EP:012 – The Cotton Club Podcast
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Well I think we figured out in this episode of The Cotton Club Podcast exactly how important a reliable internet connection is to producing a show like this. My guests Keith Crawford, Brant Collins, Robert Blake, Craig McCoy, Arlton Lowry, and Steven Trotter were all gracious despite the fact we were disconnected 4 times thanks to my connection dropping out. I promise to work on this and get it all squared away in the very near future so please bear with us through this episode, I did my best editing work to splice together all of the audio, hopefully you won’t be able to tell but I bet you do…
Even though we had some tough connection issues we still managed to cover some pretty cool topics in this episode including the release of the new iPhone and the IOS4.0 operating system. We also touched on the rollout of Wordpress 3.0. Another discussion was carried over from my recent blog post on social media taboo where we each weighed in with our thoughts. If you run a business and want to leverage social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, or Foursquare in your marketing you should definitely give this episode a listen. Our guests Arlton Lowry and Steven Trotter also discussed the co-working trends that have started up in Jonesboro and Conway and as usual we wrapped up the show discussing our favorite iPhone apps. Again, please forgive our sloppiness in this episode, we are working to get everything resolved with our connection so we are up and running again soon without interruptions.
Let’s Discuss Social Media Taboo
Okay, let me get started by saying that I don’t blog a lot about social media anymore because I don’t want to fall into the category of being a self-proclaimed guru, but I do this for a living, and yes I have clients that pay me to do this for them as well, so I feel no shame in admitting that I might know more than a lot of people handing out advice these days because this is my full-time gig. Not bragging, just saying. At Pleth, we have clients reach out to us on an almost daily basis for social media consulting and it’s something that I think we, as an industry, pretty much do right w/ the exception of a few bad apples and of course some companies that try to do it themselves internally.
I am not for sure who all out there is advising their clients to do these two things, and maybe some are just taking this upon themselves, but I know of at least one firm (won’t mention any names, they are out of state anyway) who advised a client to do this and it sent shivers down the base of my spine. I wanted to set the record straight, or at least weigh in on my opinion as to why these things are being handled completely wrong…
Businesses / Organizations Should Not Be Facebook Profiles (They are not Humans!)
Here’s the thing, there are right ways and wrong ways for your business or organization to get involved on Facebook. You even have some options when it comes to pages or groups, depending entirely what your motivation is for getting involved. I hate to see a friend request from a business or an organization. This is not correct.
Surely at some point during the process while this profile was being setup, this had to seem like it wasn’t right. I don’t know, maybe at the point where they asked you your birthday, or your sex, possibly even relationship status. I mean, does your business date? Does your business have a gender? Hopefully not, that would be illegal in most states. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but this gets under my skin a little bit, especially when I find that a firm has consulted someone to do things this way so that they have some different options that pages or groups presently don’t have. I have to scratch my head and wonder if that is not some sort of malpractice somewhere down the lines. Don’t we, as an industry have a fiduciary obligation to our clients not to steer them wrongly?
Companies / Organizations with Geo-Social Profiles (Where you Goin?)
Why would a company add me as a friend on Foursquare / Gowalla? You got me, I have no idea but I have had 2 do this recently and it made me wonder. I mean I know your company, the request wasn’t out of line, but your company is comprised of hundreds of employees and you have 2 physical locations. How come you want to be friends w/ me? Your company is not representative of one person, where are you going to check in at? Are you physically going to move your entire building to another location and check-in? Of course not. If you are interested in knowing where I am checking in at, you don’t have to be my friend to find out that information.
Now that that part almost sounded like a rant, so let me back up a little bit and commend you on your interest in wanting to be involved with geo-social. You are on the cutting edge my friend, no doubt. But, there are right ways and wrong ways to get involved with trends, and honestly by doing it wrong you can make yourself look worse than had you not even tried at all. (example: me trying to sing karaoke).
If you want to get involved with geo-social as a company or an organization, I would advise contacting these companies (Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, Loopt) and seeing what they recommend, or possibly by going off on your own and offering discounts for mayors / checkins / etc. You might even consider getting a custom stamp for your business on Gowalla, I won’t go into all of the details on this right now, but trust me, these companies are startups so they are eager for your involvement, just call them.
