sectors.

The sectors are:
•    Social networks
•    Social Commerce
•    Apps & Tools
•    Social Business
•    Social/Digital Marketing
•    Social Gaming
•    Data Analytics

You can download the full Social Media Funding special report here:

By Andrew Shotland

Google launched +1 [on March 30], basically its answer to Facebook’s Like button. When you click on a “+1? icon displayed on a URL, it shows up in Google search results when you are signed in. And if you have social connections within the Google empire (e.g., Gmail contacts) you will see which of your connections has +1?d the URL. While I am digesting the possibilities I thought it might be helpful to summarize some initial reads on the +1:

Meet +1: Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button – Danny Sullivan

Google did say that if someone does a +1 on a web page, then that will show up to others who find that page in search results. That’s going to be a huge bribe, in my view, for getting wide adoption of these buttons on web sites.

Now Google Social Search will gain +1 recommendations, content that people are explicitly recommending using Google’s +1 buttons. Google Social Search remains, but in addition to the first two items below, it now gains a third feature:

Show content created by those in your social network
Show content shared by those in your social network
Show content recommended by those in your Google +1 network
Social search signals, including the new +1 recommendations, will also continue to influence the first two things below plus power the new, third option:

Influence the ranking of results, causing you to see things others might not, based on your social connections
Influence the look of results, showing names of those in your social network who created, shared or now recommend a link
Influence the look of results, showing an aggregate number of +1s from all people, not just your social network, for some links

What’s +1 mean for Facebook? A very good chance that Facebook’s seeming monopoly on how people “like” pages will be over.

Google’s Answer to Facebook Likes: +1 – Om Malik

For the longest time, Google has resisted the idea of human interference in its flagship offering: search (and advertising.) Lately, thanks to the fast growing volume of information and rising importance of social validation, the search giant is changing its tune and is reluctantly embracing humans.

Google’s +1 A Potential Boon To Paid Search Marketers – Greg Sterling

According to Christian Oestlien, Google’s Group Product Manager for Ads, +1 will appear on all Google search ads by default.

And if advertisers use organic URLs in their ads that have already been +1?d, they also will show up in the ads. And according to Greg:

Pluses will be counted as one of the signals that Google eventually uses to determine organic rankings.

Sure, I Could Join a Google-Based Social Network, but Why? – Mathew Ingram

everything the company does is still seen through the lens of search, which is why it has so much trouble understanding how social features work (see Buzz) and sees social as something that can be “bolted on” to its existing services.

On one hand I am concerned that the propagation of +1s onto the SERPs is going to clutter the results display, making it potentially more confusing. On the other hand, I see the benefit of getting recommended results in the SERPs as long as they are not gamed…too much.

More thoughts to come after we’ve seen some +1’s out in the wild.

This column originally ran on the BIA Kelsey blog. Andrew Shotland tweets at @localseoguide.

The evolution of online video, you could say, took a step backwards last week with Warner Bros. stepping up as the first Hollywood studio to cut a Facebook distribution deal, streaming rentals of “The Dark Knight” for three bucks a pop. To some online video experts, it’s not the price tag, but the experience that has them grumbling. Batman fans are confined to viewing the entire film off-site, on Facebook.
Hollywood execs no doubt are not thrilled with this arrangement. But the chance to reach 600 million fans is what they’re really after and so they’ll take the less than ideal viewing experience and let Facebook play manager of this virtual movie cinema. You can imagine that Warner Bros. execs would love the chance to stream trailers of the studio’s upcoming flicks too, but Facebook, it appears, has the final say here.

One tech firm that believes strongly in tapping the power of Facebook, but on a company’s own terms, is Prague-based KIT Digital, a specialist in online video delivery platforms. It provides online and mobile video delivery for over 2,000 clients, some of whom are large broadcasters such as Sky News and NBC. KIT Digital used to be known primarily as a builder of state-of-the-art broadcast centers. Now, through through the acquisition of KickApps, Kyte and Paris-based Kewego, it also builds video-enabled social networks for enterprises and brands, the latter can be done at a Web or mobile domain or on the social web, explains Alex Blum, COO of KIT. (Blum had been the CEO of KickApps before KIT bought it at the end of January).

When Blum spoke to SMI recently he was adamant that brands do not have to give up full control of the user experience to Facebook should they want to tap the social web. In essence, this is what Warner Bros has sacrificed with its Dark Knight movie rental venture. “You can build a Facebook experience that mimics what is on the domain and vice versa, a Facebook fanpage experience that sits on the domain,” Blum explained. “That’s what we do.”

In such a way, the branded social network would allow a brand to do all the things Facebook uers do – comment, share, recommend and like content – and the brands gets to keep the data analytics as it occurs. And what is getting KIT Digital more interest is the ability to build these communities on Facebook, too, collecting the data on users as it happens rather than waiting for the select detail to trickle through from Facebook. “A KIT digital customer can track engagement in a single analytics dashboard,” Blum explained.

Another driver is the appeal of online video for enterprises inside and outside of the workplace. A combination of factors – cloud computing, more powerful broadband, fully networking smart devices, even HD flip video cameras – are driving this push, Blum said, with powerful results. For example, many clients are using video to communicate internally new initiatives, new hires and new products, and they are finding it is quicker and easier to say it with video. “This is new age of everything being done in real time,” Blum said. “This is going to be, in our view, the norm.”

So maybe the future of online video will be a lot duller than Hollywood. It could very well come from the Human Resource team telling you about a new hire.

The NFL continues its blitz on building up its non-American fan base in a geeky way, this time teaming with Foursquare to create a virtual Super Bowl party for the big game on Sunday early Monday morning.

Here’s how Fourquare explains the initiative:

This year, we have some super exciting news for all you football fans: we’ve teamed up with the NFL for the biggest sporting event of the year – Super Bowl XLV! We wanted to give the entire foursquare community a chance to gather together, so we’ve created our first global venue, Super Bowl Sunday. Foursquare users around the world can check into the largest Super Bowl party – ever!

Football fans, Foursquare explains, can earn a special Super Bowl badge that entitles them to 20% off products in the NFL shop.

TechCrunch predicts it will be “the most checked-in venue of all time when all is said and done.” Maybe so. We’d have liked to see it unveiled in time for last summer’s World Cup. Maybe in 2014.

Good news, Dodgeball Google Latitude fans. After a quiet stretch when we thought Google might just give up on Latitude, the longest running of all geo-location check-in services (if you count its past as Dodgeball), the search king has announced it’s not dead, but instead will be recast as a mobile app that works with Google Maps.

It’s very mobile in that it features automatic check-in and check-out when you reach a destination, plus it delivers notifications when you’re near a business worth checking out. Okay, nothing really new there. The big revamp is that it is built inside Google Maps for Android users which gives Google a crucial edge over pesky upstarts Gowalla, Foursquare and, ahem, Facebook – scale. In order for location-based check-in services to be really worthwhile they need lots of users, and, crucially, lots of people you know. Surprisingly, Google says it has that bit covered. It claims to have 10 million active monthly users (twice as much as Foursquare). Foursquare though still has one ace up its sleeve – the point-scoring gaming element, a huge draw with devotees. Google instead is pulling out the maps technology to appeal to geo-geeks. We’ll let them explain the rest: