Fliike – the local business Facebook Like counter
If you have a shop or any other business, chances are that your have a Facebook Page too. On your website you’ll probably have a link to Like your page to show how popular your place is. But, how about seeing your Likes in your coffee shop, fashion outlet or retro-modern-shabby-chic-gastro-venue? You need the Fliike.
Fliike is the brainchild of French startup, Smiirl, and not only does it look cool but it serves an interesting purpose by providing a bridge between a venue’s virtual presence and its physical one.
There have been similar products to the Fliike before, but Smiirl co-founder and CEO Gauthier Nadaud says that existing offerings tend to target large companies and international brands with “very complicated and costly installations”.
Smiirl is looking to those smaller, local, indie businesses – hence why the standard Fliike stops short of 100,000 ‘Likes’ I imagine. If you look to be getting more popular than the Fliike will allow, the company is open to producing customised versions for you.
Personally, I really dig the mechanical design and Nadaud says that “Screens are everywhere, that’s why we provide a simple design using mechanical interactions, thus giving [the] Internet some tangible aspect,”
Why bother with Fliike or things like it?
Well, making a company’s virtual presence or digital identity tangible in the real world is only one way of looking at Smiirl’s mission.
The main emphasis comes from figuring out how to show how popular a local business is on social networks and then to use this ‘social proof’ as a way to drive customers in store.
It’s kind of a modern twist on the saying that you should never eat in an empty restaurant. Let’s face it, if you know that a place has a steady stream of customers then it figures that there’s a reason for this. Small indie businesses might not always have a full shop but, if you could tell that it does have a faithful and reasonably sized core of customers, you may be more inclined to check it out.
In addition, Nadaud says that it’s also “very hard to convert a satisfied in-store client into a Facebook-fan or a member of any digital community”.
Seeing a business’s Facebook page ‘Like’-count on display, especially if you happen to catch it going up, is a subtle way of encouraging you to also become a fan. Who wouldn’t be tempted to click the ‘Like’ button using their smartphone just to see it click over?
The Fliike goes on preorder today for €300 plus taxes/delivery with the first batch limited to 500 units.
Would you like to see more things like Fliike appearing in the windows of your local small businesses?