In closing, I am sure I am not the only one that these things bother, please comment your thoughts on this. Also, what are some other things that you see that bother you today w/ corporate / organizational use of social media?? I am personally inviting some heavy hitters and experts that I know to contribute to this discussion. Please feel free to weigh in with any other pet peeves you might have. I would love to turn this discussion into a podcast at some point soon…
EP:008 – The Cotton Club Podcast
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This weeks show was sort of an experimentation in that we had four guests on at once via Skype as opposed to just Keith and I, I think the end result was pretty awesome, we only had one glitch in the middle of the show and it was minor.
This week my guests for The Cotton Club included Keith Crawford, Robert Blake, and Brant Collins. Some topics discussed were Geo-Location Social Applications (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Lattitude). We also discussed the previous day’s Wall Street Fiasco involving Citigroup and Proctor & Gamble and how a case study could be made for the entire event. Another topic we covered was Net Neutrality and what role the FCC will play in regulation. We also briefly touch on Google and YouTube’s design changes. As usual we wrapped up the show w/ our iPhone apps of the week.
One of the things that has continued to amaze me about this podcast is how our subscription counts have continued to rise each week. We are now over 400 subscribers to the show. If you have topics that you would like to hear us discuss on The Cotton Club, please drop me a line or leave a comment below and we will be happy to consider them.
EP:007 – The Cotton Club Podcast
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After a short hiatus, The Cotton Club Podcast is back! Tonight I had special guest co-hosts Keith Crawford and Robert Blake on the show to discuss a wide variety of topics including the new Facebook enhancements rolled out at the F8 Conference and we each weighed in on what our thoughts were as to how it’s all going to impact site owners and bloggers. We also touched on Location Based Applications, Gowalla and Foursquare, and how we view these two competing applications.
Robert also broke a funny follow-up chapter to the Gizmodo / Apple controversy where the new iPhone was discovered in a bar. Apparently the “Apple Police” have started raiding homes! You won’t want to miss the newest revelations in this saga so be sure to listen. Also, as we closed out the show all three of us commented on our iPhone apps of the week. Keith shared Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy, Robert hee-hawed a little bit about Farmtown, and I closed out the show discussing the Gowalla Sniffer.
It’s hard to believe but we almost went for 45 minutes this evening making this one of our longer shows, but be sure to listen to the entire show because it’s packed w/ some cool content. If you haven’t already subscribed to The Cotton Club on iTunes, you can do so by clicking here…
Let’s Discuss Gowalla & Foursquare
Today we had an active discussion on Twitter (for the 10,000th time) regarding the whole Geo-Social showdown between Gowalla and Foursquare. I have summarized some of my thoughts that I took from this conversation below as well as some insight provided by people in my network. I have also posed some questions below that I would love to have your feedback on so please feel free to comment your thoughts…
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Being a die-hard Gowalla fan as well as a loyal user I have a hard time buying into the statement that Foursquare is the best geo-social application to get behind. A common response that I get back from my network of followers is that Foursquare is better for businesses.
Every time I hear this I keep thinking that maybe I am missing something with Foursquare that I should learn more about but the best that I can come up with is the fact that Foursquare has these listed features for businesses that more or less allow business owners to post messages to users who are in the area to entice them to visit an establishment. Foursquare also allows owners the opportunity to offer specials to Mayors and those who have loyalty points (# of check-ins). I guess I can sort of see where everyone is coming from on their position that Foursquare might be better than Gowalla in this one aspect, but overall Gowalla has a much better product and user experience. As a developer and a business owner, I can attest to the fact that user experience and application quality go a long way!!!
