My social media fountain of youth

My biggest takeaway from this semester’s Social Media for Managers course is so simple, it’s perhaps pedestrian: Social media is indeed social.

Allow me to explain.

When I enrolled in this course, I’d already been using social media extensively at work. I’d been tweeting regularly, I’d ensured my products’ Facebook pages were up to date, I used LinkedIn to connect to new contacts (especially after attending conferences), and I’d blogged occasionally on my company’s social website platform.

But, quite honestly, social media had started to feel like work.

All of the blogging, tweeting, connecting, and posting felt like yet another bevy of items to add to my already-bulging to-do list, and I wasn’t quite convinced that all my extra effort was making any sort of difference.

And personally, I had turned into a social media lurker. Having used Facebook since its inception (I was one of those Ivy Leaguers invited to join early on with my .edu address), I’d come to tire of the platform. I saw the site as a way to loosely keep tabs on what my old college friends were doing, but my Wall was noticeably free of recent updates or connections.

I can honestly say that MI621 has been my social media fountain of youth. I truly have a renewed interest in — and I’d go so far as to say passion for — social media and what it can do for individuals, groups, entrepreneurs, and businesses of all sizes.

On a business level, I’ve come to realize that you simply have to be in the social media game, because your customers are already there talking about you. And mundane, automated Twitter posts and Facebook updates won’t get you far. But if you personalize your posts — if you make your customers see that there really is a breathing, thinking human on the other side of that Twitter handle, typing interesting factoids in 140-characters or less — people will listen. They’ll take interest in your brand, they’ll read the articles you suggest, and they’ll engage in a virtual dialogue with you — and there’s not much better (free!) first-hand market research than that.

As I type up this blog, I’m ecstatic to share that my work Twitter account just surpassed the 3,000+ followers mark — I’m at 3,011 at this very moment. That’s just plain cool. That’s over 3,000 people I can poll for article and conference ideas. That’s 3,000 people whose insights I can monitor to understand what’s interesting to them. And that’s 3,000 people I otherwise wouldn’t have engaged with if it wasn’t for social media.

A perfect example of how social media is truly social.

And while my business lessons from this class have been many, it’s on a personal level that I’ve experienced the more dramatic learning curve.

Before taking this class, I followed 3 people on Twitter and had posted 1 — yes 1 — tweet. I’d never blogged for personal purposes. And as I noted earlier, “lurking” was the best descriptor of my Facebook behavior.

Now, I’m tweeting, blogging, and posting daily. And by daily, I mean multiple times a day. In fact, if a few hours go by without me quickly checking my social media feeds, I start to feel disconnected. I’ve also really enjoyed blogging, and I’m not just saying that because it’s the end of the semester (i.e., grade time!). I’ve had some very interesting conversations — with my work colleagues, with my uncle, with fellow classmates, with my Mom — about the topics I’ve commented on in this forum, conversations I’m positive would not have happened had it not been for social media.

The pre-MI621 me might have thought that all this social media activity was a complete waste of time — that social media represented countless ways to procrastinate from the real work I should be doing. But the soon-to-be-post-MI621 me begs to differ.

Because of social media, I’ve been able to tap into the minds of industry luminaries that I admire and respect, even if it is 140 characters at a time. I’ve been able to better understand my community and my neighbors by following local organizations like my town’s newspaper or the high school’s booster club. My classmates have become more than just people I sit next to in Fulton; instead, they’re contacts I’ll have forever (digitally, at least), and they’re people I’ve been able to learn from, challenge, and debate with via forums and blogs. I know more about my MI621 classmates than I know about students in nearly all of my other courses. Dare I say, I’ve even gotten to know more about my closest friends and family members, even the Mayor of Swedberg Manor (whose antics have been the source of many a blog post, as loyal readers would know).

In a very real and personal sense, social media has made me more social, more connected, more in tune with the people that mean the most to me.

And I fully expect that social media outlets will continue to play a starring role in the way I connect with, influence, and learn from my contacts and friends.

As we’ve learned throughout the semester, sure, there are traps to social media. Used incorrectly, social media platforms can jeopardize breadth in our worldviews by narrowing what type of information we see and read. Or they could change the way we think by bringing information to the forefront within milliseconds, negating our need to remember facts and figures the way we used to. Or they could (and will) flip traditional business models on their heads, forcing us to think about how we monetize services and content in entirely new ways.

But to me, those traps are in fact what’s most exciting about social media. They challenge us to think differently, to clarify our thoughts so that we can stand out from the crowd, to think critically about our digital footprint and what the world can know and learn about us. The good far outweighs the bad.

To reiterate, social media is indeed social. It challenges us to be better communicators. It amplifies our ability to network and meet new people in ways that traditional communication channels never could. And it does not (nor was it designed to) replace face-to-face interaction — instead, it enhances it.

And with that, I thank you all for an excellent semester. I’d say “stay in touch,” but with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook at our disposal, we have no excuse not to.

What’s a girl gotta do to buy some concert tickets?

A week ago, I wanted to buy four tickets to an upcoming concert at the House of Blues. (For the curious, the band is Jack’s Mannequin. The lead singer’s story is inspiring — he overcame a battle with leukemia — and the band’s music is creative, driven, and charismatic. I highly recommend them.)

My first stop for tickets was the band’s website, where they were selling a limited number of advanced tickets to “true fans” — those who’ve signed up for the band’s mailing list. Unfortunately, I was a few hours too late; the special advanced fan tickets for Boston were already sold out.

