Poken represent a perfect example about what are working all big player in the market about it like as Apple, Google and all players can tracking your activities like as Credit Cards company or the connection carriers.

Anyway waiting the big player are ready with their sandbox, Poken represent now the only one complete technology ready to offer complete UX in the market. The application are huge, from promotional event, to social, to the in-Store experience, Tourism (italian edition of iMagazine), education, and more.

The future of the business is on self-tracking and sharing.

Livestand is your living magazine app, where the news and stories you care about come to life with visually stunning photos and videos. Explore its publications for breaking headlines, celebrity news, sports, or whatever you’re into—as you’ve never seen it. You’ll lose yourself for hours with its electrifying images and captivating content. Livestand is the ultimate tapping, scrolling, and swiping magazine experience!

Features:
• Inline videos and photo galleries are displayed in a unique way always tailored to what will look best on the iPad.
• Fresh Content: Articles, photos, and video update constantly. Headline news, stock quotes, and Twitter feeds update automatically.
• Make It Personal: Create your own “Personal Mix” magazine of your favorite topics from Yahoo! and around the web, whether it’s science headlines or the latest design trends.
• All About You: With Yahoo! Today, exclusive to Livestand, you get a personalized serving of your daily basics: weather, stocks, horoscope, and TV. Add the titles you want to “My Library”.
• Up To Four Unique Profiles: Everyone in your family can have their own personal Livestand on the same iPad.
• Spread The News: Share your favorite articles by email or on Facebook right from Livestand.

This argument is everyday more present especially now where Facebook introducing the Timeline profile page. This is particularly important for define officially the start of Self-tracking hera, because Facebook finally focus his attention is the most important function: track your life.

Facebook always more will be not a ‘Social Network’ but looks more like as the ‘Social Tracking’ platform where everybody track their activities, movement, think and relations. The Facebook will be your International ID and life tracking tools for be able to share your information with other products and service when you want it.

“Some months ago Facebook acquire the App/company of Nicholas Felton, famous info graphic designer. This project call Daytum was a Self-tracking white app”

I know many people scream at this idea but this will be the future because it’s a Human Behavior and it will drive the business. The humans always track, write or leave sign about their actions, think, dream and culture sometimes on paper, other times on rocks and most recently in the digital space of the web.

All biggest business player in any sector already start to invest to define new solution for self-tracking like as Adidas and many other are ready to introduce their solutions on the market like as the Digital Wallets.

With the platform provide self-tracking a new pitch social business born: that of interpret all this huge datas and maybe remember you it though a specific function, service or User Experience flow.

A fanny sample are two sample find recently about tool show you what you have done, the first is 7YearsAgram and 4sq7yearsasgram.

But the Analytic Challenge of self-tracking is no new. Viewzi (not dead) was a cool project on the web try to visualize infographic & timeline about your social Network activities. ( an other similar project was Revisit )
Are many the projects in this way someone think too to be able to foresee financial crisis though the social networks behaviors and analytic, other try to understand the emotional status of a country though twitter.

What is true the capabilities to analyze and use this information for provide new service and product will be the next step of Social Influence products and service on Digital.

This is an unusual article without specific interpretation but just a for leave a consideration about what are happing now on the market.

Zoosk is announcing revenue numbers, reporting that the startup has grown its annual sales run rate approximately 250% in 2010 to more than $90 million. That’s up from $20 million in revenue in 2009. – Zooks

Some big brand just for introduce you in this market:

- Match.com
- eHarmony
- Lavalife
- Matchmaker.com
- Chemistry.com
- Plentyoffish
- OkCupid
- Date.com
- Zoosk

These are probably the most important brands for Dating Sites without consider all the other social networking platforms where often many relations and dating beginning inside them. Some of most popular between adult and Teens:

- Facebook
- hi5
- Bebo
- Orkut
- Ning
- Gaia Online

Take in consideration of the Half or US Adults now use Social Networks and the use of them daily grow.

[T]ake a look below at the steep curve of the user growth rate in all age ranges and demographics, and the continuing pervasiveness of social networking into every facet of work, play and life in general. It’s hard to argue that social media hasn’t changed forever how we interact and connect online. – Search Engine Journal

I take the opportunity to talk about Social Network dating sites (because probably are the perfect place where see the best Social-interaction ideas) after have discover f*Buddies site.

F-Buddies site try to satisfy one of probably most diffuse questions of everybody especially when you are teenager (and not sometimes). Who like me?
The site using your Facebook profile information (Friends network) give you the opportunity to ‘check’ the people with your I’d like have a ‘friend-relations with Benefits’ in a total anonymous way. You can discover who choose you only if you have expressed the same preference.

The real basic flow and in the sometime the great engage it offer is an unbelievable sample of Social Model interaction where it meet the ‘Community request’.

