The power of your competing with your friends for trophies has been a force since man first evovled from ape. Whoever killed the biggest animal fed the most people, and gained fame throughout the land. Today there are many trophies, many competitions and most of us have a bunch of friends. In today’s world of hyper connectivity, we can stay in touch with friends and acquaintances just as if they lived across the hall. This leads us to follow our innate competitive instincts and make a bunch of stuff over which we can compete peacefully. In this hyer-connected world, we have many examples of how games and trophies become popular, sought after and create successful businesses. The NFL is based on competition, Major League Baseball, UEFA,  The Olympics, all multi-billion dollar businesses built around the peaceful exploitation of competition.

But there are other levels of competition, ranging from who has the nicest car, to who has the most followers on Twitter. Us crazy people spend hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars and massive resources to win the imaginary trophies that the world offers to us. But alot of these games are fun, meaningless ways to interact with your friends and associates. Zombie Toss on Facebook, ReTweeting and now the ultimate example - Foursquare.

Foursquare captures all the potential of Twitter, and makes a fun game around who can go to more places and “check in” You can become the mayor of your favorite coffee shop, win badges for hitting multiple spots in a night, and show off your badges to all of your hermit friends. The intriguing game of checking in and badges is only the front of what could become a brilliant business idea, and I believe will capture the potential value of twitter to many of the small businesses staring aimlessly at a little baby-blue bird.

What Twitter first started out as, and what got me intrigued was the ability to broadcast where I am, to the people who cared. Now Twitter has become much more than that, but Foursquare takes that fundamental use-case, and makes a fun game out of it. It tracks and records where I go, how often I go, and withwhom I go (of course, only when I tell it). This information is absolutely invaluable to small businesses. Deli’s can learn their customers favorite sandwiches, discover problems in their offerings, and find out who their best customers really are. Then they could be able to send out offers to those customers who “checked in” They could build an email database to lure those customers back in. There are so many business applications to Foursquare, so many more obvious ones than for Twitter itself, I would buy Foursquare if I were Twitter - like tomorrow.

Foursquare is a fun application that takes human nature’s desire to see their friends and show off their trophies and turns it into a desire to go out more, tell the world where they are and win some meaningless badges. But all that adds up to great data for small businesses, great marketing opportunities for those businesses and a whole bunch more percieved immediate value than simple twitter feeds (to small businesses). Instead of trolling through twitter searches, I can just go to my business page on Foursquare and see what people are saying - and who’s coming.

I have several great takeaways from Foursquare’s app, but really its fun and it makes me want to go out more so I can check in again. Who doesn’t like badges?

The holidays are a time of traveling, eating gift giving and spending time with Family. I turned off the blackberry for a few days and tried to avoid any lcd screens (other than my tv, because I crush James Bond during breaks). It was brilliant. I feel refreshed and ready to get back to work, of which I have plenty.

Of course it didn’t work entirely. My mom and brother got new iPods. My dad got a new all in one charging dock and in place  of Christmas cards, we sent hundreds of photos out digitally to the extended family. I was needed for all of these actions and had to troubleshoot a Picasa issue that was not letting my Dad share photos properly.

The point of this post is to layout some predictions for 2009. I have been way to immersed in my own technology recently and I really don’t know enough about emerging technologies to comment on which ones will be the most famous next December. But I do know that digital is going to be it. Everyone is going to realize that the cost-effective power of the internet is actually something to take advantage of - not just to talk about how “neat” or “cool” it is.

Heads of businesses are going to adapt or get passed by leaner more efficient companies. Layers of Presidents and Vice Presidents that clog the business process are going to be gone. Large excessive manufacturing is going to begin to disappear. Newspapers will realize that spending millions of dollars printing papers is not cost effective and actually do something about it.

The power of the internet will become mainstream in 2009.

Yes today the internet is mainstream, everyone uses it from time to time. Most everyone uses email frequently and people can find things they need with Google. But everyday people are going to realize all the great benefits of the internet. The communication mediums that it has created (blogs, facebook, twitter, etc) and not just look at them and say “wow, this technology is really cool. look how many people use it!” but they will sit down and actually use it themselves to make something worthwhile and relevant. Average users will take advantage of the really cool tools the “web 2.0″ world has made us. They will make their business process more efficient. To gain new customers. To make new “real” friends. Even to buy real world virtual goods.

I’m not in tune enough to tell you whos going to be behind all the great apps and widgets. I just feel very strongly that it will be 2009 that makes it all mainstream.