My next stop was the House of Blues website (which connected me with the Ticketmaster/Live Nation site), where I learned the tickets would go on sale on Thursday at 10am. At 9:55, I was all ready to go, credit card in hand. But when I tried to actually order the tickets, I learned that the Thursday “on-sale” date was actually a pre-sale date, only available to those with a special password (which I didn’t have) or to those who’d downloaded the Live Nation app.

Want to buy tickets? Only if you have this app.

Alright, I’ll download the app, I thought to myself. But upon further investigation, I realized the app was only for Apple devices — iPhones and iPads — and there I sat with a Droid device in hand.

Bummer.

Then began my frenzied quest to find someone with an iPhone who might be willing to help. I called the Mayor of Swedberg Manor, who owns an iPhone. But the timing just wouldn’t work. He was about to jump into a two-hour meeting at work, and wouldn’t be able to download the app and get the tickets. I had an iPad at home, but that was a good 20-minute drive away.

As time ticked by, I knew the good seats were flying off the shelves.

Eventually, I gave up on the app route and enlisted my co-worker (and fellow Jack’s Mannequin fan) to help uncover the pre-sales password. He’s crafty, and found it within 15 minutes. So I used the “secret” password to log on to Live Nation and get my four tickets (success!).

But the whole process really got me thinking about how apps and social media are changing the way we buy concert tickets. Remember the good ol’ days (am I dating myself?) when you actually had to show up in person at the venue’s ticket office to get a wristband and buy seats? (That’s how I got my first NKOTB tickets!) And then, you’d walk away with the actual printed tickets in hand. What a concept.

Then, the Internet changed the face of ticket buying — the race to be online at the precise “on-sale” time began.

Now, 2.0 technologies are changing things again. To get the best seats, you have to own a smartphone (an Apple phone, at the moment), download an app, and be tapped in to your band’s social media outlets (Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc.) to know when exactly the tickets go on sale. My how times have changed. (And boy, do I sound old saying that.)

Many observations have been made about social media’s impact on the music industry in general: how it used to be that bands toured to sell albums, but now they sell albums (or give them away, as many musicians have opted to do) to sell concert tickets.

But now, even the way in which you sell concert tickets has changed. Remember when bands would tack up posters to advertise their upcoming shows?

 

The Mayor of Swedberg Manor did eventually download the Live Nation app, in case we found ourselves in this ticket-buying predicament ever again. And it turns out, the app is pretty neat: It scans through your iTunes and then makes concert recommendations based on your musical preferences. It also saves set lists of all concerts from your favorite bands, so you can quickly re-create the musical experience from shows you’ve attended.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re not suckers. We realize that this Apple/Live Nation partnership is all a tactic to get people to buy more concert tickets. But at least they’re providing some neat functionality in exchange.

Your thoughts? Is the multi-tiered concert ticket buying process fair to consumers? How do you prefer to buy tickets?

And for those interested in learning a bit more about Jack’s Mannequin, here’s a tasty morsel to whet your appetite:

How I Became a Twitter Bard, and 6 More Social Media Snippets from Madrid

Today’s post comes live from the Madrid airport where, thanks to a delayed flight, I’ve had some time to digest the week’s events. I’ve been in Spain since Sunday, attending a large technology conference.

Work-wise, I’ve learned a great deal this week, and enjoyed over a dozen very successful and opportunistic meetings. But I’ve also learned a lot about social media, and am excited to share my top 7 social media observations from Madrid:

My proud Twitter shout out — I'm one of the keynote's bards!

1. Twitter hashtags are breathing new life into conferences. Throughout the event, the conference’s dedicated Twitter stream was so highly trafficked, I found it hard to keep up with all of the conversation. The show’s attendees embraced the event’s hashtag (publicized all over the show floor) to post all sorts of 140-character gems — about the conference’s content, its speakers, its sessions, even the food and logistics. Perhaps the most active Twitter times were during the event’s two keynote addresses. I was an active tweeter during both of those sessions, and will honestly say that I had a blast doing it. And I wasn’t alone. Many keynote watchers were tweeting along, adding a mix of summary and commentary on what the speakers were saying. It was incredible to see such a real-time reaction to the speeches, and to follow how differing opinions reacted to various announcements. Much to my delight, once the second day’s keynote was finished, I received a much-welcomed “shout out” from the event’s organizers for my coverage of the speech. What a proud social media moment!

Post-show, I also made the “best of” list of tweets from the keynote. Another crowning achievement, if I do say so myself.

2. The right tweet can do wonders. During one of the conference’s keynote addresses, the speaker mentioned a reference customer and the incredible things that said customer was doing upon implementing a brand new piece of technology. Knowing that we’d just done a story on that company in one of the magazines I oversee, I quickly tweeted:

My star tweet of the week

Not sure why, but out of all the tweets I’d posted throughout the week, that one seemed to catch on like wildfire. I had 4 retweets within 90 seconds. And once I got back to the office, I checked the statistics: A record number of new readers had downloaded our app that day. What a great (and free!) way to get the word out about our publication.

There’s an art and a science to social media (more art than science in my opinion), and companies really need to be taking advantage of these social channels to drive buzz and excitement around their business. My experience in Madrid this week proves the benefits.

3. Europeans are even more passionate about abandoning paper than Americans are. In our company’s trade show booth, we were distributing magazines, flyers, catalogs, and handouts, all of which are also available online or through an app. As soon as most attendees found out that the paper materials were also available in an electronic format, they dropped their print copies and said: “If this is posted online, then I won’t need to take the paper.” It’s funny, because just a few years ago, we printed EVERYTHING, fearful that customers would miss the feeling of paper in their hands. But now, the tide seems to have shifted, especially in Europe. (For the record, Europeans are also ahead of the curve in terms of recycling. Every trash receptacle I saw in the city was divided into 4 components: 1 for plastics, 1 for cans, 1 for paper/cardboard, and another for waste. The non-waste components tended to be much more full than the waste section, a very nice-to-see trend.)

