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Facebook Acquires Gowalla…

December 2, 2011 By 2 Comments

The story was broken this evening on CNNMoney that Facebook had purchased Gowalla, I actually got a heads up this morning that this might be going down soon. I’m pretty mixed on this.  It’s no great secret that I was a huge Gowalla fan in the early days of location based services and geosocial but the latest evolution of the Gowalla product really drained me pretty bad and just like most of my friends I stopped using it altogether. I would have personally liked to have seen Gowalla go back to what they were in the beginning that had all of us on fire about the app but I think once the new release rolled out they were pretty much committed at that point.

What will the future hold for Gowalla? I have heard that the Gowalla team will be relocating to Palo Alto in the future and will fit into the Facebook timeline, whatever that means. To me that sounds like integration into Facebook, and that this acquisition was more or less a talent grab. I do think that there is serious room in the geosocial arena for a player like Gowalla and that they just gave up to quickly when they did what they did with their latest release.

What are your thoughts?


For some reason this just seemed appropriate…

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Rant: Innovation -vs- What Works

October 10, 2011 By 4 Comments

I tweeted something today that had been on my mind for a few weeks:

The reasoning behind the tweet was a culmination of things lately that have really had me scratching my head. The first being Facebook’s latest upgrade. If you haven’t noticed the level of interaction on Facebook drop since this upgrade you should probably get your eyes checked. Honestly, no one knows what to do, where to go, etc., it’s even confusing to me at times and this is what I do for a living.  Granted, there probably hasn’t ever been a Facebook upgrade that was ever accepted with open arms by the community, people will complain about anything, especially Facebook users (who pay nothing by the way). In the past the tweaks and improvements put in place have always been intuitive enough for people to catch onto what’s going on after they get their bearings and in a week or two it’s a mute issue (until the next update of course). Not this last revision…

I can’t single out Facebook, one of my favorite apps of all-time, Gowalla, recently launched the biggest new release yet, and get this, it’s a complete departure from where they started. For myself, and about 2 dozen people I have spoken with lately, all of the reasons we fell in love w/ Gowalla are now gone. It’s sort of like dating a really pretty girl in high school and all of a sudden she shaves her head and grows a beard. One of the things I really liked about Gowalla was the custom location stamps, for instance, when I checked in at Wimpy’s Burgers and Fries on Gowalla, I could post to Facebook where I was at and let all of my friends know in a bold way by displaying Wimpy’s custom icon on my Facebook wall. That is now gone, in fact, the entire simple check-in process appears to have been replaced by “stories”, something that I discussed among friends this past weekend (see tweets).

I’m not saying that Gowalla shouldn’t ever change, that’s crazy! My problem is that they changed too much, all at once. When I first heard about the exciting changes coming at Gowalla I was pretty excited about the idea of stories, that was of course before I figured out that the simple check-in was gone!!  Here’s a post I did on the announcement of the new version…

I think sometimes we get way too anxious in this day and age to be the first to deliver some new innovation or improvement that no one else has ever seen before that we lose sight in our purpose. Let’s take for instance what we saw today w/ Netflix. They had this idea for something new, Qwikster, but announced today that they were just going to leave things alone for the time being…

  • What kind of cojones did it take for Netflix to recall something they had invested hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into because it wasn’t a good fit for their consumers?
  • Remember “New Coke”? Remember when they brought back “Coca-Cola Classic” because “New Coke” sucked?

I applaud Netflix for their maturity, and wish nothing but the best to Facebook and Gowalla, just wanted to share my two cents. What are your thoughts?

 

 

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Social Media Ministry Management Tips

September 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

I recently was asked to assist with the management of social media for one of the fastest growing churches in the United States. I am still in the discovery process of what all social media strategies and presences they have in place right now but it hasn’t taken me long to figure out that they have worked pretty hard to get to where they are at presently. For instance, they have multiple campuses across the state and are opening new ones quite frequently. For each existing campus I have discovered that there are individual Facebook pages / places for each campus in place presenting us with some challenges in terms of management and consistency. Fortunately, there is only Twitter account so that end of the spectrum is less complicated. Over time we plan to tweak the existing social media strategy to make it more effective, but everything we will do will be gradual.