Not necessarily you, but alot of people out there who are responsible for making decisions based around incorrect or misused information. “Well we just got our new RSS feed live so we are on the forefront of the the online game.” “Our online advertising needs are being met by our facebook page because (insert 3 random and conflicting facts about facebook here).” We just placed a large buy with the local paper’s website, so we are all set for now.”

All three of these are actual comments I’ve heard from advertising prospects in the past week. Of course we get turned down, we’re not perfect, but it is frustratingly amusing when I hear these responses. “No, we don’t need your services because we have this other program that isn’t measurable and entirely different from your program. But what is it you do again?” The beauty of the internet is that it is measurable, fixable, flexible, adaptable, etc. But just because you can measure 37 different variables on your latest campaign doesn’t mean you’ll get the data you want.

I’m digressing from my point. I sometimes feel like half of the people out there using new technologies are like 16 year olds with out their license cruising around in a Lamborghini - they don’t know what they hell they’re talking about. Sure your RSS feed is nice to have, and I’m happy to hear that you have a blog for your business, and I’m impressed that you have taken the time to build a facebook page. But your facebook page has 2 fans, and the last time your wrote on your blog was December - what is a new feed going to do for your business?

My point is, just because you have something fancy, doesn’t mean you’re using it right. Technology is not a money tree, you have to use it wisely and there isn’t just one way to do that.

Over the past week several of the major players online have announced the opening of their social networks. MySpace’s “Data Availability,” Facebook Connect, and Google’s Friend Connect. While I am slightly skeptical about the immediate implications of these new applications, the long term ramifications are huge. I have been searching for a way to prevent users from creating a new login, a new identity, and the overall hassle of creating another account with in our community. And here I am today with several options before me.

Of course, in typical media war (in this case social media) fashion, everyone is quick to announce their latest and greatest new development, with out actually releasing it.

“We expect that Facebook Connect will be available publicly within the next several weeks.” - Facebook Official Release;

“With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One),” - Official Google Release;

these both come a few days after MySpace’s annoucement regarding their new data availability program. The reason for the haste, is fairly obvious, but it is absurd nonetheless. I digress…

The huge potential impact of these new programs brings a solution to many developers’ and publishers’ dilemmas: “how do we reach social users with out disrupting them out of their routines?” Well here it is, now we can allow users to log in using their original passwords, allow them to quickly, easily, and natively bring their friends with them and truly build on the idea of an open social network and create true connectability across websites.

I am extremely excited about this and will have at least one if not all three of these new technologies up and running as soon as they become available and I have a chance to figure them out.

Ahh, the cure for my login addictions (well, maybe not..)

Do you have log in addiction? I’m pretty sure that everyone I know has log in addiction, and the growing influence of social media online is only compounding our problems. Do you find yourself refreshing gmail to see if you have any new emails? Logging into facebook to check the updates? Refreshing your homepage to check for any updates on your RSS? I do, and so do you.

Seemingly every day I come across something new to sign up for, log in to, and then gage my response from. Do any of these applications actually add value to my life? - That is the question on many people’s mind these days, but does it really matter? As all of these new sharing programs emerge and millions of people are logging in every day, what is the world coming to?

My question is how will all of this ever be monetized? There is no way to charge for it, because users will immediately reject that and move to a similar and equally useful/less service that is free. Do we fill the application with advertising? If so, how do we measure the value and effectiveness of these ads? Will marketers really want to pay to reach these tiny niche markets that have suddenly become giant flat, almost muddy, fields?

As I sit here writing this I have 5 other tabs open on my screen, all of them require a log in, a sign up, an email, a profile, something to connect me to all of the anonymous users out there pleasantly sucked in by their ceaseless need to log in. But what is the value of this to me? To you? Facebook has billions of pageviews a month, yet they are losing money. Sure the potential value of those views is huge, but how will they make it happen. What will be done to address these revenue models?

Five websites I’m on. Simultaneously. Two of them have advertising on them. Three of them do not. Why do these websites exist, and how are they going to make money.

If you build it they will come… well if they come, how will you get them to stay long enough to make money? The answer is simple - login addiction. We love connecting ourselves so much, in this increasingly disconnected world, that we will try anything that is fresh, cool and can keep us in touch with the people we care about.

Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, Blogs, Forums, Chat Rooms, Twitter, YouTube, on and on and on, until we stop liking each other. Oh, by the way, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed…