Who's Using Who?

User-generated content might have once been a marketers nightmare, but since the uprising of empowered consumers and social media, user-generated content has taken a step up on the podium to claim first prize.

Since 2008, the growth of smart phones and 3G phones has spurred on the popularity of social media networks because now you could connect anywhere and at your convenience. Evolving past conventional text based communication, photo and video based media has also been on the rise, giving users the opportunity to capture and share content with their friends and subcultures. So is that it? Not exactly.

By definition, user generated content refers to 'material created and uploaded to the web by non-media individuals.' And...it's one of the fastest growing forms of content on the Internet. From review sites to rating sites, comments to blogs, User Generated Content (UGC) has actually been around since the 1980's but only in the last few years has it grown into a phenomenon.

So, if most of what is on the web now is UGC, how can you harness that to build your business? UGC has brought on a new wave of advertising and marketing tools. Some of the opportunities created by UGC is that marketers are now empowered to shape the discussion. The advertiser is now required to talk to the user, creating a dialogue and a platform to 'convince' users of the benefit of their product and really engage with them as an individual rather than just a statistic.

Marketers and advertisers also have the chance to experiment. Because conventional advertising doesn't have the same impact that it used to, an opportunity presents itself to allow advertisers to specifically respond to, talk about or piggy back their solutions and products based on the exact needs and wants of the user.

The only drawback of UGC is that when someone feels free to share their opinion - they can't be censored to only share what is great about a product. They will share the pitfalls and disappointments too. Although this negative feedback does need to be monitored to steer a potentially damaging review, it can also be the chance you were looking for to rectify any misconceptions and gather valuable information and feedback that can help you improve your services.

UGC seems as though it will be here to stay for now. Until of course, the world gets tired of making their own decisions and just want to be told what cereal to buy, phone to use, trip to take. Until then, harness the power of UCG and watch your business grow.

Visit www.hummba.com and share your pictures straight from your phone to the web. come on user...generate.

(Contributor/Writer: Jacques Teichmann)

Super Cool Super Hero

Start of a brand new year and a brand new blog for me. I took over the hummba blog cause I reckon I'd have a few more stories to tell - crazy traveler and all. I'm on a mission to see the most amazing cities in the world and so far, I've done pretty well so far, I've seen over a thousand cities and counting.

I think its time for you and I to get to know each other better so I'm going to tell you why my mobile phone is the one thing I ALWAYS travel with, no matter where I'm going or what time of the year...

Its the ultimate travelers companion. I can do just about anything on my phone and it saves me the hassle of finding an internet cafe to stay in touch. Hummba means that you keep moving, so with my phone I can let all my buddies know where I am and what I'm doing. I fancy myself as a bit of a rogue travel guide so I take geo tagged pictures of my travels and upload my Footprint photo album for everyone to check out. Its a cool way to stay in touch. Hummba is one half mobile application and one half social network for travelers. The cool part is sometimes I get to a city and I don't have any idea about what to see or where to go so I log on to hummba, check out what free audio travel guides are available in the city, download them and BOOM! I'm a city expert/traveling super hero. Its cool. Trust me, or don't - go and try it out for yourself and let me know what the deal is.

To a great adventure! Hope to catch up with you soon.

Jack

1000 Words or More

The holiday season is fast approaching and travel plans are being finalised. Because most of you won't be travelling with every friend and family member you have, it means you'll be leaving some people behind. The good news is that you don't have to with hummba. Taking a Footprint photo album on hummba means that you track your travels and all your photographs are geo tagged to the place they were taken. So? So, your friends and family can experience your holiday without even having to leave the house.

The holiday season also brings out the photographer in all of us, and why not? So, to make sure that your photographs and Footprints are the best possible version of virtual travel for your friends and family, I've included some photography tips to keep you snap happy.