I sat down this evening to discuss social media with a friend from another Church, located out of state, and he was asking me for some suggestions in terms of managing their social media more effectively. We talked for the better part of three hours and I shared a lot of things that he hadn’t considered. I will share a few of the basics we discussed below in hopes that they will help you manage your social media ministry more effectively…

Utilize Both Facebook & Twitter

You have to realize that there are particular people that you are trying to connect to that are going to be on Facebook exclusively and won’t have any interest in Twitter whatsoever, and vise versa. You will find that your older demographic will primarily be Facebook and your younger demographic will lean more toward Twitter.  It’s for this reason that it’s very important to utilize both networks in your strategy.

Learn the Rules for Engagement Before Jumping In…

Saavy Twitter users are turned off by organizations or brands that are all about promoting their agenda (products, upcoming events, etc.) and do very little actual interaction with their followers. It’s important to keep an eye on your Twitter stream to make sure you are interacting with your followers just as much as you are promoting your agenda. If you are all about broadcasting content and don’t take into consideration that your followers are following you for a reason and want to interact with you, you might actually find yourself spinning your wheels and not having near the impact you could have potentially…

Pretty much the same rule applies to Facebook as it does Twitter, you should use Facebook to engage your audience. Instead of posting a link to an upcoming event to your wall, try elaborating on the link in your status message, or asking your users a question related to the event. This seems to work a lot better than just posting content like you would on a bulletin board. Another recommendation I make to just about everyone I know that manages their company or organizations page on Facebook is to pay attention to their stream. Not only should you concern yourself with what others are saying or posting on your wall, but you should also be sure not to broadcast the same message over and over again. Let’s say you have an event coming up in two weeks, you definitely want to post the event to your wall several times leading up to the event, but never post these updates back to back. By doing this you could find your fan base unfollowing you because you are a broken record, posting the same message, over and over again. I highly recommend breaking your posts up and posting some fun, engaging status updates or videos in between your posts promoting your event.

With Twitter and Facebook both, it’s very important to respond quickly to your followers / fans when they ask questions. I have found that the Twitter generation especially expects a rapid response when they ask a question, when you fail to respond quickly to questions or comments on Facebook and Twitter both, you run the risk of the user losing interest and moving on.

Think Out of the Box…

When engaging people using social media you have to keep in mind that you need to make an impression very early if you are going to influence them to use your product, brand, or organization. You also have to keep in mind that during the course of a normal day they are engaged hundreds, if not thousands, of times by other brands competing for their time. It helps to think outside the box. I am presently running a trivia campaign for our church that asks users to answer three simple questions related to a popular movie that our weekend service is going to be based upon. As an added perk, we are throwing in some tangible prizes like blu-ray movie players, netflix subscriptions, and movie tickets as an incentive to participate.

For the same series I referenced above, we also have a landing page inside of Facebook that allows visitors to see previews of our upcoming services, to share a link to the page on their walls or inbox to their friends, and finally they can click on a link and receive a free cup of coffee prior to the service if they should decide to attend. I have found that plans like this really do work and have an impact.

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Off Topic…

Today I posted a question on Facebook asking our fans what college football team they thought would win the Southeastern Conference Championship. I posted this question on the page for Wimpy’s Burgers & Fries. Granted, the post had nothing to do with Burgers & Fries, but at the end of the day, who wants to hear us talk about Burgers & Fries all the time? College Football just started last weekend and in the south, our target market, College Football is a big deal. I think our users, or fans, appreciate the fact that we share similar interests with them and are not all about selling them hamburgers on gameday!

Geosocial Has Arrived…

I am a huge fan of Geosocial networking, like Gowalla and Foursquare. These companies are maturing rapidly and will continue to do so over time. Both of the services I mentioned offer some great tools for ministries and non-profits to engage their audience and know who is visiting their campuses and what they are saying. There are way too many dynamic aspects to geosocial for me to go into this post but I highly recommend checking out these services.

Also, I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on Facebook Places as they have announced they are discontinuing Facebook Places for the time being.

Filed Under: Faith / Family, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook’s Public Figure Limitations

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I have been talking with some people lately that are considered “Public Figures” on Facebook because they have reached that magic number over 5000 friends and were forced to either stop taking friend requests or to convert their profiles over to “Public Figures”. Let me start out by saying that for most people that fall into this category (celebrities) the problem I am fixing to outline is not a big deal, but for the handful that are affected by it, this can be a serious frustration.

