foursquare

The holidays are in the air again - but they're also online. From Yeshiva University's the Maccabeat and their viral YouTube sensation, Candlelight - which has nearly 2.5 million hits - to the holiday favorite "Elf Yourself," getting into the holiday spirit at your laptop, on your iPad or on your phone has never been easier. And with social media, the smart, fun and charitable ways to enjoy the season are getting better every year.

These are some of our favorite ways to do the holidays like a social citizen:

1. Cash in when you check in.

Retailers are going way beyond Sunday circulars and email ads. This holiday season stores are using geolocation platforms to reward customers and perhaps attract a younger, more techie clientele. Radio Shack has created a Holiday Hero badge on Foursquare, which allows users to earn a 20% discount by unlocking the badge through the end of the year. On Facebook, Sears has adapted a Groupon model and is posting daily deals on its Facebook page, which will go live once it receives enough likes (but you have to like Sears first to see the deals). Other stores like American Eagle and Zales give foursquare users a discount just for checking in.

2. Give a gift that gives back.

Holiday gifts that delight the people on your list but also benefit a cause have been around for a few years, but the variety, quality and convenience of gifts that give back is greater than ever before. Philosophy bath products have a "shop for a cause" line this season, which includes varieties like "shower for a cure" which benefits the Women's Cancer Research Fund and "sweet to the core" which benefits educational programming on PBS. Or give the gift of fashionable rain gear with Kenneth Cole's Electric Rain Boot, which benefits The Awareness Fund and supports HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. For more ideas, check out lists from Change.org, Philanthropy 411, Forbes and Daily Candy.

3. Download a helpful holiday app.

My Jewish friends were able to light the menorah no matter where they were with the iMenorah (or any one of about 50 Hanukkah-themed available apps). Bargain shoppers can also use apps like Shop Savvy to compare prices without all the legwork, and MobiQpons gives you access to local coupons on your phone, which you can search and show to your cashier when you're ready to check out.   The new app Shopkick allows shoppers to earn points which are redeemable for merchandise by checking in at stores, walking around and scanning item barcodes. The holidays have never been so convenient.

4. Go on a holiday social media scavenger hunt.

With their Gifts on the Go, Gowalla is giving away a number of prizes every day through Christmas to users who check in at secret locations - the more you check in, the greater your odds of winning a gift. Their adorable advent calendar lets you peak at the gifts coming down the pipe, but December 25 is still a big secret! As a closet baker and holiday treat aficionado, I can't resist listing a holiday promotion by New York cupcakery Baked by Melissa. The mini-cupcake shop has hidden 31 gift certificates throughout New York City and is posting clues on their facebook page every day to help fans hunt down the golden tickets. They're also encouraging winners to post photos and videos of their delicious discoveries.

5. Shop at the (online) angel tree.

Over the last 40 years, many families, offices and groups of friends have participated in the tradition of shopping for kids from the angel tree, but for many, the tradition may have fallen off as they have gotten busy and done more of their shopping on the web. Last year, the Salvation Army and JCPenney teamed up to offer this holiday tradition online, so you can still give back without fighting the mall traffic - but hurry the deadline is December 10!

6. Simply give up the gifts.

With many nonprofits still struggling to through tighter economic times, the holiday giving tradition makes a big difference for these organizations and the causes and people they serve. Social media standout charity:water is encouraging people to give up the gifts we don't really need and ask people to contribute to drinking water instead. Whether you're passionate about clean water or something else, consider trading your gifts under the tree for support of your cause.

7. Give a little and get a little.

Gap's Want campaign presents a win-win for social media users who want to shop and do good at the same time. Their videos feature celebrities like model Lauren Bush and actor Ryan Kwanten dressed in Gap favorites and talking about giving in the holiday season. For each "like" their videos receives on Facebook, they'll donate $1 to nonprofits like Women for Women and the FEED Foundation. When you "like" their campaign, you also receive a code phrase that will get you 30% off one item.

How else are you doing the holidays like a social citizen?

As with many new technologies and developments, social media is being used in surprising and unintended ways to analyze and reveal unexpected data and trends. Twitter, Facebook and Google tools have already been used for market research, sales predictions and targeted advertising. Twitter, for example, has shown remarkable accuracy at forecasting box office success, even more accuracy than the currently used (and comparably complex) Hollywood Stock Exchange method. Now credit card companies are reportedly using foursquare and other location sharing platforms to predict divorce, and therefore financial troubles, by analyzing the places people are checking in frequently - the logic being that Home Depot and Bed, Bath & Beyond check-ins demonstrate stability in a way that frequent late night bar check-ins do not.

