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As I sit here and write this post, it’s been a crazy week in the digital world. Come to think of it, it’s been a crazy month…a crazy summer…a crazy year…ahhh, I digress.

As I’m sure you’re aware (I make that assumption because you are reading this blog), Facebook announced and released “Places” this week — yesterday, actually. If you follow the industry at all, this has been a long time coming. Nevertheless, this is facebook’s entrance cannonball (from the high-dive) into the location space.

I’ve already heard all kinds of things about how “this is going to kill foursquare” and “Yelp’s in trouble” and…blah blah blah, but that’s not what I want to write about.

Foursquare is growing like a weed to the tune of roughly three million users. Gowalla is the consensus #2 player in the industry, and they’re just under 400,000 users. Despite some great national partnerships on both counts, neither has really reached mainstream in terms of awareness, let alone acceptance.

So…here’s the thing:

Facebook is in a place unlike anyone before them. Facebook isn’t a search giant like Google and they’re not a shopping giant like Amazon. Rather, Facebook is a one-stop destination for its visitors to consume what they want to consume and interact with whom they want to interact. More than that, Facebook is a change agent:

Facebook is well on it’s way to well over $1.2 billion (BILLION…that’s nine zeros) in revenue. They are in such a strong position that they acquire whole companies just for their talent — Facebook is assembling the most diverse, forward thinking, intelligent team imaginable. You’re not a success when you’re on facebook’s radar…because EVERYONE is on their radar. There hasn’t been a startup making noise of any kind in the last 24 months that Facebook hasn’t been aware of. That said, it’s fair to say that you’ve made it when Facebook implements your core functionality into their own product.

First, Twitter knew they “made it” when Facebook implemented the News Feed, “@” mentions and all.
Then, Aardvark and Quora knew they “made it” when Facebook announced Questions.
and now…foursquare know’s they’ve “made it” because Facebook has announced Places.

I don’t say those things to badmouth Facebook — I say those things in awe of Facebook. I marvel at their agility. They’re not set in their ways, they’re not afraid to fail, and they’ve got more money than they could EVER spend and they can pivot on a dime — all the while maintaining commitment to an overarching vision and a dedication to their culture.

Up until this week, they’ve only been on the web. As of yesterday, with the announcement of places, they’re in the real world. They’ve taken a market with unlimited potential, validated by both success and competition of players like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, and they’ve shifted the paradigm. It wasn’t but two weeks ago that I published this tweet, and the ability of facebook to expose emerging trends to an enormous audience is exactly why. Facebook, and this is part of the reason I’m in awe of them, continually pushes the envelope, bringing new trends (what’s next) to the mainstream…to mass audiences…exponentially faster than anyone else could dream of.

I’ve tried and tried to get my “non-digital” friends to use fourquare and/or gowalla for the last eighteen monts and I’ve received nothing but ridicule in return and so i realize that, sometimes, no matter how great the reason, people are just too set in their ways to adopt change — unless, of course, you force them to.

For that, I simply say…Thanks, Facebook. I don’t care what anyone else says about you, I think you’re doing great things.

Consider for a moment the ever increasing presence of Facebook in your life. Your mom is on Facebook, your mom’s friends are friending you, your friend’s friends are making comments to you about your life that you never told them personally, politcal pundits are quoting Facebook statuses as sources.

Our jobs at dynamit, and consequently our lives on occasion, revolve around digital monsters like Facebook and Twitter. The research emails flying back and forth among the team this week have certainly had a Facebook theme. So as Facebook hits us with more announcements on their continued changes, upgrades, new features and privacy, I couldn’t help but wonder if you’re suffering from Facebook fatigue like so many others.

The point of course, is that it doesn’t matter. Facebook is here to stay.

Thus, as it grows it also becomes more relevant, and recent announcements only support this.

Yesterday, Facebook officially announced its entry into the LBS market with Places. Location-based services still largely live on the fringes of the general public – Foursquare is growing in popularity, with Gowalla finding it’s own niche – but with Facebook’s announcement (along with the apparent whole-hearted support of both Foursquare and Gowalla – a topic for another post), the LBS market is about to explode. With 500 million Facebook users, its not hard to understand why.

Michael Gartenberg of the Altimeter Group recently commented in a blog post, ”This is an important announcement as it establishes Facebook immediately as not only a credible player in this space but arguably the most important player. I’ve argued in the past the features such as “check in” are more of a feature than a standalone service and therefore the idea of integrating this directly into Facebook, already a key hub of social activity makes sense.”

Facebook is also making changes to it’s profile tabs and application boxes. While a seemingly insignificant change to the aesthetic of a Facebook profile, it has pretty large implications for the 3rd party developers who rely on the visuals afforded them in the application boxes. Now, all they have to work with is a (smaller) tab displaying their name, and hope the user likes them enough to click on it.

So what does all this mean? Why are you reading the ramblings of an Account Manager working for an industry leading digital firm?  Because we’re all trying to make sense of where Facebook is headed, and how we can stay on the bleeding edge of it’s influence and power. Nick highlighted a very tangible, hard to ignore example of this power last week in his post - read it, if you haven’t already.

We know where the biggest surf is, so if you want to ride the wave with us, grab your board and give us a call.

We’re looking to add another account manager  to our team.

