Catch Up Lady

RIP Catch Up Lady (b. 2006 - d. 2010)

After four great years, it's time to pull the plug on Catch Up Lady - which many of you will have noticed has been dying a slow and painful death over the last six months.

In talking to others about my predicament, I found myself listing off all the reasons why I felt compelled to end it.  This lead to a joke about creating an Advanced Directive for any blog you start - basically a list of situations in which you are obligated to pull the plug.  Here are a few of mine, got any to add?

• You Lose Your Strategic Filter:  When I started blogging about social media back in 2006 (on FRIENDSTER!), "social media" was a perfectly appropriate filter - it was new, and almost anything a brand did was news in the space.  Fast forward 5 years and social media is its own industry - brands have moved beyond experimentation to full integration with their marcom efforts.  And, there's a site that blogs about "social media" in its entirity, it's called Mashable, and they have a few more hands on deck then I do...I needed a more specific POV.

• Blogging Becomes a Chore:  About six months ago my blog started to feel like a weight on my shoulders.  I suffered from major "blog guilt" for not blogging and feared that protective services was going to come take my blog away from me.  Unlike times past, nothing I saw compelled me to blog...I stopped thinking like a blogger and being excited to post.

• You Stop Caring:  Finally I hit a point where the blog guilt went away, and I just didn't care anymore...  It was time to move on.

So, move on I will - and I hope you move with me, over to Social Sweat, my new blog focused on the intersection of social media and sports marketing. 

Thanks to all of you who read, linked, commented, sent ideas, and supported the Catch Up Lady.  And special thanks to those fellow bloggers who I came to know through this project.  I'm proud that many of you are now my friends "IRL" - that alone is worth every minute I spent on this blog.

Zuck Zings iPhone

Was saying to my brother literally 20 minutes ago that all Apple needed to do to secure pre-orders of the iPhone 4 tonight is to promise it will reliably connect and maintain actual phone calls.  Too bad I didn't invite Facebook or my hilarity would be on Mashable right now...

John McCain @'s Snooki, Hilarity Ensues

In the preview for the not so critically acclaimed upcoming season of Jersey Shore, star Snooki, commented “I don’t go tanning-tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning…He did that because of us.”  

This comment probably would have lived and died in the minds of millennials for a matter of nanoseconds had John McCain (or some hipper member of his comms team) not seized the opportunity...  (456-ish days late and a pair of tanning bed goggles short.)

 

When Singing Dancing Paperboys go GaGa

There are no words for this.  Oh wait, yes there is. 

AWESOME.

What a Tangled (Privacy) Web Facebook Weaves

Today's sign that people are circling the wagons on Facebook and their privacy settings.... 

A graphic from the New York Times showing Facebook's 50 privacy settings and 170+ options.  In the wake of Facebook's roll out of it's Open Graph API and associated complaints about privacy concerns, the company called a privacy all-hands meeting (announced yesterday) and changes are expected.

I predict dramatically simplified privacy setting options and clear, and easy opt-outs for third party sites to quell the backlash that's quickly growing (i.e. consumer protest with efforts like Quit Facebook Day.)

Levi's Facebook Friends Store - The Future For The Socially Connected

Brands talk a lot about integrating social into their Web site.  Unfortunately more often than not it seems this inspiration results in simply the addition of sharing functionality and potentially Facebook, Twitter and YouTube icons linking out to other social channels.  True social functionality facilitates content sharing and conversation - which transforms a brand website from a cathedral you can walk away from to a dynamic space requiring regular maintenance.  Many brands aren't there yet, and may never be in some cases.

That being said, it's nice to see brands like Levi's leaning forward - in late April they launched their Friend's Store as an integrated part of their home page online shopping experience.  When you arrive at the Levi's home page you can use Facebook Connect to tap into your friend's Likes and opinions on their styles.  Likes, of course, appear in your stream, creating the oh-so important generational spread of your activity/WOM.

Like other friend-based social features (i.e. Twitter, FourSquare) I see Facebook Connect being as powerful as your network.  If you have hundreds of social friends using Facebook Connect you are immediately going to realize the value of brands using Facebook Connect - if your network is more inactive, these changes won't impact you or your web experience and you'll wonder what all the fuss is about. 

Facebook's hurdle will be rolling out these partnerships and Connect opportunities in a way that feels safe and secure to users.  I Tweeted yesterday that I was tightening up my Facebook privacy settings and 4 people immediately tweeted that they were doing the same.  Recent incidents, like the Yelp debacle, leave even the early adopters a little skittish on the true benefits of connecting their network to third party sites.  I'm banking on Facebook clearing the hurdle, and consumers following suit. 

EDIT - Literally minutes after posting this I saw on Twitter that Facebook has called an all-hands privacy meeting today to discuss their strategy on this topic... stay tuned.

  

PS - Hey Jason Falls, how those 501's fitting?

Colgate Yearbook Goes All 2.0 On Yo' Ass

When I went to college in 1999 my @wellesley.edu was the first email address I ever had.  In contrast, two years ago Boston College stopped offering @bc.edu email addresses and made them simply a forwarding addresses to student's existing personal email accounts.  In other news from the wow-has-technology-changed-college-file, Colgate University has launched this mashup with yearbook style info of their graduating class and their plans for the future.  8 of the students have added video on their year end thoughts on their college experience.