4. When phone lines falter, social media can really help a girl out. When I first arrived in Madrid, I immediately turned on my phone, eager to check any missed text messages or calls. When my phone didn’t seem to pick up service, I didn’t panic. I assumed it would just take a while for my phone to register the fact that it was in a new country. But when I got to the luggage claim, and my service still seemed to be faltering, I started to get nervous. Even worse was when I got to my hotel, and the phone still wasn’t working. (I’d been off the grid for — gasp! — 7 whole hours.) But at least the hotel had internet service. So, I connected my iPad and navigated to a live chat with Sprint customer service. Then, the worst news yet from the customer service rep: My phone just wasn’t going to work in Europe. At all. Even though I had a brand new phone with International Service enabled, my phone’s hardware couldn’t technically get service in Europe.

I was crushed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone without cell service for a day, never mind a full week. And it wasn’t just the lack of ability to check work or personal messages. I was travelling with nine other colleagues, so coordinating meeting times and on-site plans was going to prove challenging. I was dreading it. BUT, social media to the rescue! (Cue super hero music.) The conference venue had a terrific wireless connection, and I was able to tweet and Facebook message and chat to my heart’s content throughout the week to stay connected to my colleagues in Madrid, my colleagues back in the office, and, of course the Mayor of Swedberg Manor, who entertained me with photos of our darling dog. Thank you, social media!

5. Spaniards use phones to talk more than text. I was pleased to see that Spaniards haven’t lost the gift of gab that I loved so much when I did my semester abroad here back in 2001. Don’t get me wrong: I still saw folks texting and and sending photos on their phones throughout the week. But the most popular use of smartphones was by far to call and talk. This isn’t to say that social media hasn’t caught on here, but it was an important realization — that conversation and personal interaction is still incredibly important and valuable (and refreshing, even!) in the midst of all this posting and tweeting and texting. On my last evening in the city, I even saw a group of young people at a bar TALKING to each other all night without checking their phones (shocker!). I didn’t even see a smartphone on the table, which seems to be a common badge of honor here in the States.

6. If you don’t have a smartphone, get one now. Getting through security at the Barajas Airport today, there were two lines: one for regular ticket holders, and one for mobile ticket holders. Maybe this was the first time I’ve ever seen an exclusive mobile ticket line, or maybe it’s just the first time I noticed it. But I definitely noticed it. (The giant QR code on the bright yellow sign probably helped. As did the much shorter queue of people standing in the mobile ticket line.) But as I headed toward the paper ticket line, it struck me that within a few years’ time, the mobile ticket line will very likely be the more popular queue. It’s so easy, really. Just check in to your flight through your phone, and pull up your digital ticket whenever you need to pass through security or your gate. So quick, so efficient, so easy. If you’re one of those still holding out with a more traditional phone, I encourage you to start evaluating your smartphone options. (Now, if only the smartphones’ monthly fees would scale down, as I’m positive that’s what’s holding a lot of consumers back from adopting them.)

7. Social media can be funny. Amidst all the conference-related tweets that were flooding my Twitter feed this week, I noticed a rogue hashtag starting to trend: #suithugger. Since the event was a true melding of business folks dressed in dapper suits and IT folks dressed in rugby shirts and jeans, the IT crowd saw this as an opportunity to start a viral Twitter trend: to capture photos of IT geeks hugging their suited business-side counterparts and upload the pictures to Twitter. It’s nerdy, sure. But it’s also really funny. And I confess that I found myself continually checking the #suithugger thread to see which suit would be the next victim. The suit huggers even crafted an on-the-fly point system for their work. The higher the title of the suit being hugged, the more points for the geek doing the hugging. An awesome, clever, and funny idea, and one only made possible through social media.

The #suithugger craze

Honestly, I could have added many more snippets to this Top 7 list, since my week in Madrid provided so much great social media fodder. I started to wonder if I only was noticing these social media gems because of my current enrollment in #MI621, but I don’t think that’s the case. Social media is everywhere, truly, and you can’t help but notice its pervasiveness and the creative, innovative ways it’s being used.

Thoughts? Anyone else have social media traveling stories to share?

(Now if only airplanes had wireless…this lovely post would be live online right now!)

Are computers taking away our jobs? Thoughts from Andrew McAfee

The intersection of technology and labor is a very interesting place. On the one hand, technology makes us incredibly more productive as workers. We can create faster, calculate faster, and connect faster. But on the other hand, as technology advances, it’s also encroaching into the domain of human skills. Computers can do many things much better than people nowadays, and in many instances, that means technology is used to do the jobs that humans used to do.

Andrew McAfee

This double-edged technological sword was the central theme of a fascinating talk I attended on Tuesday morning at the Westin Copley in downtown Boston. Hosted by enterprise content management (ECM) firm OpenText, the talk featured the insights of Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management, fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and coiner of the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring of 2006 Sloan Management Review article. The event was McAfee’s first public talk about his new book Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, co-authored by economist Erik Brynjolfsson.

To illustrate the new “division of labor” between humans and computers, McAfee offered a handful of salient examples:

1. Back in 2004, it was a well-known tenet that humans were better than computers at advanced pattern recognition and complex communication. Accordingly, humans had been the hands-down outperformer in activities like driving a car, in which difficult judgment calls have to be made on the fly. Fast forward to 2010, and we learn that Google developed an automated car that had been driving itself — completely without human interaction — for more than 100,000 miles and only got into one car accident. The cause of that accident? The car was rear-ended…by a human.