I posed the question today on Twitter: What makes Foursquare better for businesses than Gowalla? and I didn’t get any really concrete or specific answers back from very many people. Keith Crawford brought up the fact that Gowalla really needed to address business users, and I agree w/ that point. Natalie Ghidotti mentioned that Foursquare did a better job connecting users to businesses w/ mayorships, etc. and I can sort of see that point of view as well, but doesn’t the idea of picking up items on Gowalla that can be exchanged for tangible items such as appetizers, t-shirts, phone cases, etc., sort of counteract that? Not to mention making it more fun when you win these items? Furthermore, to counteract the loyalty aspect of Foursquare (ie. mayorships, # of checkins, etc.) couldn’t Gowalla’s leaderboard also answer that one?
Not too far into this debate, I posted links to the online location profile for Pleth, LLC in Conway from both locations (Gowalla: Pleth, LLC and Foursquare: Pleth, LLC) to demonstrate that from a desktop browser perspective there really wasn’t much difference between the two. It wasn’t long after this that a representative from Gowalla, @SanLei came into the conversation and had me refresh my browser to see my Pleth location page again. She had added my company information, twitter handle, and stream into my profile page. All day long during this conversation we never heard a word from Foursquare.
Bryan Jones also weighed in saying that he also leans toward Gowalla over Foursquare for similar reasons that I do, Quality over Quantity. Mark Ferguson also weighed in saying that he preferred getting items for prizes than becoming a mayor of a particular establishment, and I think I am inclined to agree w/ his position as well.
- Here’s my thing, isn’t the user experience going to win out every time?
- Does anyone disagree w/ my position that Gowalla has a much better user experience?
- What does Gowalla need to do to address / encourage Business Use?
#RefreshCA – GeoSocial Showdown
Be sure to join the Central Arkansas Refresh on February 23rd for our GeoSocial Showdown to discuss several of today’s top applications. After a lot of discussion we have decided to have a little bit different format for this month’s meeting. As opposed to having one speaker offer a presentation and then have group questions, we are going to have a moderator and 5 representatives from within the group to represent the top 5 services. Each presenter will give a short overview of the app they represent (approximately 3 minutes long) and then the group will be invited to interact with the panel and ask questions. It should be an awesome time. The volunteer representatives and applications represented will be:
- BrightKite – Anthony Valley
- Foursquare – Amy Bradley Hole
- Loopt – Bryan Jones
- Gowalla – Khara Cavaness
- Waze – Keith Crawford
If you have never attended one of our meetings, we invite you to attend this one. Our meetings are held in the basement of The Flying Saucer in downtown Little Rock at 6:00pm on the last Tuesday of each month. For additional information please join our Facebook Group and follow @RefreshCA on Twitter. Our meetings are open to the public and free! Below you will find a map to The Flying Saucer…
View Larger Map
#RefreshCA GeoSocial Showdown (Update)
Recently I did a blog post asking for feedback regarding the format for our upcoming February Central Arkansas Refresh meeting on GeoSocial Applications. I think for the most part we all agreed that there needs to be some sort of “intro” to each of the applications we are going to showcase.
Daniel Spillers brought up a good point in the comments from my last post that these presentations need to be pretty brief and concise laying out the specifics and differences between each app. Keith Crawford also agreed that he thought a short overview for each application regarding their implications and differentiations would be wise. My thoughts all along have been that this meeting in particular might have the same kind of response from the community that our Google Wave meeting had back in November where we had a lot of people attend that usually don’t attend. Based on our November meeting attendance I walked away thinking that we had actually given something back to the community, which was pretty cool. That’s not to say that our meetings where it’s just us nerds aren’t fun, because they are!
One thing that we accomplished in my initial blog post was setting up our panel of representatives for this meeting as well as the apps that we are going to discuss, here’s how things have shaped up:
- BrightKite – Anthony Valley
- Foursquare – Amy Bradley Hole
- Loopt – Bryan Jones
- Gowalla – Khara Cavaness
- Waze – Keith Crawford
I will probably act as the moderator for the meeting to kind of kick things off and introduce each panelist. Each panelist will have about 2-3 minutes to give a brief rundown of their application and tell how it’s different from the others and it’s implications.