An account manager on the dynamIt team will:

• Have experience managing client relationships, preferably in an interactive agency or by leading digital projects at a traditional agency.
• Fully understand a client’s business model, industry and resources in order to deliver contracted work and proactively identify opportunities that will impact the client’s business objectives and grow the relationship.
• Serve as the primary client contact and be responsible for day to day communication.
• Have extremely strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Work closely with strategists and projects managers, acting as a conduit between dynamIt and clients.
• Be extremely comfortable with and passionate about web — have the ability to solve problems with digital and communicate in the space.
• Make sure all aspects of the project have balanced attention and are aligned with the scope, budget and timelines while maintaining a high level of quality.
• Experience is important, but personality is key. Our culture is what drives us, and we’re looking to build our team with someone who both fits and contributes to it.

*This position will involve some travel – primarily regional.

The position is full time at our office in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio.

If this description sounds like you and you are interested, please submit a resume along with other helpful information to work@dynamit.us.

About dynamIt
dynamIt is a digital agency based in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. We work with clients and brands on digital initiatives that include strategy, design, user experience and development. We influence communication and commerce.  Client work includes Charley’s Grilled Subs, McGraw-Hill, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), E-Z-GO, American Electric Power (AEP), Columbus College of Art & Design,  and the Ohio State Medical Center (OSUMC).

We found something pretty compelling while reviewing analytics with a client the other day.

The client participates in the social web — they’ve got outposts on some of the major strategic networks and actively engage with customers. They monitor and are progressive with their digital strategy.

However, the focus of their digital footprint has been on active participation on these networks. As you know, social web has quickly expanded from constraint on networks to socializing content on any site and/or application. Native integration is important and robust APIs make this possible. [all of this when and where appropriate, of course]

A month ago, our recommendation was to begin to wade into some native integration on their primary site.

We installed ‘Like Buttons‘ on product pages. Note – that means that for someone to interact with them, they have to be ON the site, not on a social network.

After 1 month, results have been positive. While the total number of likes is very small (142 as of writing) the pageviews and visits that those likes produced exceeded 4,000 each in just 1 month.

What I mean is that when someone on the primary site ‘liked’ a product from that page, that ‘event’ was pushed (via Facebook Graph API) to their News Feed. Facebook users (some might have been fans of the client already, though we assume many were not) used that ‘like event’ from their friend as a link to visit the client’s primary website (we’re tracking referral URLs through Google Analytics).

above: pageviews filtered to referring URL generated from ‘like’ button

Leveraging customers’ social graphs through APIs allows what used to be utilitarian informational content on a primary site to become hooks — creating more brand touchpoints, working to acquire new eyeballs (customers) and continuing to allow peer preference to influence behavior. An intentional alignment of multiple web properties optimizes content and allows you to cover necessary ground.

Where are you (or your clients) leveraging APIs like we did? What sorts of content are you socializing and what are the results?

We’re looking to add another developer to our team.

A developer on the dynamIt team will be experienced with:

• XHTML & CSS: competence with a good deal of experience using CSS for layout
• JavaScript: A good working knowledge of JavaScript and the DOM. Experience with JS frameworks is a plus, but not required.
• PHP & SQL: experience building a wide-variety of data-driven web applications using PHP and SQL
• AJAX: Experience writing AJAX-based applications is recommended, but not an absolute necessity
• E-commerce experience is a plus, API/Web Service experience is a plus
• Good ability to learn and thirst for knowledge
• We’d rather have experience writing code than experience with jobs/in an agency, but it’s certainly a plus
• Experience is important, but personality is key. Our culture is what drives us, and we’re looking to build our team with someone who both fits and contributes to it.

The position is full time at our office in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio.

If this description sounds like you and you are interested, please submit a resume along with portfolio to work@dynamit.us.

About dynamIt
dynamIt is a digital agency based in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. We work with clients and brands on digital initiatives that include strategy, design, user experience and development. We influence communication and commerce.  Client work includes Charley’s Grilled Subs, McGraw-Hill, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), E-Z-GO, American Electric Power (AEP), Columbus College of Art & Design and the Ohio State Medical Center (OSUMC).

We’re looking to add another designer to our team:

A designer on the dynamIt team will:

• Be well versed with Adobe Creative Suite: Strong knowledge of PhotoShop, experience in Adobe Illustrator and knowledge of Indesign.
• Have a strong understanding of Usability & Web Trends: Experience with user interface design, knowledge of best practices & examples of this in a portfolio or live site/application design. They will also be up-to-date on web trends and design tactics with examples.
• Have experience in User Experience Design – designing application and system interfaces. This experience is crucial for this position.
• Have Basic Programming Knowledge: We’re not looking for a developer here, but the designer should have the ability to design for web with a knowledge of the boundaries and how to design for execution by a programmer.
• Have a Strong Portfolio: We’d like to see much more web work than print.
• Be eager to learn, with a passion for design & the web. The designer should have a strong internal drive for industry knowledge and be committed to furthering the craft.
• Experience is important, but personality is key. Our culture is what drives us, and we’re looking to build our team with someone who both fits and contributes to it.

The position is full time at our office in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio.

If you this description sounds like you and you are interested, please submit a resume along with portfolio to work@dynamit.us.

About dynamIt
dynamIt is a digital agency based in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio. We work with clients and brands on digital initiatives that include strategy, design, user experience and development. We influence communication and commerce.  Client work includes Charley’s Grilled Subs, McGraw-Hill, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), E-Z-GO, American Electric Power (AEP), Columbus College of Art & Design and the Ohio State Medical Center (OSUMC).