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Mar 24

Why I Can’t Get As Excited About Geolocation as Scoble

March 24, 2010 • View Comments • Other Social Networks

I was partially responsible for choosing Gowalla as the Texas Social Media Award winner for 2010. While I am happy to support Gowalla and use it myself, I feel compelled to drop a little vitamin C in the geolocation Kool-Aid to make sure people are okay.

I’ve had some not so pleasant experiences with someone who felt compelled to tell me that I couldn’t block him from certain circles of my life, even though they were circles he didn’t know. When I’d tweet that people should go to an event, he’d friend everyone involved. He was basically trying to be everywhere I was both online and off and it was very scary. I’ve mentioned this to other people who are avid social media users and some of them have actually been targeted as well. It is not fun and it makes you think you are going totally crazy.

Here’s the scoop: it doesn’t matter if you think you aren’t going to be stalked. By accepting friend requests from people who you don’t know in any way shape or form, you are jeopardizing yourself along with all of your friends. Why? Imagine I hang out with Person A a lot. Person A befriends Person Q who just so happens to be someone who makes me feel generally unsafe or uncomfortable. Person Q can generally assume that they can hang around along the peripheral of Person A and eventually, I’m going to show up. Thanks a lot, Person A. You’ve just put me in harm’s way because you like the idea of having a million friends on FourSquare. That sucks.

Or, say I check in to all my local spots on Gowalla. I have fairly consistent patterns. If I tweet where I am at, it goes into a public timeline which Person Q can easily see. Person Q can figure out my routines and intercept me this way. That is why I do not care how friendly you are. If I can’t track you in person, I will not friend you. Even if I’m met you once or whatever. I don’t care if I lose out on a few serendipitous meetings.

I’m not saying Scoble is like this by any stretch, but I just felt that someone should bring these points up. Someone shouldn’t have to die for us to figure out that posting your location to total strangers is not a good idea. Geolocation is cool, but don’t use it without putting some thought behind it.

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Mar 16

Bringing SxSWi Back (and Why Jolie O’Dell is Right)

March 16, 2010 • View Comments • Events I've Attended
Twitter's Ev Williams - SXSWi 2010
Image by Randy Stewart via Flickr

So here’s my SxSWi post. Please note that your experience could have been totally different based on your approach.

I don’t want to see the Chevy Volt at South by Southwest. I don’t care to see Sobe or Pepsi. I don’t care about tattoos or doo rags or bacon stands. I want South by Southwest to return to being about technology and the future of the web. I don’t care about winning prizes and I cringe to meet web celebs. If that means I pay more and there are less people, that’s fine. I’m exhausted and I feel like I just ate two dozen cupcakes without actually eating any dinner.

Everyone launches an app or an announcement at South by Southwest. It gets very noisy and exhausting, especially when you stand by Scoble as part of your job description. Seriously, one guy pitched us as we stood waiting for a co-worker. He acted like he didn’t know who we were, but come on. Who pitches two random strangers engaged in a conversation? That’s just sick in the head.

The highlights for me? Knowing that I sponsored InfoChimps’s Big Data party and that they and the folks at Jones-Dilworth totally rocked it. Catching up with cool people I hadn’t seen in a while. Bowing out of Mashable’s party to listen to the sick dubstep next door. You know, everything outside what was actually listed on the SxSWi website.

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Mar 05

“As Many as Possible” is Not a Marketing Segment

March 5, 2010 • View Comments • Online Marketing

If you ever hire a PR firm (well, a good one), getting a story in the press feels a lot like an interrogation. Who should this story appeal to? Why should they care? Do you have evidence to back this up? It can feel a bit invasive if all you want to do is get a story out there. The best PR firms are going to interrogate you the hardest because they want to figure out how to pitch a story and to whom so as to maximize impact.

Often we focus on coming up with the best product or the most creative story. When it comes to the audience, the answer often becomes “as many people as possible”.

Let’s think of the logic of that. You are a person who obviously hears stories from time to time. How frequently do you hear a story that you like, your neighbor likes, your mom and dad like, and your kids like? How frequently do you watch conservative or liberal TV and go “Man, those people are crazy?” How frequently do you discover lame movies or music on iTunes or real life that someone else is totally gaga for?

People are much more different than businesses often consider. This is why the “as many as possible” campaign fails.

Theoretically, you should consider the end user from day one when you actually build a product. By the time you get to actually marketing it or getting PR, the “Who and Why” question becomes easy. Accept the constraints of having an audience to woo and you’ll find the numbers will soon follow.

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