File this one in your web marketing plan and set an alarm for this Friday. Facebook announced on its blog today that it will allow all of its members to select Vanity URLs for their profiles and fan pages starting this Friday, June 12, at 9:01 pm PDT. Vanity URLs are customized web addresses that have long been an integral part of most social media websites like MySpace and Twitter.  I've had http://www.linkedin.com/in/hunterjensen for years, but Facebook fan pages have always had a long string of random numbers instead of a URL based on your company's name, products, or services.  The opportunity to customize your company's Facebook fan page will be a great marketing opportunity for businesses because it will make it easier for current fans and potential customers to find your fan page and remember your web address. “When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you,” writes Blaise DiPersia in the Facebook blog. “We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.” This will also have SEO implications as it will be possible to select keyword-rich URLs, which will help the pages rank higher. These fan pages are available to the public (you do not need to be logged in to view them), and indexable by search engines, so expect a mad dash for popular keywords like http://www.facebook.com/pages/sex or http://www.facebook.com/laser-eye-surgery. Customizing your company's Facebook web address will not only increase your searchability but will also give you another opportunity to highlight your company's online brand and image, so be careful in your selection.  Facebook's fine print for this selection recommends, "Think carefully about the user name you choose. Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer (your vanity url.)" Your company will be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis at www.facebook.com/username/. The turnout for this vanity URL is expected to be high.  If you're happy with your trademarked brand name, you shouldn't have too much of a problem. But if you're looking for something a little more strategic, be prepared to wait in the digital version of the line outside of a Star Wars premiere.

Have you ever transformed your face into an adorable deer? Do you know the satisfaction of swiping over a photo and discovering the perfect geofilter to match your weekend mood? Ever troll your close friends with a series of silly faces? Welcome to Snapchat. Snapchat has become a cornerstone in the social media application world since it was first released in 2011. The app soon amplified its primary function (sending real-time snapshots to friends) by introducing new features, and quickly gained momentum amongst high school students. Snapchat now has 166 million daily active users (for comparison, Facebook has 1.28 billion) who send an average of at least 3 billion snaps in 24 hours. While Facebook’s users are distributed across all demographics, Snapchat’s audience is the highly coveted high school and university student market: Generation Z and millennials. A recent study showed that 88% of students use the application. Despite Instagram and Snapchat being in a tight race for the top spot, an Adweek survey found that 67% of respondents thought Snapchat’s features were better — something that could continue to boost Snapchat’s popularity and market dominance in the future. If you’re developing an app and you haven’t yet studied Snapchat (especially if your target market is Gen Z), you’re missing a prime opportunity to learn from one of the masters. Snapchat introduces a lot of new and seemingly silly features — and not all of them knock our digital socks off — but what makes it one of the most successful social media apps is that it continues to innovate with its users in mind. If you want to tap into Generation Z with your own app, start by looking at what Snapchat does right. Here are the features that have propelled Snapchat to success with its users. Easy Photo Chatting Don’t overlook the first aspect that made Snapchat popular: the ability to send disappearing photo chats. Users were encouraged to share genuine snapshots of their daily activities. This was a refreshing step away from the posed, curated, and edited images often shared on Facebook and Instagram. It met a key consumer need for Generation Z at a time when students were growing discontent with the nature of existing social media, and were looking for a new outlet. The disappearing act is key. Snapchat’s designers anticipated a potential consumer pain point with their product, and solved it in advance. What was the one downside to taking “real” photos of yourself (particularly in the eyes of a teenager)? They show the real, imperfect you. While sharing “real life” photos may feel embarrassing or compromising, users could rest easy knowing their pics would disappear in less than 10 seconds. Potential problem, solved. Snapchat Stories Aside from one-to-one photo sharing, users can also create Snapchat stories to share with the world (or at least, their own circle of friends). Stories are series of individual photos or videos which followers can choose to view any number of times with a 24 hour period. This innovation took something users were already doing — sharing Snapchat photos with all of their friends — and made it much easier. Instead of scrolling through to select each of your contacts, it just takes one click, and your photo is posted for all of your friends to view. Today, Snapchat stories are also shared in the “Discover” section by brands and celebrities, a feature that introduced monetization to the app. With the Stories feature, Snapchat became a true trailblazer. The release of Instagram stories in August 2016 was regarded by most as a near-identical incarnation of Snapchat stories. Facebook, which now owns Snapchat, incorporated a similar stories feature at the top of its News Feed just a few months later, further proving how successful this feature was. Lenses Galore One of Snapchat’s most well-known features is its diverse offering of lenses — digital masks that can turn your face into an animated animal, add fake cosmetics effects, and distort your voice. These lenses (also referred to as filters) are purely meant for entertainment, and are hugely popular amongst Generation Z users. The lenses are regularly refreshed, offering fun new masks for users who want to become someone new. And, guess who followed its cousin by quickly adopting a version of lenses? You got it — Instagram. Geofilters and Stickers Geofilters allow users to easily add stickers to their photos that share their location with followers. By swiping on a photo or video, illustrated filters pop up based on your location — from a glammed out New York skyline, to a custom geofilter a company has created for an event. