Tag Archives: social media

Carmageddon

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I think the fine folks who are planning for the two year shutdown of Business 40 in Winston-Salem for repairs might want to watch how the folks in California are preparing for their own Carmageddon this weekend.

Los Angeles, home of notorious traffic jams, is preparing for a potential doozy. People are calling this weekend’s closure of 10 miles of the 405 “Carmageddon.” What’s happening is 10 miles of the very busy highway will be shut down to traffic as part of a reconstruction project. The big question is whether the work will result in massive traffic jams or if the impact won’t be that great because it’s a weekend project.

We’re seeing some examples of social media in action in preparation for Carmageddon. KABC is teaming up with the traffic app company Waze to offer an app that is powered by the audience. It detects your speed as you drive and keep the app open. Utilizing that information, Waze generates a map showing traffic. After your ride you can report what you saw along the way (typing is disabled while you’re driving).

 

Aha!

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I'm still kind of bummed that I had to beg out of taping my "Aha Moment" when they were in town (work and life in general got in the way), but I'm glad to see that Winston-Salem's uber-Tweeter, Kristen Daukus, had a great time recording hers:

and showing the Aha Moment folks what Ribfest was all about:

There are some great stories from other Winston-Salem folks if you browse through all the clips recorded by the Aha Moment team. Just search on "Winston-Salem + aha" on YouTube and you should find most of them.

Here are the people I've met in real life (my apologies if I missed anyone):

Paul

SueMo

Cheryl

Kim

Danielle

Here's someone many people in Winston-Salem have probably seen in real life even if they haven't met him – Robert Moody of the Winston-Salem Symphony.  BTW, I consider it one of my great failings that I haven't gotten over to see the Symphony in the seven years I've lived here.  I'm gonna have to do something about that.

After viewing most of the videos I had a BIG Aha Moment – there are a ton of really interesting people in Winston-Salem I haven't met yet and hopefully I can rectify the situation in the near future.

Breaking News via Facebook

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There's a bit of a political kerfluffle brewing right now in Greensboro over a recent redistricting vote by the City Council.  It's been a hot topic at Ed Cone's blog, which everyone in Greensboro knows is where you go to be seen, er heard, er read when you want to vent your spleen about the goings on in what is likely North Carolina's whiniest city. What's interesting to me is that Ed just broke the news that one of the City Council members announced that she's going to ask that the vote be reconsidered, and she made the announcement via her Facebook status.  

It would be easy to just say that this is a sign of the times, and it is, but upon further examination I think there are some fairly interesting ramifications in this simple act. Here are some that have come to mind:

  • Any reporter "friended" by a public figure who uses Facebook as a primary communication vehicle will have a competitive advantage over a reporter who isn't. Public figures have always had preferred members of media and I suspect they've always cherry-picked who they leak news to, but this is a very public way to play favorites with members of the media. 
  • Of course the public figure can also completely "disintermediate" the media by friending everyone but the media, thereby communicating directly with their audience and excluding the media.
  • Whether or not a member of the media is included or excluded, the news will be old to a healthy chunk of the audience by the time the 5 o'clock news airs or tomorrow's paper is printed.
  • This development has only reinforced my conviction that "news" operations need to move away from the shallow "breaking stories" MO and move quickly towards deep and analytical stories that provide context and avoid titillation and tattling.  In other words most of us now know what happened with the Greensboro redistricting, but few of us really know why.  Giving us the "why" is where the professional media can make hay.
  • In another interesting twist I've found that most of the really good comments on Ed's blog are posted by the professional journalists (I'm thinking of Joe Killian here) who often provide context and expert understanding of the issues in response to other commenters on Ed's posts.

Case Study on Good Corporate Twitter-care

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Last week the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) hosted its regular monthly dinner meeting and it was one of the most successful meetings we've had in a long time.  The topic was social media and it featured a presentation on the "Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Social Media" and was followed by a Q&A session with some social media experts from the apartment industry. One recurring theme that evolved from the presentation and the Q&A was the importance of being active in the social media sphere, and being prepared to engage with customers and prospects via Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I thought of that today when I observed the interaction between one of my coworkers, Rachel, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  Enterprise told Rachel that they'd be at our office to pick her up at 2 p.m.  At 2:15 she called them to see where they were and they indicated that the driver had left on time and knew where he was going so he should be here any time.  Rachel waited a few more minutes and then wrote this on Twitter at 2:21:

Hey Enterprise, remember when you said "We'll pick you up at 2!" That was awesome. Except. You didn't. #tickfreakingtock

Obviously she was being funny, but it's also obvious she's getting a little annoyed. Well, someone at Enterprise is on the ball because within 20 minutes @enterprisecares Tweeted the this:

Have you called re: the delay? If you need anything else follow us & I'll DM my contact info to get details (Elizabeth)

Needless to say Rachel was impressed and is currently a very happy Enterprise customer.  BTW, the driver showed up just a couple of minutes later; he'd gone to the wrong address which is not uncommon for people coming to our office since it's a kind of weird location. 

Here's a screen shot of my Tweetdeck showing the interaction. Very well done Enterprise:

TwitterCustomerCare
 

The Difference Between Moms and Dads

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Everyone except Esbee will understand this: on Hallmark days people on Facebook will post things in their "status" that someone else has written for the occasion and then arm-twisted everyone else to post in their "status" too.  For Mother's Day we have this one:

Before you were conceived, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. When you were born, I saw your face and knew I was in love. Before you were an hour old, I knew I would die for you. To this day, I will. With Mother's Day approaching, repost this if you have children you love more than life.

