We were contacted by Saul, from The Digital Edge, about being on the show as their feature on the Agency of the Week for this week, so of course we accepted.

Joey had a good interview with them on Friday and the podcast is available today on The Digital Edge. Dont be frightened off by Episode 19’s topic though.

Please listen to the podcast and tell us on what you think.

Applications have seen a considerable rise in not only their adoption by users but also monetisation for developers.

There are 57,514 apps on Facebook with over 200,000 developers currently evaluating the platform. These applications were used 34,175,797 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $269,323,488. [Source]

Adonomics™, formerly Appaholic, provides analytics for Facebook and provides a list of the Top 100 application developers which ranges from large development agencies to lone developers and are ranked, and valuated, on their daily active users. Currently ranked at number 1 is Zynga, with a company valuation of $121,986,913 driven by 28 application revenues.

Revenues from applications are obtained in many ways, as far as the consumer and the imagination will allow, and include users purchasing virtual currencies, like 750,000 poker chips for $100 in Texas HoldEm Poker and subscribing to offer-based advertising whereby the advertiser reserves space in the users application in return for “favors” like a bag of cash in Mob Wars.

Facebook is not alone on the applications front though. Smartphone users are showing confidence in application downloads too.

Downloading and installing apps is not the big surprise, as consumers are always on the lookout for new ways to entertain themselves as well as customise their devices, the interesting part is the amount of money that these consumers are paying and willing to pay for such applications.

Research done by Compete shows Smartphone users are comfortable to spend in the $5.00 - $9.99 vicinity with a slight drop when it comes to the $10.00 - $19.99 category.

Out of the Smartphone category, iPhone users are the early adopters and innovators when it comes to purchasing applications. These users have a focus on games, entertainment and music respectively and have spent mostly in the region of $2 - $4.99 with some even breaching the $50+ mark!

The monetisation model for apps is therefore based on 1) direct sales of the apps 2)virtual products like “favors” and 3) advertising, providing an opt-in option for marketing messages that are targeted as well as unavoidable in the user’s interaction with their chosen platform.

With the large adoption rate of apps and the possible ROI that they can deliver it would be worth your while to have an application developed to meet your specific marketing requirements or developing applications for creation of revenue. Either way, ensure your idea is well researched and that you seek advice from people with the right experience.

In the previous post I spoke about utilising Twitter Search to keep track of what is being said about you, your company and its products/services. Having read that, you should now have a basic grasp of your online reputation as far as Twitter is concerned.

There are more operators that Twitter offers that can help with other marketing functions, like demographics or targeting.

Near: and within:
These two operators work on a location base of users and therefore can deliver a very targeted message to potential product/service users. For example, you are having a promotion or giveaway in Stellenbosch.

You would like people in the vicinity to know about it (in a short time) and attend. By running a search near:stellenbosch (don’t use any spaces between the colon, or the name of the location i.e capetown for Cape Town) you will see all the active users in the area. But you will notice that the search has picked up users from further away, like Paarl and Bellville.

Now by combining the within: operator with near: you can target your specific catchment area, for example, near:Stellenbosch within:10km, and your results will show users within 10km radius of Stellenbosch. For an extra bonus, the Google Maps widget will show you a map of the area you are searching in.

Now that you have your users in the area, you can tweet them and encourage them to spread the word in their area by either telling their friends, via word-of-mouth or retweeting (RT) your message, creating a localised viral effect for your specific brand engagement in that area.