When a user converts their account to a Public Figure on Facebook they basically are becoming a “Page” where their friends are actually converted to “fans” or “likes”. If you manage a page on Facebook for your business or organization you are probably already aware that there are some limitations as to what a page can do. For the most part, a page can only operate inside Facebook by posting links, status updates, photos, and videos to their own wall. Granted, the page, or public profile, can interact with their fans on their own wall by responding to comments, etc., but that pretty much sums up what they are allowed to do. Again, for most celebrities or brands out there, this is probably okay, but let’s say you are a “Public Profile” but still would like to interact with your “friends” or “fans” by posting messages on their walls, etc., you no longer have this ability like you would if you were still a normal user, or “Profile”.

As brands become more and more involved in social media marketing, I can’t help but believe that Facebook will eventually implement something to allow for them to eventually post messages or respond to status updates from their fans at some point in the future. For celebrities or “Public Profiles” that use social media as a tool to interact with their friends, or fan base, on a daily basis, these limitations present some serious frustrations. I am presently working with two individuals that have public profiles that are extremely unhappy with these limitations and would love for Facebook to do something about this pretty quickly so they can get back to engaging their fan base like they use to with their standard profiles.

Any Potential Workarounds?

I have thought about some possible workarounds for this situation and haven’t been able to come up with anything of value other than setting up an entirely different profile and friending a limited amount of people that you want to engage and then unfriend them when you decide to engage others. Keeping an eye on the magic number of friends and making sure that it remains below 5000. This obviously is a lot of work and probably more of a headache than it’s worth.

Another potential solution, and I haven’t completely ruled this out as an option yet, is setting up a Facebook Profile for the user, and then establishing a group, “friends of John Doe” for example. John Doe, our celebrity or public figure, would be one of the administrators for the group and he / she could interact with as many people as he wanted without some of the limitations of a page, but at the end of the day he / she is still back to square one when it comes to posting messages on group members walls, they have to be friends in most cases to be able to interact.

  • I’m just curious, has anyone else ran into this issue before?
  • What solution or workaround were you able to use? 
  • When will Facebook address this issue?
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What Advice Do You Have For Teens Concerning Social Media?

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A while back I was asked by a good friend who is in leadership at a church in Little Rock to come speak to his youth group about social media. I am real excited about this opportunity because this is one of those rare occasions where what I do professionally intersects somewhat with my personal faith.

Another reason I am pretty excited is because I get to co-chair this talk w/ my good friend Keith Crawford, also known as @tsudo on Twitter, and another fellow believer… Keith and I have been going back to our own personal networks this evening and crowd-sourcing this question, “What advice do you have for teenagers concerning social media?”, and some of the responses we have received so far have been incredible.

On my Facebook wall alone I have received almost 20 comments in 2 hours and Keith has also had several good responses to his Facebook walls posts here and here and as well as his Twitter stream.

What advice do you have for teens concerning social media?

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Exciting Enhancements for Gowalla

September 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

It’s not a big secret that I am a Gowalla fan-boy, have been for a long time now. I see the value of geosocial as an industry insider and a business owner, companies like Gowalla and Foursquare have been leading this charge along with Facebook, who recently announced they were dropping their emphasis on Places, or at least take it in another direction.

I have known for a while now that Gowalla was going to make this huge announcement but in my mind I don’t think I realized their vision would be this awesome. While Gowalla is going to remain one of the top check-in services out there, they are also going to expand the app to include two other awesome areas that are pretty much no-brainers in this day of social networking, storytelling and travel. Today, Josh Williams unveiled the new Gowalla 4.0 app at TechCrunch Disrupt.  Here are some comments from the TechCrunch website as to what you can expect to see in version 4.0:

Technically version 4.0, the new version bears little resemblance to the previous versions of the app. Gowalla is no longer predominantly a check-in service. That’s still one aspect of it, but the idea is now to focus on two key areas: travel and storytelling.

When you load up Gowalla, the first thing you see is still a main activity feed. Here you’ll find the activity from your friends. Because Gowalla isn’t completely pivoting away from their core location functionality, much of the data and social connections remain intact. But instead of a stream of check-ins, you’ll notice people hanging out together. They’re checking-in, but they’re also taking pictures and talking to one another in clusters that are known as “Stories”.