I found the actual interface and student info to be pretty bland - but as Mashable points out the concept is totally dynamic and you can easily see a more robust version of this catching on for face books (the old kind), yearbooks, alumi groups, and other student organizations.  The ability to customize your info with multimedia and content, or even link to specific content on your existing social channels would make this an particularly easy lift - essentially filtering pieces of your social life to represent you in a designated group.  Easy to see how this concept can be broken out and applied more broadly.

Why Twitter Will Endure

One of the best sessions at the #140 Conference yesterday was by David Carr @carr2n, a brilliant writer and blogger for The New York Times.  In 10 minutes he gave one of the funniest, most spot on presentations I've seen on "why Twitter will endure."  I do it barely any justice...

• Momentum – Despite some slowing growth of the user base there are more than 50MM tweets posted per day.  Besides, the metrics aren't the most important thing to focus on "look at MySpace."
• Twitter is Joyful – Nothing gives the deep joy of Twitter, and the ability to see into the skulls of some of the best writers in the country. 
• Utility – If forced to pick between listening on Twitter and broadcasting, he’d pick listening on Twitter every time.  Twitter is human enabled RSS – you can scoop in a cup and find out what’s happening right now.
• Simple/Easy UI – Simple is hard, and Twitter does it well. 
• Starbucks – Twitter makes waiting in line at Starbucks tolerable, and calms you the baristas appear to be moving underwater. 
• Hook Ups – We never give up hope that we’ll somehow meet and have serendipitous interaction with other humans, and  Twitter - or mindcasting - is one of the best indications of who you are.
• Pipes – Twitter is infrastructure. 
• Serendipity – David's "thanks to Twitter" story involved getting an offer for a new seat on an airplane after tweeting that the passenger next to him seemed to be involved  in an Axe Body Spray cult.  Everyone has a story like this.
• Zietgiest – Twitter helps you see over the hill and expose you to trends that might open your eyes (like Glee!)
• Hivemind – Need help with Final Cut Pro?  Recommendations for a NetFlix rental?  Interviews for a story?  The hivemind is always active and always helpful.
• Decency – Your avatar is you and people mind their manners unlike other places.
• Fame – You have the opportunity to curate your followers to maximize value
• Inertia – Chances are that you wont leave your followers behind, even for something like Google Buzz. 

Cast & Crew of Mad Men Dick Around

Love this behind the scenes look at the cast and crew of Mad Men spoofing their Bye Bye Birdie set in honor of Matthew Wiener, the shows Executive Producer/Creator.  Totally strange to see the characters we know to be so buttoned up goofing off (not to mention seeing John Hamm really smile - creepy!)

Wish more shows took advantage of social in this way - low to no barrier to entry and so so appealing to fans.

Confessions of a Reformed FourSquare Hater

As FourSquare burst forth onto planet Earth and quickly amassed nearly 1MM users in a matter of months I totally resisted the pile on.  I had joined initially last summer and unstrategically friended pretty much anyone that came my way.  I checked in like three times (ok once), got annoyed with the push updates, and quit.  Over the next few months, as the platform gained popularity, I stayed in the corner - siding with the haters like Gawker who recently proclaimed, "If you use foursquare you are an annoying jackass."  I was a typical hater - I didn't see the value, I didn't want people to know where I was at all times, and the gaming aspect of it didn't appeal to me at all. 

Nevertheless, I followed the trend from a business perspective.   I saw some value in Yelp's rendition given the number of people already using their app and their review based premise.  As conference season took off I began to re-examine FourSquare.  Intel was one of the first brands to partner with the company for an onsite activation and used the service to promote their presence at CES.  At SXSW Foursquare was all the rage and helped people keep track of each other in the nerd herd chaos.   Couple that with brand's like Starbucks usage of the tool and the constant barrage of geo-targeted social networking headlines, and it was clear that the trend isn't going anywhere.  In fact, geo-targeted social networks are obviously the next big thing - and are closing the gap between social and consumer action/purchase in a very real way.

So, I got hip to the game.  And approached FourSquare with the same Mack Collier-esque strategy that got me turned onto Twitter almost two years ago to the day.

1) Create Your Own Experience.  Make sure you are following the RIGHT people - people you care about.  For Twitter this was a large social media crew, for FourSquare it's a more intimate group of people I actually know city to city.  Knowing what my friends are up to is actually interesting, and with status updates, amusing.

2) Try Hard.  You get back what you put in - so just passively signing up isn't enough.  I started checking in multiple times a day and low and behold I started to see some value.  Last week I saw that @DougMeacham and I were both in New York.  Doug and I hadn't seen each other since SXSW 2009 and we were able to hook up for drinks and dinner thanks to me actually using FourSquare.

3) Learn from Others.  Ask how others are using the platform, you might be surprised what you find!  I'm searching for "deals" in DC that you can get through FourSquare and am continuing to track how brands are using a platform that I'm invested in.

All this goes to show - you have to use social media to "get it."  You can't sit on the sidelines passively reading about social media, or attend a 2 hour training and count on it unlocking the secrets (or the badge - haha.)  You have to be proactive, even when you think it's not immediately applicable to you.  Lesson learned.