Events like this are a great way for restaurants and bars to generate business and connect with customers.  Pazzaluna, also in St. Paul, did a similar event a few months ago and AJ Bombers of Milwaukee is one of the best success examples I have seen so far.  If you know of other events like this in the Twin Cities let me know.

I’m intrigued by it because it’s simple, visual, social and nicely complements other location/real-time services like Foursquare and Twitter.  Since many locations on Foursquare revolve around food and drink, Eat.ly adds a nice visual context to the great food you find.  Eat.ly nicely integrates with Foursquare and Twitter, so you can update your Eat.ly stream and check-in/tweet at the same time.

There is also a health component to Eat.ly where users can rank how healthy a meal looks.  I’m curious to see where they take this idea.  I think there is an opportunity to provide additional functionality around logging calories, daily food group servings and maybe other metrics from various dieting programs.  It could be a very helpful tool for people who closely track what they eat.

Eat.ly is well positioned to take advantage of a growing trend as well.  The New York Times just ran a piece about a growing number of people who keep photo food diaries.  Unfortunately I didn’t see Eat.ly mentioned in the article.

Eric Friedman, one of the people behind Eat.ly, posted about the project recently and discusses how it’s easier than ever to start a small web project.  He blogs regularly at Marketing.FM.

Remember these?

Despite great progress in the broadband area, there are many opportunities for improvement in areas like speed, coverage and affordability.  The National Broadband Plan is an internet roadmap that will try to address the following six goals (quoted from the site).

1. At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.
2. The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.
3. Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.
4. Every community should have affordable access to at least 1 Gbps broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals and government buildings.
5. To ensure the safety of Americans, every first responder should have access to a nationwide public safety wireless network.
6. To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

I’m glad that the U.S. government is thinking about long term internet infrastructure needs and is trying to plan for it now.  There are many challenges and it will require collaboration with private telecommunications companies.  Existing infrastructure needs to be replaced with fiber, rural areas need to move past 56K connectivity and wireless networks need to expand coverage and support a rapidly growing number of users.  There is a great conversation around the plan at Fred Wilson’s AVC.com and another conversation there about the parallels of broadband infrastructure to the development of the NYC subway system.

While the government works on developing its plan, Google has decided to do an experiment of its own.  Their plan is to build fiber broadband networks in a small number of cities across the U.S.  Google plans to deliver 1 gigabit per second fiber connections to homes, which is about 100 times faster than most broadband connections today.

It’s an exciting experiment and it’s great to see a private company putting up its own capital to push the broadband envelope.  Google received an overwhelming response from communities across the country that want to be part of the experiment.  Communities quickly mobilized grassroots campaigns to vie for Google’s attention.  Topeka, Kansas renamed itself to Google, Greenville, SC made a people-powered LED Google sign and Duluth, MN and Superior, WI collaborated on a joint campaign.  Google won’t be able to build in all of them, but it clearly shows that cities everywhere are passionate and eager for better broadband.

• The NYC Tech Scene Is Exploding
• New York Isn’t Silicon Valley
• 20 Hot New York City Startups
• NY’s Silicon Alley Humming Despite Slow Economy
• Tweet Tweet Boom Boom

It’s exciting watching these young companies quickly building various technology products and it has me thinking about what helps a brand new startup succeed. I thought I would look back at one of New York’s most successful startups for inspiration.  Founded in 1984, I’m talking about the Ghostbusters.  Here’s a playful look at what made them successful.

Busting into a new market
The Ghostbusters team was passionate and focused on finding and capturing ghosts.  Like many startups, this passion pushed them to pursue a business.  They were the first to build a business around capturing ghosts and as a result they enjoyed a first-mover advantage.  Time and time again the best businesses are fueled by passion.

Ground breaking technology
Catching ghosts became a reality thanks to the development of key technology.  Proton packs, traps and P.K.E. meters made a new business and industry possible.  The Ghostbusters haven’t even explored licensing out their technology to other companies or turning their own business into a franchise.  Peter says it best when he claims, “it’s going to be bigger than the microchip.”

Strong branding, cheap marketing and generating buzz
The Ghostbusters excelled at marketing their new business and didn’t even have to try that hard or put too much money into it.

Branding
Everyone knows the Ghostbusters’ name and logo.  The name is catchy and the logo is simple and iconic.

Cheap marketing
They used a variety of cheap marketing tactics:

• Cheesy television ad that still gets your attention
• A ridiculously catchy song
• They cleverly branded their car and suits as well making them instantly recognizable around the city

Generating buzz
Finally, the uniqueness of their business was new and exciting and the media was quick to catch on and promote them faster than they could keep up.

Listening to customers
It’s always important to listen to customer feedback, no matter how crazy it sounds.  Eggs frying on the counter and far-fetched ghost stories turned into business opportunities.

Assembling the right team
Assembling the right mix of talent is challenging and critically important.  If people don’t get along and work together, the overall business suffers.  The Ghostbusters have the right mix of optimism, vision, scientific/engineering talent and a little bit of comic relief.

Dealing with the unexpected
Startups are roller coaster rides and the Ghostbusters needed to work through significant challenges. It’s not every day that your office explodes or you need to combat a giant marshmallow man.

A cool office
Last but not least, they have probably the coolest startup office ever.  Their converted firehouse complete with fire pole beats all other offices I’ve seen.