2. It used to be the case that computerized language translators were mediocre at best in translating proper context and meaning from one language to another. Now, however, automated translation services like Google Translator are more than “good enough” for business purposes. McAfee cited the example of one firm that used computerized translation tools to live-translate Chinese into English (and vice versa) in a “customer service by live chat” scenario. A few short years ago, this use case would have been unheard of. Today, 90% of customers said they got “actionable information” out of this automated exchange. Not bad at all.

3. Many of us were glued to our television sets to watch Watson, the IBM-powered supercomputer, completely crush its human competition in the ultimate battle of pattern recognition and complex communication: Jeopardy.

Moore's Law: Computing power doubles every 18 months

And if we’re impressed now by what computers can do — and what they can do better than humans — “we ain’t seen nothing yet,” says McAfee. When you consider Moore’s Law, which demonstrates that computing power doubles roughly every 18 months, it won’t be long before computers take on even more work that humans used to do.

McAfee’s discussion, and a good deal of its subsequent Q&A, talked about what this all means for the average American worker. While technology is enabling the overall economic pie to get bigger in the US, it also plays a role in leaving the average American worker behind. Just think of all the entry-level jobs (involving order entry, scanning, filing, etc.) that don’t exist anymore because computers can do the work more efficiently. This is particularly an issue for new workers — recent college graduates, for instance — who are struggling to get their feet in the door at companies that have since eliminated many of the entry-level jobs that computers are now doing.

Overall, however, McAfee’s talk was NOT an anti-technology talk. In fact, it was quite the opposite. McAfee threw up the “obligatory logo slide” as he called it, filled with the symbols of Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Google, and the like. He asked the audience: What do all of these companies and services have in common? They’re all FREE. McAfee marveled at what an incredible thing that is — that we as humans have access to such an incredible wealth of information without having to pay for it. These are world-class search, social networking, and communication tools that we have at our disposal, and accordingly, it would be a mistake to think that our best economic and innovative days don’t lie ahead.

The discussion then turned to some prescriptive actions that McAfee and Brynjolfsson offer in the book — how education, entrepreneurship, capital investment, and regulatory and tax reform are some of the ways we can right some of the wrong trends (i.e., unemployment and stalling median incomes) that our nation faces today.

Overall, a fascinating discussion, and one that has left my head spinning for days. My biggest takeaway? The world is a different — and overall better — place because of technology and the advances in it. But we as a society have a lot of work to do to ensure that technological enhancements don’t just serve to further separate the “haves” from the “have nots”. Here, I think social media plays a huge role. This is technology that’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use. So let’s make sure that everyone has access to it — no user left behind, so to speak.

To conclude, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention three quick anecdotes from the event, all incredibly relevant to our class:

1. Upon entering the session room at the Westin, I overheard two attendees somewhat awkwardly introducing themselves to each other.

Attendee A: “Oh, I follow you on Twitter! It’s so nice to finally meet you!”

Attendee B: “Oh yes, a pleasure! I didn’t recognize you without seeing your Twitter handle. I’m surprised you recognized me — I look nothing like my avatar photo.”

This, my friends, is the new social norm.

2. In her closing remarks, Deb Lavoy (Director of Product Marketing for OpenText Social Workplace) explained her rationale for hosting the speaker series that brought Andrew McAfee to the day’s event. She noted that she’d much rather invest her marketing budget in an event that encourages meaningful discussion than some AdWords on Google. (And for that, I applaud you, Deb!) But she also noted that her ability to gauge the success of her marketing spend depended heavily on us, the audience. She encouraged us to blog, tweet, and share our thoughts about the talk as liberally as possible. Good ol’ word of mouth, social media style. Very indicative of the way today’s marketing teams are thinking about social media and promotion.

3. I attended the event with Dave Hannon, a co-worker of mine, as the talk had some very relevant applications for our work lives too. Dave wrote a great blog summarizing and commenting on the talk, so I have to give him the proverbial “shout out” — nice work, Dave!

You gotta love free seminars that really get you thinking.

So what do YOU think? Does technology help the average worker more than it hurts? Do you know anyone who’s been held back in his or her job — or who’s struggling to find a job in the first place — because of a technology gap?

Virtual events: Close but no cigar

I’ll confess: I’ve never experimented with Second Life, I’ve never played The Sims (even though my husband is convinced I would love it!), and I’ve never designed an avatar to represent myself in a virtual world. I don’t have any sort of aversion to the whole “virtual reality” concept — I’m just not that into it.

So when Mike Pinkerton, the COO and General Counsel of Metaverse Mod Squad, came to speak at my Social Media for Managers class on Tuesday evening, I thought I may have trouble connecting with the content.

But then, it dawned on me. I do have experience with virtual worlds — and from a business context, of all places. Several times, and in fact just today, I’ve participated in virtual conferences — interactive online platforms designed to simulate the experience of traveling to and participating in a face-to-face trade show, seminar, or similar learning event.

Have you seen virtual events before? Here’s a sample that looks nearly identical to the event I “attended” today, the Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo.

A virtual conference lobby

The show was marketed as a “digital content day at your desk” in which you could attend live and on-demand sessions (on topics ranging from monetizing digital magazines to leveraging QR codes to growing magazine audiences through social media). You could also visit exhibitors in their virtual trade show booths, download white papers and PPT decks from the show’s resource center, and — most interesting for this blog post — network with peers via a live chat.