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a real thing for Generation Z. Geofilters offer a clever and colorful way for users to do something they already do frequently; give their friends more information about where they are and what they’re doing. Businesses quickly recognized this as an opportunity to create branded filters, embracing Generation Z’s love of sharing to spread and strengthen brand recognition. Learning From Snapchat The development of Snapchat is an interesting case study — for reasons beyond the founders’ refusal of an initial $3 billion takeover deal from Facebook. Build for Success, and Let the Money Follow Unlike many apps, Snapchat didn’t begin by focusing on monetizing its features or finding investors. In fact, for the first several years, the application didn’t have an obvious monetization pathway at all. Its founders have said time and time again that they aren’t in this for the short-term gain, and for the most part they’ve done their own thing. That includes starting with a small team and being agile enough to introduce features they thought users would like, without much thought to the immediate profitability. The lesson to those trying to build a new app? Think more about what your users want and need than what will make the most money. If you can deliver a great product to users, monetization will come later. Be Open-Minded and Adaptable Another lesson to learn from Snapchat to have a willingness to adapt to new forms of technology. Snap Inc. (Snapchat’s parent company) recently launched Spectacles, a set of glasses that allow wearers to record 10 second videos. The world will see exactly what you’re seeing. Spectacles sync wirelessly to a user’s Snapchat account and recharge when they’re put back in the case. The technology is still in its initial stages, but at $129.99 a pair, this could be an effective way for Snapchat to rake in more cash. Innovate with Users In Mind Finally, Snapchat isn’t scared to shake up and innovate an established market — for the right reasons. Innovations for your users are much different than innovations for your investors, which may benefit your users. Snapchat’s next feature will likely be the introduction of short video shows, and the company is in talks with Saturday Night Live and comedian James Corden to find a way to revolutionize television offerings for a Generation Z audience. The agility and creativity Snapchat brings to the table is enough to keep app developers on their toes. These traits have made the app both an inspiration and a leader in the social media market, particularly for younger audiences. Above its agility and creativity, though, sits a genuine desire to please, delight, and support users. If app developers take anything away from this Snapchat case study, it’s that building a successful app comes from putting users at the core of what you do. When you cater to your consumers’ interests, ease pains and inconveniences, and make their lives more enjoyable, they will want to use your app. The business success follows naturally. With new features incorporated all the time, we can anticipate Snapchat’s success sticking around much longer than its photos do.

Lots of apps suck. Just plain, bad products that should fall into the undesirable pits of failure and leave us alone. Don’t let that happen to your idea or your app. There are plenty of ways to ensure your app is used, loved, and could even be the next big thing. Here are some tricks we’ve learned along the way from clients whose ideas went from concept to Steve-Jobs-like success story. 1) Make it stupidly simple. No no, don’t make your app stupid, make it stupidly simple to use. There is nothing more frustrating than taking the time to download an app, only to struggle with understanding how to use it. Provide a simple walk-through guide for first-time users so they understand what they are supposed to be doing with your awesome app. From there, remove complexity in every way possible. Your app should be a tool to make their lives easier or a game to bring joy. Therefore make sure yours is an asset to their app collection, not the complicated monstrosity they will be complaining to their friends about. 2) Avoid a bunch of advertisements. How many times have you downloaded a free or freemium app, and to use it you’re barraged with an unending amount of advertisement pop-ups? Or worse, ads over your listening experience. Take Spotify’s advertising model for example - while we appreciate the freemium version they put out there, users are pretty much bullied into subscribing monthly for the app due to the constant stream of music montage ruining commercials that keep screwing up your workout, especially that one time you were about to PR (personal record). Yes advertising can help fund your app, but remember there are lots of ways to monetize your app. If you choose to go the ad route, try not to overwhelm your user - because that sucks. 3) Keep your target audience in mind - and make them happy. As much as you’d like it to be, your app can’t be everyone’s best friend. Understand the person you are targeting and build your app with them in mind. If you try too hard to imagine every person who could ever possibly use your app, you’re just going to piss off everyone. Focus on the ideal user and make them giddy with your app experience. 4) Make it inexpensive or free. Everyone likes free stuff. That goes for your potential users too. Lower the barriers to entry and if you can, make your app free to download. If you do want to put a price on it, at least keep the cost down to maximize the people who will be willing to pay a buck or two for your app. 5) Learn from your audience. The Internet is filled with people with opinions. If they don’t like something you can be damned sure they are going to tell you about it. Listen to those who complain and yes, sometimes it stings a little. Just don’t forget the haters are always louder than the lovers. It’s therefore helpful to request feedback from your users to get the opinions of those who like your app and can tell you what cool things you’re doing right. You’ll probably need some positive feedback anyway as listening to the complainers and trolls can get downright taxing. 6) Study your competition. It’s helpful to understand your competition because you don’t want to reinvent an already working wheel by making a lamer version of something users know and love. Check out their model to verify that you have something unique that users can gravitate to. Sure, it can be a solution to the same problem the competition is looking to solve, but what’s going to make you successful is having taken a different angle and mastering your own competitive advantage. 7) Do one thing and do it better than anyone else. Sometimes people think their mobile app should be a mobile version of their web app, with all the functionality of the web app on the mobile app. This is typically the wrong approach - your app can’t be everything to everyone. Facebook recently realized this and is actually removing functionality and spinning them out (e.g. Messenger) into separate apps. Do yourself a favor and realize this early and focus on being an expert at that one thing. The point is, your app idea could be great in your head but flop on execution. The last thing we want for you is for that to happen. So don’t be a stranger, let us know how we can steer you in the right direction, whether it’s with us or another team who will help make sure your app isn’t awful.