I think the consensus from those that I have heard from was that after the presentations for each app were complete we could then open up the room for discussion, questions, etc. regarding each application. I think that if we all hustle we can knock out the presentations in about 20 minutes or so and leave the remainder of the evening open for discussion. I guess my question is,
How Does This Sound?? Leave a comment if you want to add something or if I forgot anything…
By the way, our meeting is scheduled for February 23, 2010 at 6pm at our normal location, The Flying Saucer. If you are a member of Facebook Group you should get an event notification. Also, be sure to follow @RefreshCA on Twitter for news and updates. If you have never attended a #RefreshCA meeting, here’s a map to The Flying Saucer, we meet in the basement…
Be sure to tell your friends and co-workers about this meeting, I think it has the potential to be one of our best ones yet given the popularity of geosocial apps.
EP:001 – The Cotton Club Podcast
I finally got around to recording my first installment of The Cotton Club Podcast this evening. My guest co-host for the show this evening was Keith Crawford, you may know him as @tsudo on Twitter. This initial podcast was just a test run to see how things work so that when Keith and I get ready to launch another sideline project called The Social Radar in the very near future we can hit the ground running.
Please keep in mind that this is my first go at podcasting, the quality and content should get better over time. Despite the fact that I have invested in an awesome setup from software to microphones, the audio of me talking didn’t turn out very well at all. You can hear Keith great, and that’s probably a good thing since he is a lot cooler to listen to. 
The topics we covered on Episode 001 of The Cotton Club were as follows:
- Geosocial Applications (Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, Loopt)
- iPhone Applications (Dragon Dictate, Where R U?, Evernote, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mytown)
- Social Media Predictions for 2010 (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed)
- Methods for Archiving Thoughts for Blog Posts (Friendfeed, Wordpress, etc.)
- Crazy Story of The Week from Hell
- NASCAR Withdrawels
- Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting – January 26th (Nick Brewer presenting on PODSCMS for Wordpress)
Thanks for tuning into my first show, I promise it’s going to get better over time, so please bear with me. If you want to subscribe to The Cotton Club Podcast, you can do so on iTunes.
Production Note: The audio at the beginning of the recording isn’t very loud, a few minutes into the recording I finally managed to get it adjusted to where you could hear me a little bit better. Please bear w/ me, this is a work in progress.
#RefreshCA Geo-Social Showdown
If you missed out on the January meeting of the Central Arkansas Refresh group where Nick Brewer from CJRW did a presentation on PODS CMS for Wordpress, you missed out on an awesome presentation. Nick did an awesome job presenting PODS, hopefully we will have his presentation slides and audio online for you to download in the very near future, he is working on them now.
When we opened the meeting I asked the group what they wanted to do for the next months meeting, since the conversations prior to opening the meeting that night were primarily about all of the Geo-Social apps that are on the market right now such as Gowalla, Foursquare, loopt, Brightkite, and Waze, I proposed that we have some sort of broad scope group discussion on these apps to discuss where we all see these apps going. I think we all agreed that this is the next wave of social media.
The idea that we came up with was that we could have different representatives from within our group kind of give a 5 minute overview of their favorite Geo-Social app and then we could open the floor to discuss these apps and how we can leverage them to meet our clients needs as well as our own moving forward from an industry perspective.
Now, here’s where I need some feedback:
- What does everyone think of this meeting layout?
- Do you have any format suggestions?
- If this is cool, then we will need volunteers to do 5 minute overviews of each product, here’s what we have so far in terms of volunteers: * Cotton Rohrscheib (Gowalla), Khara Cavaness (Yelp), ** Amy Bradley Hole (Foursquare), and Bryan Jones (Loopt). I guess that leaves us needing someone to do an overview of Brightkite and Waze, any takers?? @AkValley, @tsudo, @brantc ???
The meeting is scheduled for the last Tuesday in February, that falls on February 23, 2010, I think given the popularity of this topic we stand a chance of having another really good turnout, possibly rivaling our Google Wave discussion. The location will still be The Flying Saucer in Downtown Little Rock and will kick off around 6-6:30pm.
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* = I can easily speak on Waze too if someone wants to take Gowalla
** = She is awesome and was volunteered by the group. Hopefully we can convince her!!!