• Over 500,000 users
• Over 1,000,000 badges have been awarded
• Over 1.4 million venues with 1200 offering specials
• Over 15.5 million checkins

Foursquare has already discussed that checking in is becoming a commodity and this week there was more news about Facebook and Twitter getting into the location game as well.  I even noticed this on my Twitter account today:

Foursquare mentioned that to compete with these threats they need to provide “the most incentive for a user to check-in.” To help reach this goal, this week they announced new analytics tools that will give businesses visibility to information about their Foursquare customers.  Businesses will be able to better understand who is visiting and hopefully use the information to improve on customer retention and acquisition.  As the Foursquare platform evolves and the analytics become more powerful I think we will see interesting promotions to bring in new customers and reward loyal ones.

The analytics tools are an important step to adding more incentive for checking in on Foursquare.  Tools like this should help get some of the 1.4 million (and counting) venues to be active participants on Foursquare.  More businesses using Foursquare and better understanding their customers should lead to innovative promotions (here are some great examples:  AJ Bombers in Milwaukee, Pazzaluna in St. Paul and Starbucks).  Valuable promotions should encourage users to check-in often and help drive new users to Foursquare as well.  Foursquare needs to be the location-based service of choice and tools like this are helping them lead the pack.

I thought the streaming issues might be caused by the wireless connection to the PC.  In a perfect world I would have it plugged in with a network cable, but the layout at home prevents this.  Furthermore, I’m able to stream content through a web browser from Netflix and Hulu with pretty good consistency on the same PC.

The UI at first glance looks nice and slick.  Everything is well designed to display on a TV and be viewed from across the room.  In my case I only have a mouse connected to the PC and find navigation to be difficult.  Mouse clicks don’t always register and clicking back to previous screens often doesn’t work.  I also find the worst scenario is when you start a streaming video, it begins to chop, you try to click back to stop the video, the click doesn’t register and you are essentially stuck and have to completely restart the PC.  In my case this hard reboot sent my PC into a cycle of endless blue screens and reboots.

In short, my second go around with the new beta version wasn’t any better than the first.  Disappointed, I left a little frustration out on Twitter and to my surprise I heard back from Boxee’s support account.  We had a short conversation and I sent the log file to them.  I really like how social media tools are helping customers and businesses connect like this and was impressed that Boxee was out there listening for customer feedback.

Here are some of the partnerships I have seen over the last few weeks.

• Bravo TV
• Zagat
• City of Chicago
• Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs
• And a few more mentioned at TechCrunch and AdAge

As Foursquare continues to grow there is an effort underway to build Foursquare communities by hosting streetup events (basically a meetup with a spin on the name).  Events like this one are popping up all over the place.  Read more about it on the Foursquare streetups page.

The goal with these events is to promote the Foursquare service to both users and businesses by showing how both benefit from using the service.  For businesses, offering Foursquare promotions can help bring in customers and for customers, checking in with Foursquare can redeem promotions, specials, etc.

A small group of us in the Twin Cities plan to continue putting on events like this in the future.  If you run a restaurant or bar and are interested in partnering on hosting an event like this, please contact me.

What Is Foursquare?

Foursquare describes itself as part friend finder, social city guide and nightlife game.  So what does that mean?

Friend Finder

• Users “check-in” to venues from a mobile device.  A venue can be any place people go like a restaurant, bar, museum, park, etc.
• You add friends to your Foursquare account and can then see each other’s check-ins.  Makes meeting up with people on the fly easy!
• Foursquare is integrated with Twitter and Facebook, so you can blast your check-ins out to a broader audience if you want.

Social City Guide

• Each venue on Foursquare has its own profile page that shows all kinds of details about it.
• Users can leave behind short tips at venues telling future users good things to order, try, do, etc.  It’s fun to check these when you visit a place for the first time.
• Venues can create promotions for Foursquare users.  Think freebies and discounts!

Nightlife Game

• Users that check-in at a venue the most often become the Mayor.  Creates an instant incentive for repeat visits.
• Check-ins also earn users points and unlock badges for certain actions.  As Foursquare evolves I think the points will become more meaningful beyond bragging rights.

How Do You Play?

Foursquare is meant to be played from your phone while you’re on the go.  There are Foursquare apps for the iPhone, Android devices, Palm devices and one is on the way for Blackberry too.  Users with phones that don’t have an app can use Foursquare’s mobile page instead (http://foursquare.com/mobile/).  Finally, if you are like me, and don’t have a smartphone, you can still check-in with standard text messages.  The apps provide a more robust user experience, but texting still gets the job done.

To use text messaging send a text to 50500 in this form:

@ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball

The @ designates the venue name and the ! designates your shout, which is a short message you can include with your check-in.  Note that you need to text in the exact name of the venue for the check-in to register correctly.  You can search venues from Foursquare’s main page to get the exact name.  If the check-in is successful you should get a confirmation message back from Foursquare.

For Businesses

If you’re a local restaurant, bar, etc. you should definitely consider running a promotion on Foursquare.  It’s free to run an offer and can really entice users to stop by.  Find out more and sign-up for promotions here:  http://foursquare.com/businesses/.

For Developers

Foursquare recently opened up an API to developers for building applications to interact with Foursquare.  Developers are already creating some neat software like Mob Zombies.  See more information and examples here:  http://foursquare.com/developers/.

Similar to how Twitter grew in popularity last year and everyone was asking if you tweet, I think this year we’ll see the same thing happen with Foursquare.  If you have any questions about how it works leave a comment below, check Foursquare’s help page or leave a question at their Get Satisfaction site.  Go play!