Foursquare Goes to School

It looks like Harvard may turn out to be the epicenter of all things from the social web. Urban legend has it that it was there that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg borrowed discussed developed the true beginnings of today’s social networking giant. Now foursquare has struck a deal with the school to have a ‘branded’ version of the product.

Foursquare has been busy cutting deals as of late that range from business applications to good causes. The deal with Harvard is interesting for sure as TechCrunch elaborates

Harvard is the first university to use Foursquare to help its students explore the campus, the school notes today in its paper. Foursquare has set up a special Harvard page on the site that includes a special logo, and a series of tips. If you follow this special account, you’ll be able see and contribute to all the tips for the school involving the various venues on campus.

“We believe that Harvard’s participation will allow our community to engage with friends, professors, and colleagues in new ways. We also hope visitors and neighbors will benefit from the platform as it grows through use,” Harvard’s digital director of communications tells the schools’ paper. The paper explains how students can earn mayor badges by checking-in to venes, and earn points by leaving these tips. Foursquare apparently made a special Harvard Yard badge to mark the partnership. Students that check-in a certain number of places on campus will see it.

You can see where something like this is heading from a revenue standpoint. The more that foursquare becomes ingrained in the community of Harvard or any other affinity group the more likely it is to be sold as a marketing vehicle to that audience. Of course, there is fear that marketing and advertising might ruin the fun but I think we are all getting over this free nonsense. Free is a beautiful entrée (entrance not meal) into markets but it doesn’t pay the bills or the payroll in the long run.

I would love to hear from our readers about how they use / interact with foursquare because I will be honest I have never used the service. I am not the right demographic and that’s more than fine with me. As a marketer, however, it doesn’t matter whether I use it or not. It only matters that I understand what value is derived by foursquare’s users. Heck, if we had to all be full-on users of every tool out there in order to be ‘legit’ no one would get any work done.

So you foursquare fanatics check in and give us your location opinion.

Facebook Sued for Stifling Competition, Click Fraud

It’s a saga we’re all familiar with by now: create a pretty awesome web service, start a trend, become a media sweetheart, make lots of money (VC or acquisition), get slapped with a lawsuit. Or two. Or fifty billion. Facebook added two more lawsuits to its heap recently: a countersuit from Power.com and a click fraud proceeding.

Facebook filed suit against Power.com in December. Facebook claimed the one-stop social-media aggregator was infringing upon their copyright, violating their TOS and scraping proprietary data. At the time, we weren’t sure whether “proprietary data” included user information.

Power.com finally decided not to take this sitting down. TechCrunch reports that Power.com has now filed a countersuit, claiming Facebook is “unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things.”

Facebook also faces legal action from RootZoo, an erstwhile advertiser. After analytics from their Nov 2007-June 2008 campaign varied greatly from Facebook’s reported data, RootZoo requested Facebook’s logs and a refund. Facebook said no to both.

RootZoo’s complaint uses 2 June 2008 as an example of the discrepancies between the two. While Facebook reported 804 clicks on their ads, RootZoo’s analytics programs show 300 clicks from the social networking giant.

While there have been rumblings about Facebook click fraud for some time, this is the first suit in the matter.

What do you think? Does Facebook have anything to worry about from these legal claims against it? Is there anyway to avoid getting slapped with lawsuits once people see you’re making some money?

Schmidt Says Google Looking to Buy Some Little Guys

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Fox Business Network that Google is in the market to buy smaller technology players. For most this comes as no surprise. In fact, with all the cash that Google has it may be a surprise that there is not more buzz concerning acquisitions especially considering the favorable valuation environment that exists currently.

Reuters reports that the company has particular targets

Schmidt said, Google plans to focus on the cloud, mobile, and open source distribution of software in the next year.

Schmidt further clarified the philosophy

“We primarily look for technology. It’s a typical build versus buy. How long does it take us to build it with our engineers, versus there are already engineers in this other company that have built this thing.”

This philosophy is taking a page from the Cisco Systems who has been purchasing smaller technology players who have developed a technology that makes sense in the grand scheme for the networking giant. Since its early days Cisco has made over 130 acquisitions. Will Google follow the same line of thinking?

To listen to Schmidt, what they are doing is just business as usual

“We have been (looking to acquire),” Schmidt said. “We have been wandering around looking at all of the different companies. With the big ones we haven’t come across anything we’ve particularly liked. We are definitely talking to a number of smaller companies but we’ve done that routinely.”

So if you are small company with a nifty technology that might be attractive to one of the most influential companies in the world, tighten up your preso and reach out to Mr. Schmidt. Of course, whether you catch him in Mountain View or Washington, DC may depend on where he can best advance the cause of Google the greater good.

Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!