I’d signed up for this virtual conference several weeks ago, and I made a point to block out the full day on my work calendar. I still went in to the office, but my plan was to shut my door, tune in to the event, and studiously watch as many sessions as I could without interruption, as if I was actually attending an in-person conference. I had every intention of visiting the vendor booths, parsing through the downloadable resources, and even chatting with fellow publishers who are facing some of the same key business challenges I’m facing.

Well, it was a nice thought.

The event didn’t officially begin until 10am, so I’d booked meetings at 9am and 9:30am to discuss a few important issues with my team members before I locked myself in my office for the day. Well, the 9:30am meeting ran long, and I wasn’t able to log in to the event until about 10:20am.

Then, after the late start, a colleague needed to ask me an important question that just couldn’t wait. So he came into my office, seeing me sitting at my desk (our walls are glass) and assuming I was available. We talked for a good 20-30 minutes (I found it hard to tell him I was busy), and I missed another conference session.

Later in the day, I’d successfully logged in to the start of a session, but within 15 minutes or so, I realized I wasn’t getting much value out of that particular talk, so I signed off…and then proceeded to check my email inbox and knock off a few additional tasks before the next session began. Well, that email checking spiraled into reviewing a few documents, and before I knew it, I was already late for the next session.

The final tally? By day’s end, I’d watched one session from start to finish, caught portions of 2 others, and then had to give up completely on 2 more because regular business called.

My point here is not to minimize the value of the content within this virtual event — on the contrary, I thought the speakers were of high quality (especially for a free conference), and I picked up lots of tasty tidbits. Rather, my point is to demonstrate a key weakness of virtual events: They don’t get you out of the office.

Now, had I been at an actual in-person conference, I of course would have been distracted by phone calls and emails coming in through my mobile device. Despite my best efforts, 100% of my attention might not have been focused on the event itself. But I can assure you that I would have had a better experience — and gotten a lot more value — out of the in-person event than I got out of today’s virtual conference.

The networking piece alone would have done it. At a live event, you have no choice but to network. You chat with people while waiting in line for coffee, you trade business cards with colleagues as you roam the show floor, you get to know about a new contact’s business challenges over lunch. In a virtual event, sure, you can chat and meet new people (and social media is a huge boon here), but you often don’t. Today, for instance, I didn’t chat with a single new contact. Definitely a missed opportunity.

Virtual networking: Just not the same experience as a handshake and a face-to-face conversation

I’m not saying that there’s no place for virtual conferences. I think they’re a neat concept. And I like the idea that the materials I saw today will all be available online for a 6-month window, so that I can come back and watch any session I missed. Plus, I didn’t have to pay for an airline ticket, book a hotel room, or lose valuable time out of the office. Definitely some merits to this type of virtual platform.

But I also don’t think virtual events will ever fully replace in-person events — just as I don’t think virtual worlds like Second Life can properly simulate the reality we live in every day. There’s something about these virtual experiences that takes the social out of social media. It’s just not the same. Talking to people, shaking hands, witnessing a presentation first-hand — these are valuable experiences that virtualized worlds just can’t simulate.

What do you think? Can virtual conferences be a meaningful replacement for live, in-person events? Is there room for both?

How I’ve come to terms with the death of print

I was a Literature major in college, where I read a lot of manuscripts and journals. I work in magazine publishing, where we still print actual magazines. I’m in a book club, and I still buy and read hard copies of books.

And even I have come to terms with the inevitable death of print.

A short anecdote: I was at a committee meeting last night with a group of 9 fellow Harvard graduates. We all volunteer to conduct admissions interviews, and we meet once or twice a year to review new developments at the college, share interviewing tips and techniques, and discuss red flags to watch out for as we speak with applicants. Along with one other committee member (who happened to be in my same graduating class), I was the youngest attendee at the meeting — even though I’m not that young. One woman was in her early 40s, and all the other participants had high school and college-age children, so I’m guessing they were in the late-40-to-early-50 range. When the agenda points of our meeting had all been covered, my fellow 31-year-old pulled out her iPad.

And that’s when the conversation changed completely.

We started talking about all things gadgets and technology and Facebook and apps and Twitter and iPhones and YouTube. And it didn’t take more than 3 minutes of chatter for one attendee to say: “I just don’t understand kids today. They don’t even use notebooks and pens anymore. Me? I have to print everything out. I just have to mark things up and write all over them. I just have to feel the paper in my hands.”

Now, the me 5 years ago would likely have supported these comments. At that time, we still did a lot of paper edits on articles at work, and I didn’t bring a laptop or mobile device to meetings. I wrote everything down in a notebook. And I didn’t think I’d ever be able to read articles of any substantive length on a screen. I thought it’d give me a headache. I was convinced I’d have to print things out — to really read them, mark them up, and catch mistakes.

But now, just a few short years later, I’m among the converted.

At work, our new(ish) editorial workflow system makes it very easy and comfortable for me to review and edit articles on screen. At school, even though I bought two paper notebooks for class this semester, I have just a few chicken scratches in each of them. I’ve been taking all of my notes on my netbook, saving them to Google Docs in case I need to access them later from my desktop or laptop. And for book group this month, I downloaded the selected title to my iPad and will read it there.

Now keep in mind, I’m not a millenial. I didn’t really grow up with this stuff. When I first had to submit typed papers in school, I typed them on a typewriter — granted, it was an electric typewriter, but it was a typewriter nonetheless. Email, AOL, and chat rooms had just started to catch on in high school. And in college, no one brought laptops to class. We all had big heavy desktops back in our dorm rooms.

On the telephone front, I didn’t have a cell phone until my junior year in college. I didn’t have a smartphone until last year. And I’m still a pretty slow texter, even though I’m getting better with each text and tweet.