The main middle tab is now “Guides”. Here you’ll find curated travel guides for various places around the world. For example, if you load up the app in San Francisco, you’ll see the San Francisco guide, as well as the East Bay guide and the Stanford guide. You can quickly scroll through other guides not near you as well. And Gowalla has the ability to make special guides on the fly. For example, they made a TC Disrupt guide for event-goers.

Clicking on these guides loads up a bit of information about the city as well as all of the must-see spots. Again, because Gowalla has years worth of location data, they’re able to easily populate robust guides. Some of the locations are curated, some are based on check-in data and people favoriting places. The Gowalla “Highlights” feature also plays a role here.

The final tab is your personal profile area. Here you’ll find all of your pictures and all of your Stories.

There are several stories online regarding the Gowalla announcement, here’s a link to another good one. One other thing that I think is important to note, the state of Arkansas is a launch partner w/ Gowalla for this app.  Awesome!!!

I haven’t been this excited about an app release like this in a long time. I bet we do a podcast really soon on this…

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Thoughts on Influence Marketing

September 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Brands have used “influencers” for as long as I can remember to promote their products, just think back a few years to when Michael Jordan was at the top of his game and quite possibly the most popular athlete in the world, Nike signed him to a contract to endorse their brand and to release one of the most popular lines of tennis shoes ever created, the Nike Air Jordans, which if I am not mistaken, is still in production years after Michael has retired.  Another prime example of where influence can easily be seen is in the fashion industry, remember the 80′s movie ‘Top Gun’ where Tom Cruise wore a leather naval aviators jacket w/ patches on it? Chances are if you grew up in the 8o’s you probably owned at least one ‘Top Gun’ inspired leather jacket, possibly even a pair of Ray-Ban aviators too. Have you ever thought about why we were so drawn to the Nike Air Jordan shoes or the leather bomber jackets? It’s simple, we looked upon Michael Jordan and Tom Cruise as being the coolest of the cool, the height of popularity, and we wanted to be just as cool as they were…

In this day and age I think Athletes and even movie stars have less of an influence than they once did. Musicians, especially from the hip-hop genre probably still have an influence over their fan base moreso than other music genres, but for the most part I think this has been on decline slowly since the fifties in the entertainment industry. Think about it.  In today’s society we have so much reality television and real life interaction via social media with everyday people that I think we are finding people that influence us from within our own communities.

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the way new ideas are transmitted by social influence. New products or fashions are introduced by innovators, who tend to be creative and nonconforming. Then early adopters join in, followed by the early majority. By this time, a substantial number of people are using the idea or product, and normative and informational influence encourages others to conform as well. The early majority is followed by a second group that Gladwell calls the late majority, and then finally by the laggards, who tend to be highly conventional and resistant to change.

I couldn’t agree more with this assessment and I think most brands are finding this to be true as well. Think about this, remember the popular kids in high school that all sat together at the cool table in the cafeteria? What kind of influence would it had had on you if you saw each of them wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt? I think once you form this mental picture in your head you will agree that the rest of the school would eventually want a Whitesnake t-shirt too, and granted peer pressure comes into play here but I won’t go into this too far. I think you would also agree that in addition to wanting a Whitesnake t-shirt, the remaining student body would also look upon Whitesnake’s music favorably, probably most without ever hearing one of their songs. Again, this is influence…

Today, with just about every person you come into contact with having at least a Facebook account, and quite possibly a Twitter account too, it’s safe to say we are all connected on a daily basis, just like school kids in a cafeteria. Yes, I know this is a hokey analogy but play along. We interact with each other socially on a daily basis whether it be through Facebook or Twitter. There are obvioiusly people out there that have more friends or followers than others, and there is nothing wrong with this at all. In fact some people who are very outgoing in real life might have limited social engagement because their strong suit is real life interaction. This is something we have to keep in the back of our minds when marketing to the masses, especially through social media. With this being the case, these people who might have a larger following could be considered to be “influencers” or “thought leaders” inside their own circle or community. Also inside that community you will also have followers, or feeders, who’s actions can sometimes be led by the actions of those they look up to, ie. influencers.

