Forkfly

Forkfly is a Portland, Oregon based social commerce company that launched in January 2009. They specialize in mobile coupons and promotions for restaurants, events, spas, etc. Forkfly has an extensive Twitter following in several cities across the US which allows merchants to directly communicate with their customers.
History
Paul Wagner CEO founded Forkfly on January 15th 2009. Paul came up with the idea after having trouble editing a CitySearch page for his restaurant, Alu. “I was trying to do my CitySearch profile for two hours,” says Wagner, “and thought there had to be a better way.” As a result, Forkfly was created, and with help from his partner and friend, Marc Dooley, Forkfly’s COO, Paul launched the company in Portland.

Forum Friendly
After the launch, people began to search for deals on forkfly. Many found the application to be fun and quite useful. However, there were few who found kinks in the program. Two of the major problems included old coupons or merchants without any listed coupons. These issues created bad press for Forkfly.
Seeing those situations, Wagner took the reins and created many forum accounts for himself to address the issue personally. He logged on to the forums and directly spoke with the customers. He admitted that there were potential problems but they were being corrected as fast as the small company could fix them. Sara G. on Yelp, Inc was one of the first to bring criticism, but after a few posts from Paul, she saw potential in the iPhone application.
Twitter
Being in a such a fast-paced era, forkfly is using the latest technology, Twitter, to “connect with Users and Merchants,” says David, the Social Media Consultant. Twitter is one of the most active mediums within communities across America.
There is a Twitter account created for each city that Forkfly wishes to pursue; for example: forkflyseattle or fokflychicago. Individual accounts for the cities allow David to create buzz for local restaurants and other merchants through daily tweets.
Portland is the original forkfly at Twitter with the username forkflyHQ used to bring cohesiveness to the national brand. Nationally, Forkfly has 21,000 followers as of June 2009.
Marc Dooley believes, “Forkfly uses twitter to connect communities and truly engage our followers.” It allows the user to communicate directly with the merchants and instantly give feedback and comments.
Flytweets
Forkfly not only distributes deals to customers’ cell phones; but it also offers a Twitter management program called Flytweets. In this program, Forkfly creates and maintains a Twitter profile for a client. The client will have immediate access to its extensive list of followers in their local area. They will be tweeted not only on their own profile but also on Forkfly’s profile.
Forkfly Promotions
When joining Forkfly, offers are given to merchants to post events or promotions on their site. Most of the time the offer is made to restaurant or bar merchants. All Forkfly will ask of the merchant is that there is an incentive coupon for that night. For instance, at the Vault there was a Forkfly special during happy hour only. The Forkfly deal for Vault was tweeted about on the Forkfly Twitter account. There was also a coupon on the Forkfly application for Vault explaining the event. As a result when happy hour began, Vault was swarming with Forkfly fans. “ForkFly has definitely helped our week days become busier and there has been a lot of repeat customers,” says Kenny Stachovich of Vault Martini.

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