Here's what I predict will be written for Father's Day:

Before you were conceived, I had freedom. Before you were born, I could do whatever I wanted. When you were born, I saw you and asked if you were really done and wondered if maybe we should put you back in there for a week or two. Before you were an hour old, I knew that life as I knew it was over.  To this day, I've been proven right. With Father's Day approaching, repost this if you have children who've sucked the marrow out of your being, but what the hell, you have to admit you love them more than life.

For Those Who Still Think All Blogs and Twitter Feeds Are About Cats and BM

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As reported by the Triad Business Journal the Wake Forest MBA program's student run blog and related Twitter feed have been recognized as a "must follow" by TopMBA.com. 

Five years into this whole blog experiment thing and I still feel the need to justify my existence.  I never knew I was so insecure.

Jon’s Social Media Rules (as if the world needs ’em)

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My family and friends know I'm a pseudo-geek.  I'm not a real geek because I may know about things like Facebook before they do, but I couldn't fix a computer if my life depended on it. Anyway, as a pseudo-geek I fill the role that all consultants love: I'm no expert but some people think I am because I know more than they do.  Lately most of the questions I've gotten have been about things that could loosely be defined as social media.

As an example I get asked: "What's this Twitter thing? How does it work? Why in the heck would anyone use it?"  Inevitably the questions evolve into conversation and culminate with the ultimate statement-question: "I'm too busy to pay attention to this crap, but (insert name of someone they respect/fear here) thinks its important so I guess I have to.  How can you tell which one of these things really matter and how do you keep track of it all?"  That's when I lay out my own rules for the road:

  1. Find your sage. To determine which cool new thing to pay attention to I track people whose job it is to know these things and test the products/services they seem to be high on.  My number one resource is Fred Wilson and not too far behind him is Rex Hammock.  They don't know me from Adam, but I read their stuff religiously and pay close attention.
  2. Be patient. Usually the things that techies are high on don't seem too relevant at first.  Facebook and Twitter seemed pretty useless to me for quite a while because no one I knew was using them, but when more friends/colleagues started using them, and the network effect kicked in, they became as valuable as any online tool I have with the exception of that insipid creature known as email.  Still, it took a long time and I essentially just monitored the services until they took off.
  3. Use appropriately. I'm reminded of this by an article in Fortune about LinkedIn.  I've always thought of LinkedIn as useful, but somewhat stodgy in terms of my social media universe and that remains true.  So what?  It functions very well and does what it's supposed to do and I use it for all the tasks I need to accomplish when I'm wearing my "professional Jon" hat.
  4. Don't be afraid to cut the cord or limit your menu.  I've abandoned more of these things than not.  Off the top of my head I can name FriendFeed, Tumblr and MySpace and I'm certain there's ten times that many that I can't remember. I'm not saying that these services don't serve lots of people very well, they just never reached a critical use point for me and there's nothing wrong with that.  Do this relentlessly or you'll soon be overwhelmed.
  5. Try not to be the last one at the party.  Time really is our most precious commodity so don't waste it on something that is bringing you minimal returns.  I actually used MySpace quite a bit a few years ago because there were friends and family members using it and I found it a great way to stay in touch.  But they started leaving and all MySpace seemed to offer were really ugly pages managed by local escorts and so I said "adios." 
  6. Don't be afraid of the rebound.  Sometimes you stop using a product or service because it seems fairly useless and then out of nowhere everyone seems to be talking about it.  Before you dismiss it as simply uninformed n00bs talking out of their nether regions go back and check it out.  You might find that the service has been vastly improved, or has added a component that makes it more useful, and you shouldn't let your ego get in the way of using it.  I know this sounds a lot like 'be patient' but really it's about rediscovering something you actually abandoned (truth be told I did this with LinkedIn).
  7. If your boss (customer, significant other, kids, etc.) uses it then use it too.  You may think it's stupid, but if someone whose opinion truly matters to you is using it then you probably need to at least be up to speed.  You may not give a rats you-know-what about Facebook, but if your kids are using it don't you at least want to know how it works?  Same goes if your boss keeps spouting off about the great research potential provided by LinkedIn.  Nothing says you have to be an uber-user, but it doesn't take too much effort to get enough of an understanding to keep from looking like the kid who still had an 8-track player in his car in 1991. 

Simple, huh?  Feel free to disagree, add or delete.  

Why Twitter’s Influence is Probably Greater Than Most People Think

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Fred Wilson has a post, Twitter.com vs. The Twitter Ecosystem, that is an essential read for anyone whose job involves Twitter.  Strike that: it's important for anyone in business, period.  I say that because the evolution of Twitter and similar "sharing" services is happening much faster than many people realize and it is reflected in the numbers that Fred shares.  Anyone in business will be directly affected by that trend.

Please read Fred's post for yourself and keep in mind that his audience is a geek-ish, early adopter crowd, but over the five years I've been reading Fred's blog I've found them to be highly predictive of the world of communication and commerce that is about a year down the road. In other words they are behaving now the way the average consumer will be behaving in the next year or two.