1. Get down on their level. First time photographer want the camera to do all the work but to get really great pics, start moving! Get closer, get down, get the right photo.
2. Use a plain background. The sky is always a good one.
3. Use your flash outdoors. Most camera phones come complete with a flash, try it out - you'll be surprised at the results.
4. Move in close. Don't rely on your zoom - pictures lose quality when you're shooting the folds of elephant flesh a kilometer away. Move in rather than zoom in.
5. Take some vertical photos. Don't be limited to horizontal pics - shake it up.
6. Lock the focus. Find the object that you want to focus on. Start with the obvious at first and see how interesting you can make it.
7. Know your flashes range. Be sure to play with all the functions of your camera phone to know what is possible and what is not.
8. Watch the light. Bad lighting can ruin a photo or even a number of photos taken at the same time, in the same place. Camera phones aren't usually as sophisticated as quality digital cameras so be sure that the light is at the right angle to prevent pics that are so dark you can't make anything out.
9. Move it from the middle. Center your photos at first to get nice, clean, balanced pics.
10. Be a picture Director. Own it. Its your shot, take it the way you want it.

And then, upload them onto hummba.com. A mobile application and social network that lets you upload your geo tagged Footprint photo albums directly from your mobile phone.

Is it the future or just for now?

Mobile applications are one of the whirlwind wonders to bemuse and bewilder the masses. Once pegged as "the future" there have been countless debates about whether or not there is money to be made on the mobile platform.

In a country like South Africa where cell phone charges are some of the highest in the world, its difficult to predict the future of mobile usage and the extent of it. As it is, there are a number of mobile and social networks that are available - the ones that are most readily used are the cheap ones. As a mobile culture, we've managed to overlook the percentage of our salaries we're paying to simply stay connected but we haven't quite forgotten that in this country, it is expensive to use a cell phone.

The scramble to convince mobile manufacturers to take your application as a standard function of the phone is one step in the right direction but there will always be a service provider that will determine the cost to the user to make use of that function.

So the question remains...how will mobile applications make any money? The world over, mobile users aren't prepared to pay extra for functions like mobile apps, certainly not when it comes to subscribing. So what is the answer? I think it would have to come down to some good old fashioned business tricks...

1. Give people what they want
2. Then give them what you've told them they want and finally...
3. Make sure that whatever you're giving them, its a good product.

One of the ways to really harness (and make money) from Mobile applications is to sell location based advertising. Location Based Marketing (LBM) isn't something that has really caught on in SA and it certainly hasn't been made full use of but it is a nice alternative for users who want to choose what they want to expose their wallets to.

It is probably true that as information gets passed onto users at such a high rate, so consumerism is evolving beyond being gullible, easily persuaded or without options. Sure, the good subliminal messages still work but now its time to start engaging with the buyers. They are the ones who hold the purse strings essentially so its time to start talking to them. That's the sentiment when it comes to big businesses engaging on social networks. So go out there, talk to your clients, believe it or not but they do want to hear from you.

Visit www.hummba.com to download hummba to your mobile phone and getting moving!

Do the Locco Mobile

Bloggers speak an unspoken language with other bloggers. We speak Blog, we check updates of our favourites, we secretly crit, we search for ideas and clues about what to write. We're crazy. In short. So my daily walk around cyberspace led me to an article about - yes you guessed it - mobile phones.

Now, I've complained before about the demise of the world and how it has to do with the fact that communication is now almost safer because we can lie to each other digitally and collectively, we're none the wiser. A fellow blogger and I shared the same sentiment briefly. He had a point, he called mobile phones the most intrusive human invention yet.

He professes disgust at the fact that his last few dates couldn't get through starters without checking her phone, how kids in the same vicinity aren't talking to each other but rather to their other friends on MXIT. In essence, he boldly declared that cell phones give us a false sense of importance and in truth...we aren't that important. All true but mobile phones are here to stay. They're our other appendage. Instead of acting as our appendix, they're now our right hand. Make friends is what I say.

I'm still in the infant stages of mobile phone usage, my style is more classic with calls and text messages and the occasional MP3 download. However, I am a fan of the "possibilities." If my hope has to rest on the advances that cell phone technology makes than so be it. We're all playing the Transformers game anyway, in some way or another, so I say...let your cell phone take the heavy end.

One of the most notable advances in cell phone technology is the inclusion of GPS. So now you can bend the truth about where you are verbally...but your GPS co-ordinate doesn't lie. And thank goodness really because now you can use your cell phone in conjunction with hummba.com to become your own personal tour guide while you're on holiday. Visit hummba.com and download FREE audio clips to your GPS enabled phone and what do you know...you'll here all about the Eiffel Tower while trying to construct the perfect pic of you touching the top of it. Good times. But don't take my word for it...its the technology age, the age that never gets old. Visit www.hummba.com for more.