In one of the final phases of the social web he talks about social commerce. In that he means that communities will come together to define the products and features they want and companies in turn will bid to fulfill these needs. In essence flipping the current model of a company bringing a product to market and encouraging/hoping that you’ll buy it.

Well, that era of social commerce may be official upon us. Today, Walmart Labs (the digital division of Walmart) is launching an initiative which crowdsources a handfull of the products it will stock on its shelves. Now, it’s just a start, but can you imagine how this could evolve? You could have pop-up stores that only carry items that their followers have requested. Inventories will get smarter based on sentiment and what the crowd wants. You could even eventually see PR agencies representing large groups of people rather than large companies.

I’m sure social commerce will move quickly through various phases and iterations as the web continues to evolve. What comes next though?

The era of social commerce is here is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

The news is worse for Facebook Places and Yelp (who already had huge user bases before implement check-in services). See this chart from Business Insider.

I’m not sure I can put my finger on the reason for this backslide. Did the game of collecting badges grow weary on users? Are the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla geared towards early-adapters? Has the value of checking-in declined?

Foursquare users are checking out is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

1. Everyone becomes a media company
Wow, Bob that’s pretty broad. So, here’s where I’m coming from. Consumers are adapting to the way businesses are using social media. When they feel like they’re being sold or that the information is no longer relevant or valuable to them, they move on.

Companies are falling back into their old media ways of business. The companies that evolve and ultimately win are those that will be able to create original, non-salesy and valuable content that speaks directly to that individual and not a mass market. Status updates, videos, email, tweets, etc will all need to be on target.

Content is king may be cliche, but it will be ever so true in 2011 as companies show greater focus on the what rather than the where.

As a side note, watch the “social media gurus” of 2008 become the “content gurus” of 2011.

2. Privacy
Facebook had some small issues in 2010 about user privacy, but I think you’ll see larger groups exposed in 2011. I see this as a blow-up from a major social site that could expose lots of user personal data. The technology is evolving too fast and users are naive and overly trustworthy.

You may even see the government step in ala the “Do Not Track” regulation to help protect consumers. Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, hide yo data.

3. Question and answer sites will be the break out stars
People are making real/major decisions based upon what their real/virtual friends think. The sites you’ll be talking about this time next year are question and answer sites like Quora and Facebook Questions.

4. Group buying gets better
Groupon hit mainstream in 2010, but they still have a lot of opportunity to grow. I think you’ll see better personalization in Groupon deals such that they won’t be necessarily city-wide offers but rather deals that appeal to the demographics and psychographics of their audience. For example, a man living in downtown Memphis who likes football won’t necessarily see the same deal as a man living in East Memphis who enjoys baking.

5. Hot sites to watch
Sort of miscellaneous hodgepodge of predictions at #5.

• I think VYou.com has lots of potential in the social space and fits nicely with prediction #3 above. VYou is a mix of twitter, youtube and a dash of chatroulette (the good part).
• Watch for big developments from Google  in 2011 and maybe in Q1.  In 2008, I wrote that I thought Google had the biggest opportunity and the best pieces in place to really blow the doors off of social. Even though some of their latest ventures have fizzled out, I still think they are better positioned than the likes of Facebook, Twitter and maybe even Apple. Rumors of their +1 project have been swirling in the recent months.
• Niche and personal sites like Path and Instagram will flourish.

By the way, if you’re interested, check out my predictions from 2009 and 2010.

5 digital marketing and social media predictions for 2011 is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Upon leaving I heard people commenting that the deck was equivalent to seeing Pink Floyd live in concert .   If you missed it you can check out the slideshow below. Here, There and Yonder: Where to Meet Your Audience in 2011

My PRSA presentation: Where to Meet Your Audience in 2011 is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

List of Foursquare badges and how to get them is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

This option really opens up more of a 2-way dialogue with publishers and fans of their content.  I’m looking forward to seeing how smart brands take advantage of this new option.

Kind Of A Big Deal: Facebook Allows Publishers to Contact Likers is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Too Little, Too Late is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Here is how to view your view your Foursquare check-ins on Google Maps.

1. Visit your foursquare feeds page. Right click and copy the KML link  (no need to download it).
2. Visit Google Maps and paste your copied link into the search box. Hit enter.

You can also add “?count=100″ (or any number that you’d like to see) to the end of the URL (after .KML) to see a specific number of check-ins.  About Foursquare also has some cool tricks on tracking your check-ins with Google Calendar and Google Earth.

via About Foursquare

Display Your Foursquare Check-ins on Google Maps in 2 Steps is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

With global filters, you can easily filter out a person, tag, keyword or source.  Let’s say you have a good friend who you really don’t want to unfollow, but sometimes they go a little overboard with their so-called ‘sharing’.  Go to your TweetDeck settings, shimmy on down to global filters and either plug in their username or hastag and they are automagically removed from your stream.  It’s very similar to hiding someone on Facebook.  No hurt feelings and you can easily undo any filter once they’ve come down off their high horse.  The offending party never knows you’ve filtered them out. Here’s a peak at how it works.

Filter Out Annoying Tweets With The New TweetDeck is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Question Of The Day is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!