But, I get it. I understand why “kids today” have so quickly embraced all of these technologies and tools. I’m trying to adopt and use them more myself. I want to infuse new technologies and social media components into the products that I manage at work. And I’m encouraging others to do the same. “Quick-fast-mobile” is definitely where everything is headed. And I don’t want to fall behind.

Now don’t get me wrong. I still feel pangs of rage when I see a family of 5 out to dinner, and all 3 kids are equipped with their own iPad. But I don’t get depressed or discouraged to think that print may someday go away. I could sing you all the praises of print. Yes, I love the touch and feel of magazines and books, too. But times are changing. Preferences are evolving. And print cycles are proving too long and too expensive to continue executing. By the time you print something, it’s old news.

I can only imagine where the next generation — the little babies being born this year, for example — will take us when it comes to technology use and adoption. My best friend had a baby in May, and he already has a blog. No joke. Of course, his parents are maintaining it and using it as an incredible vehicle through which to share videos and photos of the little man. And while he doesn’t know how to use it yet, it’s only a matter of time before he’s a pro. Think of how social-media-savvy he’ll be by the time he’s my age.

Rather than get disappointed or discouraged by this behavior shift, I’m choosing to not only embrace it, but to get excited about it. The possibilities are endless.

Plus, for the sentimental among us, I think this commercial helps to tie it all together:

(How does this clip have the power to make me cry every time I watch it?!)

So, what do you think? Are you an avid technology adopter? Or are you still clinging to print?

Here an app, there an app

I’ll begin this post by noting that, technically speaking (and by that, I mean, according to the Wikipedia definition), apps are not necessarily synonymous with “social media.” However, I’m stretching the rules for two reasons:

1. So many apps — and the most successful apps, I’d argue — embrace and integrate social media components. You’ve got your classic Facebook and Twitter apps, which of course are simply smartphone or tablet versions of the full-on social media platforms. And you’ve got apps like Words With Friends, which are solidly built on the social media principles of collaboration, sharing, and engagement.

2. Jason Jacobs’ presentation in our #MI621 class this week was too darn inspiring not to write about. (For those of you who weren’t lucky enough to hear Jacobs speak, he’s the CEO and Co-Founder of RunKeeper, a running app and online fitness community that uses the GPS technology found in smartphones to track users’ fitness activity.)

At the onset of his talk, Jacobs asked, “How many of you had heard of RunKeeper before you found out I was speaking here tonight?” Two or three students raised their hands, to which Jacobs smiled and noted: “We’ve got some work to do.”

This got me thinking. There are probably only a handful of apps that would have gotten every single student to raise his or her hand. I consulted a list, compiled by Time magazine, of the 50 best iPhone apps of 2011. And I’d guess that Angry Birds, Scrabble, Yelp, Wikipedia, Amazon, PayPal, WebMD, and The Weather Channel are just about the only ones that would get 100% of our classmates nodding their heads. And if you’ll notice, most of these apps established their brand elsewhere — outside of the App Store — first. In fact, it’s only Angry Birds that really came into its own in the app format first.

This got me thinking even more. How in the world can companies like RunKeeper emerge from the App Store clutter and gain some recognition, traction, and word of mouth around their app? And when I say clutter, I mean clutter. I found this great article from McVay New Media, a group of digital media strategists, that questions: How many apps are too many? This article is filled to the brim with some fascinating stats:

• Back on March 23, 2011, there were already more than 350,000 apps in the Apple App Store.
• As of October 1, 2011, the App Store alone had more than 90,000 apps for the iPad alone.
• Only 37% of tablet owners who have downloaded 10 or more apps regularly use them.
• The majority of mobile phone owners use fewer than 7 apps on a regular basis.

What jumps out at me here is that, in order to build up your app’s brand and start staking out your user base, your app needs to be good. Not just good, but great. Users simply don’t have time or patience for poorly functioning, difficult to use, or plain ol’ boring apps. Admittedly I haven’t tried it yet, but based on Jacobs’ description in class and what I see in the App Store’s iPhone preview screens, RunKeeper has this covered.

If your app is great — it’s easy to use, glitch-free, and fun — this should lead to glowing user reviews. And those reviews should certainly help your app stand out from the rest of the pack.

From there, image is everything. Your app needs a good name, a good logo, and a description in the App Store that makes users understand what the app is and what it does — and entices people to continue with the download (even if it’s free). Here again, RunKeeper has done a nice job (although the editor in me would argue that the app’s description could be even more concise).

Now, here’s where social media’s role really takes the lead in this app discussion. You make your app rise from the App Store clutter by getting people to talk about it through…what else?…social media! Like RunKeeper so smartly did, you get relevant bloggers to blog about your app. You build in functionality that lets users easily share, post, tweet, email, and comment about it. You tweet about it yourself. You blog about interesting topics pertinent to your app that hook users in, and keep them coming back. Essentially, you master social media marketing — which, as we know, is no easy task.

With some good ol’ Google searching, I found entire companies that have been created solely to help development companies make sure that their app shows up on Apple’s list of the Top 25 Free Apps. Here’s one such company, GTekna Corporation, which boasts a promising tagline: “From Unknown to Top 25 in 3 Days!”

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that such companies exist. With entrepreneurial minds like that of Jason Jacobs in this world, we’ll never be at a loss for great new business ideas.

My point, in summary: If you build a great app, you’d like to think that users would just come to it. But, like many things in life, it’s not that simple. Apps need their own branding and social media marketing strategy to rise to the top.

