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Dennis Crowley at Mashable Media Summit

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

At the Mashable Media Summit yesterday, Adam Ostrow of Mashable interviewed Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, who got the crowd excited about his company’s plans.

This year, the company raised capital, hired 25 people and made some money. Still, Foursquare has yet to make any profit because, as Crowley explained, being profitable is not a focus right now. Instead the team is focused on innovating new features and building an infrastructure to support their impressive growth.

According to Crowley, the Foursquare team has so many ideas they ran out of whiteboards at the office. For users, this may mean more badges, city travel guides based on your friends’ favorite places, more “to-do” features, the ability to connect with people at your location, retail rewards for check-ins and maybe even another title to strive for in addition to Mayor. For businesses, this may mean more partnership opportunities, more input on badge creation, greater access to customer data and the ability to design rewards for check-ins or mayors.

When asked about Foursquare haters (Time magazine labeled Foursquare among the 50 worst inventions), Crowley politely countered with the notion that people like software challenging you to do something, inspiring you to do it and rewarding you when you achieve it.

If you’re attending a lot of Internet Week events, don’t forget to check in and get your badge!

Digital Candy Corn from CollegeHumor

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Yesterday Mashable hosted its first conference, marking the significant growth the social media blog has experienced over the past year. The agenda was packed with presentations and interviews designed to make you think a little differently about how digital channels can help your brand.

Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of CollegeHumor and CEO of Notional, shared 10 myths about online content. While some of the myths Van Veen spoke about were basic considering what we know today, there’s no denying the fact that his understanding of what makes digital content so appealing is what made CollegeHumor a success. And talk about foresight – the site was founded in 1999!

Here are two myths that stuck out:

  1. Myth: We have no idea why things go viral. Van Veen definitely knows why things go viral. Good online content provides a person a reason to pass it on. The act of sharing a link is a way for someone to say something about themselves (I’m smart/ funny/interesting/edgy), so the content needs to hit that emotional appeal. Van Veen says a successful viral video will have “candy corn.” What’s candy corn? The thing that everyone knows about but doesn’t necessarily think about all the time. Check out this video for Van Veen’s example of good digital candy corn.
  2. Myth: Experience leads documentation. According to Van Veen, documentation leads experience. Technology has broken down barriers to content creation and people want to document (and experience) moments. He likened the Facebook and Twitter phenomenon to high-tech bragging: people want to show off how cool/smart/interesting they are.

Over the next few days, we’ll continue to share highlights from the conference.