But F-Buddies is not the only one site interesting who exploring new Social Interaction model. OkCupid (Recently by Match.com for 50 Millions Cash) manage a daily User traffic of 558K worldwide and the difference and value versus other competitors is the quantity of innovative solutions based on the Gamification-model it offer for ‘discover’ new people.

• QuickMatch: A basic tool to Skip & Rate someone (you can spend hours motivated by the pleasure to discover always new person)
• Who View me: Basic function notify to you who watch your profile
• UGC Badges: Other user can reward you with Badges based on your ‘Soul’
• Local: Who is close to you are looking for someone for spend next friday night or weekend.

Definitively the social dating represent a good sample and lab for interactive matching where the advertising world need to understand and follow a little bit more in terms of behaviors and flow.

Today, I have used Hangout, the brand new G+ feature, to have a contemporary view of YouTube videos with a colleague from another office. It was a test to check features and behaviors. I have started the hangout inviting him.

Hangout Collective Video Viewing

We both can search for a video on YouTube, start it and move forward and backward in the timeline. Our computer microphones are automatically set in mute mode allowing us to fully enjoy the video. A button “Push to Talk” is there if we wish to share opinions. Once pressed, the video’s volume fades down.

Overlay advertising appears simultaneously BUT with different content. On my side Pixmania banner (yesterday I was on Pixmania searching for tech), on my colleague’s side a banner from educational institution.

We both can also inviting other friends from our respective circles, allowing to meet and greet with people we do not know.

Leaving the hangout (I was the “host”), my colleague can stay there finishing to enjoy the video.

Suddenly a connection flashed between my neurons: “Did YouTube started to rent movies?”

I would like to rent a movie and share it with my friends via Google+ Hangout. Do you remember when you went to Blockbuster and invited your friends to a “pizza and movie” night?

Cover image credits: Some rights reserved by boeke

Google is betting that its approach to privacy and extensive control over who you share information with on the network will set Google Plus apart.

The service revolves around a concept of “circles,” (presumably not the same circles that Dante visited). You can create as many circles as you like, for whatever categories you want: for example family, co-workers or biking friends. Above the circles are a slew of thumbnail images of friends and contacts which Google suggests you might want in your social network. To add a person to one of your groups, drag the name into a circle.

If you decide to remove someone from a circle, you simply drag their image out of the circle, at which point the image will explode into a cloud of smoke – one of several whimsical touches in Google Plus.

To use Google Plus you need to create a Google profile. At the very minimum, Google requires that you use your real name and include a photo. Beyond that, you can furnish the profile with as much, or as little, detail about yourself as you want.

You can control how much of your profile is visible to other folks on the network: your name and occupation for some folks; relationship status for others.  Type a person’s name into a box, and you can see what your profile looks like through their eyes.

In a sense, Google Plus combines the Facebook and Twitter models of social networking: You can have friends in your social network with whom you share information, and you can also simply follow certain people, say a movie critic who you don’ t know personally, a la Twitter.

I wanted to share this article with a friend, Diego Bortolato, a successful architect who for many years is following important customers in developing their plans for Retail. He is increasingly focused on innovation in the management of space and form and therefore the creation of new models of in-store UX.

The discussion was friendly and so interesting (even with the different viewpoints) that I decided to include his arguments, because when it comes to interaction its not only about mouse and clicks, but also about dynamics and functions.

“[...] what you’re talking about is happening for some time, catches me quite prepared in this way because I think much to the influence of new devices and interactive technologies on residential and commercial space but most of the tools, the thing that interests me are the inherent principles, the dynamics connected with them. This leads me to hazard hypothesis, and as such will certainly distort, but never mind.”

The ability to convey the brand experience to the retail is part of the strategy of Global User Experience to keep a constant contact with customers and improve the use of product in its usual context.

“[...] the customer enters the store and a simple sensor connected to the smartphone will inform the seller of his arrival for a withdrawal, measurement, and so on. Thestore will become a place of finalizing the sale, will become a place of inter-change humanized and humanizing that require more space to chat, goods will be less standardized and more space for the report, spaces for conversation and sensory areas to see the materials. Assume new customizations and make a date via the web for an update.”

(Your direction Diego somehow reminds me of Steve Jobs’ risky and premature vision for Apple Store in the late ’80s - see image below)

Primi Apple Store Concept Sketch

There are already many cases where big Retail Brands (especially in the fashion industry, see Diesel Cam) develop projects in this direction but the whole market is still in its infancy because the real change materializes when the design of the outlets will consider elements of digital interaction, not only as “furniture” but as carriers of the project for which you need to define a role in the eco-system of the store experience..