I’d be curious to know — how do you find new apps? How many apps have you downloaded to your tablet or smartphone? And how many of them do you actually use?

What’s so bad about watching a little TV?

In any given week, I work — a lot. I read — a lot. I write — a lot. I converse and share — a lot. So when Sunday morning comes, I’m not ashamed to curl up on my couch and watch some good ol’ TV. And, I’ll admit it…I don’t always watch great TV. I’ve been known to tune in to Project Runway, The Amazing Race, and much to my husband’s chagrin, an occasional episode of Dancing with the Stars.

So, when I read the “Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus” chapter from Clay Shirky’s 2010 book Cognitive Surplus, I got a little defensive. (For those not enrolled in #MI621, this article, an interview with Shirky and Wired Contributing Editor Daniel Pink, nicely summarizes the gist of cognitive surplus: the idea that people are now learning how to use their free time more constructively, particularly with the advent of online collaboration tools and social media.)

I greatly enjoyed Shirky’s inviting, lilting writing style. And I nodded my head as I read through most of his ideas. But I couldn’t help but pick up an underlying commentary that TV is for morons — that, in any unused moments we may come across, we should be creating, contributing, and collaborating with one another. That somehow, the act of enjoying a television program — especially when watching alone — is just about the worst and most wasteful way an individual could spend his or her time.

I disagree.

Granted, I don’t watch TV on the scale that Shirky cites throughout his book. He notes that someone born in 1960 has watched roughly 50,000 hours of television already. So sure, that’s a lot of TV.

But isn’t there something to be said about having an outlet? An escape? A sitcom to drift off into for 30 minutes after over 12 hours of computer screens, meetings, phone calls, and conversations around the water cooler?

Not to mention the nostalgia I started to feel upon reading Shirky’s work. The fact that everyone knows what I Love Lucy is, or that Seinfeld is such an iconic program is…dare I say…heartwarming. The thought of nearly every American huddled around a television screen, laughing with family and discussing the plot afterward, is humbling. And it’s a shared experience that I think we’ve now lost as a society. Nowadays, you can’t count on a common media thread anymore. Unless, of course, all of you caught the latest episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts this week. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I don’t mean to cut Shirky’s argument to shreds. I actually agree with nearly everything he discussed in the first chapter of Cognitive Surplus (yes, even the point that LOLcats, though really weird, are uniting and productive). And though I still call him a nerd every time he puts his XBox headphones on, I can definitely see the benefit of Mr. Swedberg’s HALO and Call of Duty game nights — and the even nerdier collaborative website and discussion forums he’s built with his XBox “friends” to track their kills and statistics.

And for the sentimental side of me, I could even convince myself that Facebook is perhaps the new I Love Lucy. Zuckerberg’s brainchild is — by far — the closest thing we have to a shared media experience nowadays.

However, at the end of the day, I just can’t get behind the idea that watching television is a colossal waste of time. I learn things from The Amazing Race, for example — just last night, I learned that Goa Jomblang is a deep cave in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It’s very popular for rock climbing and spelunking, and the sun’s rays hit the cave’s ground floor at 13:00 daily. Do you think LOLcats could teach me that?

And from a social aspect, watching television has afforded me opportunities to collaborate, share, and bond with people who are fellow spectators of the programs I watch (and not just through social media forums). In fact, I’ve met two people at work who share my affinity for Project Runway, and we chat and share notes after nearly every episode. Take that, Farmville.

So again, I like what Shirky has to say. I’m a big fan of people using their free time to edit Wikipedia articles, or contribute to a website like Ushahidi, an opensource platform that allows users to crowdsource crisis information in locations like Kenya.

But at the end of the day, I still like to watch TV. And I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of that.

(If you have 13 minutes to spare…that is, if you’re not busy changing the world through online collaboration tools, here’s a really interesting TED talk from Shirky about cognitive surplus and the Ushahidi project I mentioned.)

Wine and WIIFM

For my birthday this year, my husband (yes, the Mayor of Swedberg Manor) took me to the Newport WineFest. Simply put, it was a delightful afternoon, filled with samplings of local and not-so-local wines. The venue was right on the water, as the best things in Newport are, and the weather was perfect — warm, but not too warm.

Where wine and social media collide: The Newport WineFest 2011

While we walked up and down the rows and rows of wine displays and tasting stations, we spied a tiny little sign promoting a mobile app called Second Glass. The sign encouraged WineFest attendees to download the app, in which they could mark every wine they tried at the event, rate their favorites, and — through the magic of Facebook Connect — see which wines their friends liked. It’s essentially a mobile-based social network for wine aficionados. (The concept of the app is very similar to that of Untappd, the beer lovers’ app that Mike Schneider mentioned in class this week.)

Second Glass: A social media mecca for wine lovers

With Mr. Swedberg’s iPhone in hand, we thought…cool! Let’s download the app so we can keep tabs on all of the different wines we’re sampling. The alternatives seemed clumsy: take a photo of every wine we liked, or clumsily scribble down our favorite varietals and vintages on the back of the WineFest program guide. (Did I even have a pen with me?!)

So, somewhat awkwardly, in the middle of a wine aisle in Newport Harbor, we started downloading the app — when all of a sudden….BAM! We hit the dreaded “in order to access this app, you must pour all of your contact information into this screen” screen. And we were faced with a dilemma:

Should we proceed with the app download, for the future utility that we’re hoping to get from the app’s functionality? Or do we boycott the download, suspecting that our freshly entered contact information would then get passed along to some sort of spamming entity, to forever crowd our inbox with emails we don’t necessarily want?

