I recently had a conversation with restaurateur who has been tasked with creating the social media strategy for several restaurants. It was an interesting talk. I’ve had no exposure to this business model other than sitting down to eat or waiting tables as a youth. We talked about the specifics around this business model and I thought it made for an interesting post. It’s also a...
Back on April 13th, I lectured in Professor McCubbrey’s class on how a CIO could use Web 2.0 for their business. The focus of that lecture really how the social media landscape is evolving and then talk about how a CIO may utilize these changes. The reason for this method lies in that it’s too hard without specifying whether it’s a B2B/B2C model or a product/service. I covered...
Found this awesome visualization of check-ins at this year’s SXSW, across Brightkite, Foursquare, Twitter, Gowalla, etc on SimpleGeo. Great way to see the coming prevalence of geo-location awareness. Enjoy!
Thursday we talked about one of my favorite attributes of social media; mobile. This field is growing by leaps and bounds and provides some of the most compelling marketing opportunities. The first thing we did was talk about existing technologies that enable location based offerings to be possible. Loki (by Skyhook) – The technology behind Brightkite’s location detection Geominder...
Depends on your audience. If you’re running a business with users that are technically astute, then it’s more like the 99/1 rule. Businesses like Brightkite built out their product by tapping into collaborative users and listening to everyone may prove to be more important than someone with a more traditional online business model. Older models (like a job board) are more likely to...
I read a post on TechCrunch about one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey starting a company, code-named squirrel that is going to enable individuals the ability to collect payments like merchants. The system is enabled by the iPhone and a physical piece that allows the user to swipe (not steal) a persons credit card. This physical part of this offering is powered by the actual swiping and looks...
Been talking with a friend about “what to do with Twitter”. You may have heard of it. Along with not knowing how to use Twitter for their business they have also been wondering what to do in the mobile space. Should they create an iPhone application? Are adoption rates high enough to warrant action? Should they go through the incredibly lengthy process of creating a mobile marketing...
This past Friday, I had the good fortune of speaking with the founders of Brightkite, Brady Becker and Martin May. I got the ball rolling by walking through the front door and accusing Brady of being Martin . . . Fortunately things got better from there. Once we sat down, they told me they had just finished an interview with the Wall Street Journal the day before and had also made a TechCrunch...