While it seems a bit creepy to think about companies analyzing where we go and what we tweet about, you have to admit it's also pretty resourceful. As someone who thinks that nonprofits should often operate a lot more like for-profit companies, I wonder if there's an opportunity to use this strategy for good. What if nonprofits could use public data from social networking sites like Twitter and foursquare to predict which demographics and individuals are likely to be interested in their organization or cause?

The places people visit and the subjects they post about on social networks might provide clues about whether they are likely to donate or volunteer before they are asked - or even inform what type of appeal might work best. It might take extra work or expense up front, but it could save time and money in the long run by allowing development teams to concentrate their resources on the people who are most likely to respond. While each nonprofit might not have the capacity to pour over Twitter data, it could be an interesting third party business opportunity.

And once consumers are able to get used to the fact that people are checking up on their social media posts, this strategy could benefit them as well. Instead of sifting through all kinds of volunteer opportunities and donation asks from organizations that don't particularly inspire me, I wouldn't mind receiving targeted solicitations only from nonprofits that have some reason to believe I would be interested in getting involved in their work.

Is this social media research in the future of nonprofit development and recruitment? Is it an invasion of privacy or just smart? How would you respond if you knew you were being targeted by a nonprofit because of your tweets and check-ins?

For a few years now, I've been hearing people talk about how mobile will hold the next big wave of innovation here in the US. The exception to most technological advances, we are behind many developing nations in mobile. In Africa, for example, it is already being used for microlending, reporting violence and human rights abuses, crowdsourcing crisis information and HIV/AIDS prevention. Organizations like FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi are leading the way in using mobile for social good, and the UN is delivering food aid to refugees via text message.

Because so many people in the US have access to computers, mobile hasn't been a priority, but the convenience and utility of being able to give, bank, report, research and organize on the go may finally be dawning on us.

For a while now, we've been able to leverage the immediacy of being able to donate instantly to a cause that moves you through text to give campaigns. And with the help of the Mobile Giving Foundation, mobile giving is improving with respect to the range of organizations that can set up mobile giving campaigns and the percentage of the donation that actually reaches the nonprofit. Last year Alicia Keys demonstrated the power of mobile giving when she raised $450,000 for Keep a Child Alive from 90,000 mobile donors through one appeal on American Idol, and Ben Stiller has recently launched a series of hilarious Stillerstrong videos to raise money through mobile giving for a school in Haiti. For more about mobile giving, see extremely helpful articles by Joanne Fritz and Katrin Verclas.

When people ask what the next *big* thing in social media will be, the quickly growing, and moderately addictive, Foursquare is often the answer. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, it really only makes sense to use Foursquare on your phone because the purpose of the social media tool is to share with friends where you are out and about in your city and trade tips on deals, favorite dishes or places to watch the game. While I'm still getting into the habit of checking in when I go out, this game-meets-information-sharing platform has lots of potential. Once the reportedly coming-soon blackberry application is widely released, Foursquare will likely be widely used for not only impromptu happy hours, but also volunteering and community organizing.

Holiday bargain hunting has also proven an opportunity for new mobile applications. According to a Deloitte survey, one in five holiday shoppers says they are using their mobile phones to shop this year. The New York Times reports that "of those, 45 percent said they would use their phone to research prices, 32 percent said they would use it to find coupons or read reviews and 25 percent said they would make purchases from their phones."

There are a slue of applications that have been created for mobile-enhanced shopping, including one called ShopSavvy actually allows users to scan the barcode on an item and automatically search for the lowest price available near them. (Is it just me, or is that amazing?) And companies like Amazon and eBay, who says its mobile shoppers are spending $500 million this year, are trying to make it easier for customers to shop using their phones. Just as mobile is helping smart shoppers, applications are also being created to help retailers get smart about mobile. For example, Yowza uses GPS locations to send shoppers coupons for stores within walking distance of their location.

Although this may not be quite the heyday of mobile in the US yet, Foursquare will release a BlackBerry app and become widely adopted next year, and retailers will learn from the mobile use of consumers this holiday season. With all of this activity in mobile (finally) heating up, it seems like 2010 could be a big year. What do you hope to see in mobile innovation and adoption next year?