Well, Mr. Swedberg is a Data Analyst specializing in Email Marketing Operations, and I’m an Editorial/Program Director who works closely with subscriber credentials and contact information. And with our collective thinking caps on, we quickly concluded that the joy we may have received from downloading Second Glass was overshadowed by the likely prospect of masses and masses of wine-related emails flooding our Gmail accounts.

Now, I should note that those wine-related emails may not have necessarily been a bad thing. The Swedbergs do love wine — we were at a wine festival, after all — and maybe we would have learned about a future wine event or a new vintage we were sure to love. But the inner marketer in both of us immediately presumed that the submission of our contact information would somehow turn our details and digits over to the evil spam society. (In Second Glass’s defense, I have no idea if this is, in fact, what would have happened to our data. It very well may not have. But we weren’t willing to download the app to find out.)

This interesting little social media moment at Newport WineFest immediately popped into my mind as I listened to guest speaker Mike Schneider and classmate Greg debate during this week’s class session. The good ol’ marketing question WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) is a keenly interesting one to ask when it comes to social media. If we as consumers give and give and give out our information — in the form of both our contact details and our behavioral patterns and preferences — how can we be sure that we’ll get an equivalent amount of value in return?

As Mike Schneider alluded to in class, we can never be sure. We can only hope that the business entity we’re dealing with — the brains behind all those app screens — have thought through their marketing techniques and social media strategy enough to know that they owe us a good deal. Or if they haven’t figured this out yet, that they will in the future.

Honestly? Sometimes I’d like to be more naive about the marketing mechanics at play with these free apps and social media outlets. When you think about it, the general public — and I’m speaking in universalities here, but forgive me — doesn’t ponder these dynamics much, if at all. If they want an app, they quickly cough up their contact details to get it. But the more I learn about social media tools and technologies, the more skeptical I become.

Thoughts? Where do you stand? Do you think we’re collectively getting enough value out of social media to justify the turnover of our information? Or do you have little-to-no sense of WIIFM when it comes to social media?

(On a tangential note, another of Mike Schneider’s in-class comments resonated with my Second Glass experience at the Newport WineFest. If you’re going to build an app or run a Foursquare deal, make sure you PROMOTE IT! If it wasn’t for my eagle eyes and instant curiosity whenever I see a QR code, I think the Swedbergs would have walked right past that tiny Second Glass flyer.)

The Mayor of Swedberg Manor

My husband used to be a BlackBerry owner. He’d reliably receive text-based emails, and he never had any trouble with his phone service. But ask him to look up a movie time or post a Facebook status update on that thing, and the expletives, they started flowing.

Then, his gracious wife (that’s me!) bought him an iPhone 4. And he was like a kid in a candy store. He — like any new iPhone user, I suspect — downloaded all sorts of apps, including a Dog Whistle app that had our new dog Nola looking all quizzical.

One of Mr. Swedberg’s favorite apps — so far, at least — is Foursquare. He was proud to check in at Fenway Park the night we were there for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones/Dropkick Murphy’s concert. He checked in at Chili’s one Wednesday evening, to prove that we indeed were playing trivia and enjoying some shrimp fajitas.

But then I noticed his pride in being the Mayor of Swedberg Manor, the clever name he’d penned for our home. Yep, that’s right, he checked in to his own house. He even added a tip: “Try the Swedburger!” — and I’ll admit, it made me chuckle. I also wondered if anyone else will ever try to check in at Swedberg Manor. I have to admit, it’s a lovely place.

The proud Mayor of Swedberg Manor offers a helpful tip: "Try the Swedburger!"

But now that I think of it….

Every time Mr. Swedberg is NOT checked in to the Swedberg Manor, that means he’s NOT there. And if some evil cyber stalker out there closely followed my dear hubby’s check-in behavior, he’d have a pretty darn good idea of where he was, what he likes to do, and when might be a good time to raid Swedberg Manor and take some of our precious Swedberg belongings.

This also reminds me of my Mom, who always warns against posting your whereabouts on Facebook — because then some creep will see that you’re not at home, and will come and steal your stuff.

Part of me totally agrees with my Mom’s concern. People shouldn’t broadcast where they are at all times. First of all, because no one cares. But second, because it opens you up to potential threats — of burglary, blackmail, or even being accosted by that Facebook “friend” who you don’t really ever want to see again.

But the other part of me thinks that the overall benefits of Foursquare and other location based services (LBS) far outweigh any risks that they introduce. How great is it to know that, when I’m eating dinner at the Landsdowne Pub, my old high school friend (who I haven’t seen in years!) happens to be next door at the House of Blues. And if I check in to Dunkin’ Donuts enough times, maybe I’ll get a free coffee, just for letting them know that I stop in at least three times a week.

I can only see location based services enhancing our lives — say, for example, that I’m in CVS. I check in, and then Pantene instantly sends me a digital coupon to let me know their shampoo is on sale. Awesome! I just saved $1.50. Or, I check in to a restaurant in a neighborhood I’m not too familiar with, and I get a recommendation for a nearby brew pub that’s the perfect place for a post-dinner drink.

So yes, you have to watch out for those cyber stalkers. You have to be careful about what you post, and where and when you post it. But I don’t think these are reasons to put a halt to LBS development. Nor do I think it’s the responsibility of the LBS developers (like Foursquare) to warn their users about these potential side effects. It’s common sense, people.

And besides…if someone REALLY wanted to break in to Swedberg Manor, they’d just have to spend a few weekdays watching my husband and I leave for work every morning to realize that we’re not around for most of the day. But nights and weekends? Watch out. The Mayor of the Manor is a big, tall Swede, and he’s mighty tough when he has to be.