Pemaquid Communications

Seems like everybody is Twittering these days (or at least everyone in the wonderful world of Web).

For the uninitiated (unindoctrinatred?) Twitter is a service that let’s you tell your buds where you are and what you’re doing in up-to-the-minute detail (emphasis on “minute” as in ‘my-NOOT’). You can post to your Twitter via a cellphone text message and your pals subscribe to be notified when you “twitter” (verb). You can “follow” the tweets of others, having the site alert you by cellphone when friends update their accounts.

It’s this “text-message-broadcasting” that makes Twitter unique.

I’d always been of the opinion that all this twittering is not especially useful, and that instead of making life easier it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. I recently had the perfect opportunity to test that assumption: the 2008 SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. I knew some folks who were going to attend and Twitter seemed like the perfect way to stay in immediate contact as we fanned out across the cavernous conference facilities.

At that it worked reasonably well. “Panel in Ballroom A rocks! - u should b here” or “I’m coming down from the second floor - meet me at the 4th Street entrance and we’ll go to lunch” were typical posts. On the other hand, I concluded that I could have easily survived - as I have for many years - without the tweeting.

There’s a certain tyranny about using Twitter. Ostensibly, one of the biggest reasons to use Twitter is to let your pals know where you are or what you’re thinking in up-to-the-minute fashion. So you can easily fall into a post-early-post-often-vortex in order to keep friends informed (otherwise, after all, they might think you’re dead, and come to look for you at your last-twittered location).

Many technological tools are like this. There’s a tantalizing enticement to do something you’ve never been able to do before (”Cool, I can send a single text message to a Web site and it can alert all my friends? Dude!”). We spend a lot of time in front of our computers… because we can (I’m guilty as charged). We use devices that save us time - but if we then fill up that newly-found free time with activities that aren’t very meaningful, our quality of life goes down, not up.

There’s a usability message here: before adopting a new technological device or app we should take a serious look at whether these tools truly help make our lives easier and better - or merely different.

Gettin’ on a Big Ol’ Jet Airliner later today to head to the biggest, baddest scrum of Web-slinging early-adopters the world has ever seen.

Yep, SXSW Interactive ‘08.

Two years ago, there was blogging. Last year, online video. This year it’s… (you guessed it)… All Things Social.

I’ll be reporting live.

Are you like me? Always late on the draw sending cards around the Holidays? We’re here to help.

Pemaquid has designed a Facebook app called Jenny’s Cards (you must have a Facebook profile to view). You can use it to send a little last minute Christmas cheer to all your friends (all of your friends are on Facebook, right?)

In addition to Holiday cards, you can send your Facebook pals Birthday cards, Thank Yous or just-plain-simple note cards. The card graphics are done by annie|catherine designer stationery, a Pemaquid Client whose site we redesigned earlier this year.

We rolled out this app after Thanksgiving for two reasons: to test how “infectious” this type of viral marketing can be, as well as to help a Client promote their products (there are links to the annie|catherine Web site in the app).

So far folks from Far East Asia to Down East Maine have used the app (Facebook has 50 Million + members worldwide) and annie|catherine is seeing traffic flow from the app to their site.

Done right, Facebook apps are an excellent way for businesses to extend their brand.

Pemaquid’s adventures on Facebook are the subject of a story in today’s Portland Press Herald (Just my luck, I got a haircut the day after they took the photo, and no, you won’t see it here).

Thanks to my Facebook buddies Wendy Clark (Portland Diner logo) and Jennifer Ecker (Web design) for their help in creating Pemaquid’s Facebook apps. Thanks also to Facebook friend Justin Ellis (PPH reporter who wrote the story), who gave us a very “honorable mention”.

Our apps mentioned in the story:

• Portland Diner
• Lost on Liftoff

More are on the way. Stay tuned…

Ladies and Gentlemen… we have Liftoff. Lost on Liftoff. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

Pemaquid Communications premiered a brand new Facebook app for Lost On Liftoff, one of Portland, Maine’s hottest local bands, @ the techMaine conference a few days ago.

Go here to add the Lost On Liftoff app if you have a Facebook profile.

The idea is pretty simple. Once you add the app, it puts a “badge” on your Facebook profile, along w/a player created in FBML (that’s “Facebook Markup Language”) that allows you to play your favorite Lost On Lifoff song from their latest album, Mixtape Blackouts. You can change the favorite song if you like and invite other friends and fans to add the app to their profiles.

For the band, it’s viral marketing at its best. Pemaquid launched (no pun intended) the app just a few days ago and - through the power of Facebook’s social graph - it already has several dozen people using it.

Lead singer Walt Craven did the amazing album artwork and is working with us to redesign the group’s Web site.

Rock on!

