Nicole Hering

If there’s anything bigger than Zynga’s most recent purchase, it’s the price tag that accompanied it. Just last week, the social gaming giant swallowed OMGPOP for $180 million. But why the splurge? Two words: Draw Something.

OMGPOP’s social illustration game (like Pictionary with Facebook!) for iOS and Android has earned its fair share of handheld face time over the past few weeks for its skyrocketing number of downloads. The recent success can be attributed to WOM and the existing OMGPOP community, as the CEO cites no press coverage for the launch.

The staggering stats are hard to believe: 20MM daily active users in just seven weeks alone and 37MM app downloads – making it the #1 app in 85 countries worldwide. And its users are beyond prolific, producing 3 billion drawings so far, with 1 billion produced in the last week alone at a rate of 2,000 drawings per second.

As with any ripple on the interactive trend watch, a marketer must ask whether or not a platform like this is appropriate for their brand and pursue only those opportunities which align with brand strategy. However, if you have an established, recognizable brand and/or a broad audience, you may want to consider the following creative opportunities Draw Something has to offer:

1. Drawing integration: At the start of every round, players have the option to illustrate one of three drawing choices. In this sense, the current brand integration on Draw Something is reasonably seamless and relevant, whether paid for or not.

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As Foursquare’s 2nd anniversary approaches at this week’s SXSWi conference, we think it’s safe to say the startup has certainly made a name for itself. In that same amount of time, the iconic app has successfully accumulated a user base of 7.5 million (and growing). Even with the launch of Facebook Places, Foursquare is still marching up and assuming the role of #1 location based service in the US market.

Image via Silicon Alley Insider

But what once was a platform is now evolving into a community. While Foursquare previously asked the question ‘Where are you,’ it now seeks to answer ‘What are you doing’ and ‘Who are you with?’

The launch of Foursquare 3.0 came yesterday to eager super-users worldwide – and it certainly made a splash on its first day. Writes Foursquare in a blog post: “One of the big ideas kicking around Foursquare HQ these last few months has been the idea of ‘every check-in counts.’ Regardless of whether you’re checking into the same ol’ coffee shop or some far-away beach, we want every check-in to add value to every Foursquare user.”

With this new ‘every check-in counts’ mantra, the updated platform allows for a much more user and business friendly service fostering a richer exchange of value and conversation. Here’s a breakdown of some new features, and how businesses can make the most of each component.

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They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. In a photo community of one million and counting, you can imagine how many words’ worth of images are snapped every day. Given this mass community of image and storytellers, popular photo sharing service Instagram upgraded its users with an additional feature last week enabling hashtags and hashtag search on all images. But first, a little bit on the service itself and why marketers should care.

Instagram images with an #apple hashtag (via BusinessInsider)

The success of Instagram is certainly one for the startup textbooks. Launched in October 2010, the app (which was exclusively for iPhones at first, but is now open to other smartphones) quickly made its way to the top of the App Store in a mere 24 hours. Two quick months later, it had reached the 1 million mark in downloads and continues to grow exponentially each and every day. But why the hype?

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If there was any buzzword a brand wanted to adopt in 2010 it was location, location, location. The growth (or should we say explosion?!) of location-based marketing through LBS apps took the smartphone world by storm and is showing no signs of stopping as we move deeper into 2011.

The poster child for this marketing trend has inevitably been foursquare and the team behind it. With their 6 millionth user sign up just last week, they treated our eyes to, what else, but a pretty infographic detailing their successes and reach thus far.

Click through to view full graphic.

With an average of 2 million checkins each day worldwide, the foursquare users are, without a doubt, the ones keeping this game alive. However, among those users fueling the service are several notable brands who we think are really rocking it and humanizing the experience for the 6 million users across the world. A tip of our crown goes to the following in making foursquare’s recent growth a complete success.

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Image via blog.foursquare.com

Yesterday morning, popular location-based service foursquare launched its much anticipated upgrade to include a few new features that certainly had the Mayor of 360i New York – among many other users – abuzz.

What are the updates?

Aside from the improved speed of the app and overall beauty of the new interface, foursquare has introduced some more socially recognizable features through the addition of comment and photo uploads. The idea of adding multimedia responses to a social update seems a bit archaic in this day and age, so it goes without saying that these new capabilities had been much anticipated. As the startup announced yesterday, users have been “requesting these features for months” so it was naturally only a matter of time before these requests came to fruition. Here’s what we can experience with the release of v2.2 for the iPhone (Android to come next week, BlackBerry in January):

1. Comments: While foursquare has given users the option to ‘shout’ a comment to their followers since the earliest days (much like a generic status update), it has never allowed us to hone in on one particular checkin for a specific user. This addition gives the foursquare community a much more personalized checkin experience. It’s more social and engaging, allowing the user to even comment on checkins from Facebook and Twitter!

2. Photo Uploads: As we said before, photo uploads are no stranger to us. For many like myself, sometimes a checkin can only do our offline experiences so much justice. The ability to add photos to a venue – as services like Yelp allows – enriches not only the experience but the credibility to a venue as well. Photos can also be uploaded as tips for future checkins to see, and can be flagged as inappropriate by other users.

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