“[...] in a positive I guess this means the presence of light hardware (not robots, digital walls, etc.). but something more subtle, structural. Fenomini will see widespread selling, selling as a process that can be easily taken to buying customers, and this is already happening. In the retail system “in toto” there will always be performances of muscle for the brand but also the little shoe shop can and must manage their client from home, inform, exchange views with him. Run of preorders for him, as will the big brands.”

Adidas, Nike and Puma were the first to invest in solutions that enable customers to create their own customized product in stores and collect it on the spot some time later.

The experience gained in 15 years of eStore now seems ready to confront and merge into a new form with the Customer Experience Store, because the potential business begins to take on values ​​that are important in terms of turnover.

“[...] we Adidas and the like, invest large sums, some like the one you saw in the video is at least 50,000 euros, not counting the cost of application development. Great impact, but a purely theatrical use of this support. It ‘s the same thing happened to the giant screens for the first visual reality.

A contribution and relationship with the space very muscular, this happened and will continue to happen with thousands of new shades. Greater integration with thewarehouse, a personal management of the sale from the standpoint of the public is aradical change in the relationship user / buyer with the physical space of the store andthe clerks

The most interesting part was (and still does in reality) the back-end.“

Companies like ZARA and ALL SAINTS in the last 12 months are experimenting with new methods of collaboration between the digital experience outside the store and in-store customer experience by synchronizing the two more ways to create an exact correspondence between what is in store and the one in which there is website, for each geographic area and shop.

This suggests that the tendency is to remove discrepancies between the digital out-store experience and customer in-store experience, even better if the two based on the context in which they are found, can be integrated.

“[...] the bike shop will have plenty of room for bars and for interchange with the mechanics, the mirrors will have virtual fashion, simple but now will also have space for beauty products, seating and not much exposed. (I speakthe small city store )

Great and fundamental importance to acquire the proper design of warehouses, light, color and the food … because in virtualization and full maximum loop iPad, the senses will lead the way for the goods almost disappear from the retail space and slegherà from the slavery of the new model at all costs, you will return to put a measure.

The jeweler will sell its employees, dozens of models, will talk through the web, welcome the customer already knew everything about him, with a rhino app will show the project in the living room of his home / office.“

But this solutions are not only for the big retail brands. Even for small businesses to use interactive displays such as tablet opens horizons for the migration to digital of the traditional streams such as the payment and then tracking the Customer and / or its connection to post-checkout experience / care as example, rewards programs  and/or community collaborative experience.

Several months ago we also reviewed the IKEA Augmented Reality project ( IKEA APP AR ) in which the customer could direct his/her smartphone in their living environment prior to purchasing and evaluate it’s visual impact in the space space.
This is something that requires a lot of time to talk about but this app is certainly a good start.

Thanks again to Diego for the very interesting chat.

Diego Bortolato

Today, more and more with the development of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and many others, these concepts can begin to be implemented in real projects, and when these concepts are applied to the big brands, then it means that’ are sufficiently mature.

Nike Basketball modifies its interface homepage determining priorities based on different type of “noise” generated within the social network when you visit the site. That is the trend of the web determines the look of the Nike site.

Nike is not still the first to explore the “noise”, so that a few months ago, we also cited the example of the Lega Calcio Tuitometro Brazil, PepsiCo  Zeitgeist, or the SXSW Social Media Hell.

First, users who opt into Deals will get to see opportunities specific to their locations. Those offers will arrive via email or, in some cases, will appear in the user’s news feed on Facebook.

To be clear, these aren’t like the checkin-based deals for mobile users that Facebook launched for its nascent Places platform; while the initial mobile Deals product competed with Foursquare, the new product competes more with Groupon.

Each deal will have its own Facebook landing page, as shown in the gallery below. Users can “Like” a deal, share it via several channels on the site or opt to buy it right away. When purchasing the deal, users can pay with credit card or Facebook Credits.

It’s unknown whether Facebook will make more money from Credits purchases than from traditional ones. “We’re not disclosing details about revenue splits, but paying with Credits will work the same way as paying with a credit card,” said a Facebook representative via email. “It’s simply another way for people to pay for Deals. We think this just makes things easier for people using Facebook.”

For know more visit Facebook Blog

SFpark works by collecting and distributing real-time information about where parking is available so drivers can quickly find open spaces.

To help achieve the right level of parking availability, SFpark periodically adjusts meter pricing up and down to match demand. Demand-responsive pricing encourages drivers to park in underused areas and garages, reducing demand in overused areas.

Through SFpark, real-time data and demand-responsive pricing work together to readjust parking patterns in the City so that parking is easier to find.

SFpark is testing its new parking management system at 5,500 of San Francisco’s 26,000 metered spaces and 12,250 spaces in 14 of 20 City-owned parking garages. The pilot phase of SFpark will run until summer 2012. Federal funding through the Department of Transportation’s Urban Partnership Program pays for 80 percent of the SFpark project.