Facebook apps continue to take the online marketing world by storm. For the uninitiated, a Facebook app is kinda like a widget that FB members can add to their profiles.

Pemaquid has several under development now. We’re the first Web design company in Maine (and so far, still the only one, though competitors are starting to get a little jealous) to have developed 3rd-party Facebook apps.

A good example of an app is Portland Diner (you’ve got to be logged into Facebook to see it, though there is a stand-alone site).

Why is this so important to marketers? One word: eyeballs.

Some of these FB apps have millions of members using them, so they become attractive advertising vehicles. Of course, you have to position things carefully so that the advertising message doesn’t cause the user experience to be a drag.

I’m going to be giving a presentation on Facebook apps at the MESDA techMAINE Annual Conference tomorrow. If you’re curious to learn the basic ins and outs come on down and check it out.

This just in from Techcrunch: MySpace is apparently saying “me too” to the Facebook Platform. According to Techcrunch, the MySpace Platform will launch in about a week’s time.


Since the Facebook Platform launched in May, more than 5,000 third party developers have created “Facebook Apps” that Facebook users can add to their profile (Pemaquid has built one called Portland Diner - a restaurant guide for southern Maine). Some apps have well north of a million installed users, and the implications for marketers (er, and other social netoworking sites) are obvious.

Google is also preparing to get in the game.

If your want to position your brand to a young, smart, tech-savvy crowd, figuring out these open platforms - the Next Big Thing - should be on your agenda. Pemaquid is the first developer in Maine to have created apps for these open platforms, so contact us if you’re looking to make them a part of your Web strategy.

The Portland Press Herald interviewed Pemaquid Communications’ Rob Landry (Principal) and Sarah Hines (Creative Services Coordinator) for an article in Monday’s news on social netoworking and related Web sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Pemaquid Communications is the only Maine Web developer to have created a Facebook app. Reader’s of this space know it’s called PortlandDiner.com.

MaineToday.com jumped on the Facebook bandwagon yesterday en masse. Joe Michaud? Check. Wendy Clark? Check. Paul Caiazzo, Carl Natale, Wendy Almeida, Monica Wright? Check, check, check, check. The timing is interesting, having just joined myself 10 days ago.

Hooray! More friends for me from the old workplace…

I keep hearing about Facebook (maybe that’s partly due to the fact that I’ve just signed up and am now in tune).

Here’s a post from Paul Allen about Facebook- which he claims will become the largest social network in the world.

There’s no reason to doubt it. I’ve watched as Facebook’s Portland network has ballooned to over 15,000 members, w/several hundred added since I joined up about a week ago.

Facebook is already a more popular online destination than eBay and is gaining on - are you ready? - Google. And I’ll bet people stick around longer on FB than they would on the Big G.

And with the new Facebook Platform and the ability for developers to create Facebook apps people can add to their profiles, like…. (shameless self-promotion) the Portland Diner app created by Pemaquid, it’ll only get stickier.

To top it off, Facebook’s people demographic is better and it’s interface is much cleaner than MySpace. If I were Uncle Rupert, I’d be concerned.

Played around w/t/ Facebook Platform over the weekend, and was able to create an app for Portland Diner. Now, members of Facebook’s Portland, ME network (and anyone else, for that matter) can add the Portland Diner app to their profile and check out local restaurant listings right there - which is of course why Facebook created the platform in the first place - to allow developers to create tools that would make the user experience at FB more engaging and - shall we say - “sticky”.

There are a few minor bugs in the CSS - Facebook doesn’t allow linked CSS and rewrites inline sheets placed in the <style> tags - but it seems to work just fine. There are other wrinkles - no javascripts are allowed, and Facebook requires that developers use a subset of HTML called, naturally, FBML. SQL can become FQL and there are some proprietary tags that include an “FB:”.

If you have a Facebook account and live in Portland, Maine, you might find the Portland Diner app useful. Go get it here. We’d love to know what you think; please let us know.

MaineToday.com launched a new look last Wednesday - kudos to designer Wendy Clark and company! Very Web 2.0-y (gradients…speech bubbles rollovers…fades…signature mid-blue color for link text…)

There’s a lot of information there w/o getting too busy. Five good-sized images rotate through the marquee space and I especially like the calendar layout (”next seven days”) that will take you to that day’s events w/just one click (rollover gives you a speech bubble w/a featured event w/zero clicks).

One thing that threw me for a bit: it’s not obvious where you click to go to the Portland Press Herald or other newspaper sites in their group. For some reason my eye wasn’t immediately drawn to the “Hey, this look is different!” heading and the newspaper logos there (a little banner-blindness?). I finally did notice the links in the footer of the page.

All in all a great look as MaineToday positions itself as more of a social network user experience.

Do you do your social networking at Facebook? Head on over to the Pemaquid Zone and cool your heels w/us for a bit.