It’s for this reason that companies like Klout have a really important role in the future of marketing for brands that engage socially. I feel as if these companies are on the bottom floor for what will be an even bigger push over the next decade by brands to win influencers by marketing to them directly, almost obnoxiously to try their products. Is this bad, well sort of, in the eyes of a consumer who sees a brand going after their friend aggressively to try their products simply because they have more friends on twitter or facebook I can see how this might not go over too well. But what if a brand is able to win over an influencer, and in turn this prized consumer in turn promotes that brand to their friends or followers religiously, what do you think the results would be?

I have people call me all the time because they know that I have worked in the IT industry for the biggest part of my professional life. Most of the questions I get pertain to what kind of computer they should by, or what do they need to do to fix their computer? They look to me as a person of authority when it comes to IT / Computers, etc. As an influencer, I have a moral obligation to shoot straight with everyone and let them know my honest feelings toward a product or service. What if I have been contacted or somehow compensated by a manufacturer who provides a similar product or service to one that I would normally recommend, even though it’s inferior I would be obligated to recommend them. You see where this is going?

As a community that is starting to learn more and more about identifying influencers, we have to be extremely careful not to allow this data to be misused in marketing by big brands or it could have a serious impact. The company with the most money (ie. influencers, endorsements) would eventually be the only show in town, and this could be dangerous.

I’m just curious, how do you feel about Influence Marketing?

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EP:024 – The Cotton Club Podcast

July 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

After a brief hiatus The Cotton Club was back online this evening w/ Keith Crawford, Tyler Presley, Steven Trotter, Chris Spencer, and Mike Fraietta to discuss Google+. Being that Google+ is fairly new, this was the first chance for me to really connect w/ some of my friends to get their take on the new product. It was also very cool to have Mike Fraietta on the show this evening, he is the enterprise community manager at NewsCorp, you may have heard of them before… Fox News, Wall Street Journal, etc. Anyway, having Mike on the show was great, his input was awesome!

A few days ago I blogged about my first impression of Google+ after having used the product for a few days. I still think the future is very bright for this product if Google stays on track w/ what they have going right now. During the show we each shared some of the things that we liked and disliked about the network as well as some thoughts as to how we envisioned various aspects evolving over time…

This was a fun show, definitely great getting the gang together again to talk tech! I promise not to neglect the podcast and will be sure to post new shows from time to time, and thanks to the handful of you who have stayed on me to bring the show back!

The Cotton Club Podcast - Episode 24 / Google+ Social Network Play Now | Play in Popup
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Thoughts on Google+

July 23, 2011 By 7 Comments

I have had a Google+ account for a while now and aside from a few chat sessions, or hangouts, the week it was launched, I pretty much just got around to checking it out this evening.  I must say I am pretty impressed so far w/ the level of engagement I see as well as the clean design that Google has brought to the table.

One key feature that I really like about Google+ is that I have the ability to organize my stream into circles that contain various people or connections I have. For instance, I have a circle made up entirely of friends from Central Arkansas. I also have a ministry circle that I have included just people that I go to church with. These are just two examples, I actually have several other circles that I use, one that I can see being beneficial from a business perspective is my Pleth circle. In this circle I just have my co-workers included. So, let’s say I want to post something that I just want my team members to see, I simply share it with only that group.

There are several good resources online to get you up and running w/ Google+, here are a few to get you started:

By the way, if you are not on Google+ yet and would like an invitation, I have a handful of them left. Just drop me a comment below and I will send you one…

Also, in the next week or so I am planning on recording another edition of The Cotton Club Podcast and one of the topics for the show will be Google+, if you are interested in being on the show, be sure to leave a comment below…

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Wimpy’s Burgers & Fries on Gowalla…

May 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was going to save the surprise for this weekend’s tweetup at Wimpy’s but couldn’t keep a secret! The new Wimpy’s Burgers & Fries spot stamp is live on Gowalla! I think it looks great, can’t wait to see how it stands out on the iPhone next time I get ready to check-in.  If you are out and about this Sunday in the Conway area be sure to swing by Wimpy’s for our tweetup, you can RSVP on Facebook but it’s not necessary!

Also, stay tuned to Wimpy’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for some awesome announcements coming up in the very near future!!

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