News, Updates, and Commentary for Happn.in.

We just launched a new feature called the Happn.in Feed. Try out that feature and you could win one of four iPod Touches¹

Update (10/11/09): We’re changing the schedule a little bit from what we previously announced. In order to coincide with the release of the Happn.in iPhone app in a couple weeks, we are putting the remaining two iPod Touch contests on hold. We will announce here and via our Twitter Account when the contest is back on.

Each week for the next four weeks, we will be giving away an iPod Touch to the person who gets the most votes in their city’s Happn.in Feed.

The Happn.in Feed?

The Happn.in Feed gives you the ability to Tweet directly to your city. Similarly, it gives you access to city-focused tweets. Have a show coming up? Have a restaurant review? Want to just talk about the weather? The Happn.in feed focuses your Tweets on your community.

How to use the Happn.in Feed to win an iPod Touch.

1. Go to your city’s Happn.in page (find your city on the homepage)
2. Use the text box to talk to your city
3. You will be authorized through your Twitter account
4. Your Tweet will appear on the Happn.in Feed
5. Get your Tweets Voted Up.

Each tweet in the Happn.in feed can be voted either up or down.

We keep score; and the person with the most votes at the end of the week from each city gets a chance at the iPod. We put all the city winners’ names into a hat and pull one out at random. Got it? You can tweet in your city’s Happn.in Feed as much as you like; but remember – if you are annoying, there is a bigger likelihood you will be voted down.

The contest starts now. We choose the first winner Friday, Oct. 2 and then every Friday for the next three weeks (Oct. 9, 16, 23).

Contest Rules

¹NOTE: The prize is actually an apple gift card in the amount of $199 – the price of an 8GB iPod Touch. Because we thought: maybe you don’t want an iPod touch – maybe you want $199 worth of some other Apple product? You know?

1. Contest runs from Sept. 24 through through Oct. 23 see Update Up Above for New Schedule
2. You enter by posting a tweet into your city’s Happn.in Feed.
3. You may post in your city’s Happn.in Feed as often as you like.
4. At the end of each week of the contest, the person who’s tweets in the Feed have collected the most positive votes from each city gets entered into a raffle for the Apple Gift Card. There are 110 cities.
5. A winner will be chosen at random from the 110 finalists for four consecutive Fridays starting Oct. 2 at 8 PM Eastern; and will be announced via the official Happn.in Twitter User (@happn_in), as well as on the Happn.in homepage.
6. The winner must provide us with a legit mailing address within 7 days of the announcement. We will attempt to contact the winner through Twitter Direct Message (though, that person must follow @happn_in for us to be able to do that). The Apple Gift Card will be sent out within 7 days after receiving the mailing address.
7. We reserve the right to change or update these rules as necessary.

OK SO: Good luck. Any questions, definitely let us know either through Twitter or our Feedback Page. We will update this blog post with any Frequently Asked Questions or Rule Updates as the contest continues.

Happn.in added 14 cities over the past week to the ranks. Now lovers of the following cities can receive & express their love in 140 character bursts:

• richmond
• annarbor
• grandrapids
• virginiabeach
• albuquerque
• orangecounty
• coloradosprings
• wichita
• fargo
• winston-salem
• anchorage
• buffalo
• akron
• manchester

Like all Happn.in cities, the above will display the top local Twitter trends as well as the recently announced Happn.in Feed – the ability to talk directly with your city over the Twitters.

We add cities based on Twitter activity and user feedback – so if you would like to see your city on the Happn.in list, let us know and get others in your city to Twitter about it.

We recently rolled out a new feature at Happn.in called the City Feed (or, as we also call it: Talk to Your City). On each city page, in addition to the top current Twitter trends, you now have the ability to send a tweet directly to your city. You also have the ability to recommend tweets that other people have sent to the City Feed. Those tweets and users that are recommended more often will be displayed more prominently, which gives each city the collective ability to decide on the content that is shown in their feed.

This new feature is just one part of a larger roll-out that includes our upcoming iPhone application and Twitter’s recent geo-location announcement. The importance of this feature can best be explained by the difference between broadcasting and reception.

Broadcasting and Reception

Broadcasting is “to tell (something) to many people”. It’s mostly used in reference to Radio and Television – two communication devices that allow one signal to be sent to many people at once. In his book Here Comes Everybody Clay Shirky calls this type of communication, “one-to-many”: “I talk, and talk, and talk, and all you can do is choose to listen or tune out” (pg. 87).

Tools like Twitter and Blogger, however, change broadcasting from a one-to-many relationship into a many-to-many relationship. If you have a connection to the internet, you can not only receive signals from lots of sources, you can send them as well. You are a broadcaster.

All of that is good and smart and interesting. Using Twitter, we all have the ability to send and receive information. The problem we’ve experienced recently, however, is that while Twitter has become a good way for people to receive relevant information (trends, hashtags, searches), it’s not nearly as effective a way to send information. Twitter is still a pretty poor broadcast machine. Currently, when you send out a tweet, you are sending it out to no one in particular. You may have a couple hundred followers, but the chances are that those followers have no real cohesion among themselves. A tweet sent to your followers is a little like shouting out to everyone who is on the bus with you – there is some similarity to all of you (you are all on a bus); but the similarity is random and tenuous. The connection between you and your followers is indirect.

When you receive your tweets, however, they all seem to come directly from each individual person you follow. When you look at your Twitter stream, you see all the little messages with user names and profile pictures; it looks like these people are talking to you. The connection between you and the people you follow is more direct.

Combined, you can see why Twitter overwhelmingly feels like a good place to receive information, but a bad way to send it. Each of your tweets is sent to no one in particular, while you are inundated by messages from specific individuals.

The only cases where this isn’t true, of course, is when you have a way of sending a tweet to a cohesive group. In those cases, you send information to a group you know is looking for it. Famous people are able to do this out-of-the-box with Twitter. Their followers are a cohesive group already. When they tweet, they know to whom they are tweeting; and the people who follow them do so actively. But that’s just using Twitter like it was a radio station – just another example of one-to-many communication.

Some groups form through the use of hashtags. A bunch of Twitterers all at the same event, for instance, might all use the same hashtag to send their tweet specifically to the group at that event. And those same people can then search for that hashtag to see all the tweets being broadcast to that event. In that case, the group is cohesive and is also many-to-many. But it’s also ephemeral. After the event is done, the use of the hashtag ceases as does the group.

The Importance of Broadcasting to a Group

The problem with a communication tool more suited to reception than broadcasting is that it’s not sustainable; eventually, you’ve got a lot of people listening and no one talking. In order to become sustainable, Twitter needs tools that make it a better broadcast machine for many-to-many communication. One way to do that is to give people more opportunities to broadcast their tweets to a cohesive group. You become a more effective broadcaster when you know to whom you are tweeting. Location provides an obvious way to do this. With Happn.in’s new City Feed, you can not only receive information from a particular city; you can send information to that city as well. Communication works better when you are talking to a particular group rather than to a group of no one in particular.