“Music is best experienced with a lot of people, often with as many other people as possible, and most of the time it must be experienced loudly. This is why the concert tours have been consistently the most successful facet of the music industry.”
Hmm, where else do tweeting and shrieking with the masses go hand in hand? Hint:
That’s right, sports. When you can’t go to the game (or don’t want to because it’s -45 degrees F), you gather with as many of your friends, family, and strangers with common allegiances as possible to cheer yourself hoarse. In the horrible event you can’t be with your fellow sports fans, at the very least you can still live-blog to the whole of the Internet from your couch and still feel connected to the greater sports-loving community.
Throughout the summer, I saw my tweet stream and Facebook news feed riddled with hashtags like #Sox, #GoSox, #YankeesSuck, and variations thereof during the course of Red Sox games. These tweets and posts came from people at the game (often accompanied by Twitpics of the action) as well as those watching at home. Social networks have become a communal megaphone magnifying everyone’s game-day experience to an incredible exponent. And I love it. I can’t afford to go to every game, but at least I can enjoy a sliver of the experience online. That said, a news feed is NO replacement for the in-person experience (so, Red Sox Nation, if you wanted to throw me some season tickets, I’d be okay with that, honest). Just, for when you can’t go, you can still enjoy the game with 5,000 of your closest friends.
How has social changed how you consume sports? Let us know if the comments!
I love my new smartphone. Not only is it super-awesome, but the apps give me cool stuff to cover in RaceTalk – let me know if there’s a mobile app I must see.
We love not paying full price for things, and the success of group-buying daily deal sites has only fueled our penchant for not paying full-price for everything from pizza to skydiving lessons. The challenge for vendors choosing to participate is turning would-be one-time penny-pinchers into loyal returning customers even after the coupons are distant memories. Many businesses never close the deal, instead being left with the equivalent of countless, unfulfilling one-night stands from consumers who only loved them briefly for their discounts. Now that I’ve painted this sad, sad picture for you, cue LevelUp.
Rather than offering a one-time discount to deal hounds, LevelUp instead offers consumers an incentive to come back: spend $X, get $Y in credit. Spend $X again, get a little more than $Y in credit. The more you spend with LevelUp, the more credit you get back. As described on the site, it’s a “Sesame-Street-simple loyalty program.” We get our savings, and businesses aren’t finding themselves in the red. Good stuff, right? Let us know about your LevelUp experiences in the comments.
If you know me personally, you can skip to the next paragraph. If not, finish this one: Hi, I’m Brittany. I love beer and location-based social media. If I found anything that married the two, I would consider marrying it.
One of the reasons why I was most excited about finally getting a smartphone – aside from no longer having to make excuses along the lines of “Sorry, my phone rides the short bus” – was all the applications and bookmarked mobile sites that would inevitably accompany it. I of course anticipated the usual suspects – Twitter, Foursquare, Angry Birds, Words with Friends – you know, all those little megabytes that have become all but staples of our livelihood. What thrilled me even more was the thought of perhaps the most magical, albeit less mainstream, mobile site to grace the lives of social beer-drinkers the digital world over: Untappd. Haven’t heard of it? Read on.
I first heard about Untappd via the Twittersphere many months ago. Being an avid consumer of beer, the prospect of being able to check into which one I was drinking sounded nothing short of incredible – especially when you go to as many beer fests as I do, and keeping track after the eighth sample can get tricky. Untappd lets you track what you’re drinking, where you’re drinking it, and what you think of it.
After that first glorious (sometimes not-so-glorious) sip, visit m.untappd.com and search for whatever it is you have in your hand. Find it – or add it – add your two cents, and check in. Simple, but that’s the beauty of it. Like many Bostonians, while I do have a few go-tos, I really love trying different brews, and I only have so much brain space dedicated to beer. Untappd is turning into my handy little Rolodex of draughts and bottles and making some recommendations at the same time based off my check-ins (although I haven’t tested that out yet – has anyone who can share their thoughts?). Like Foursquare, it also lets me keep tabs (pun unavoidable) on my beer-inclined friends to see what they’re drinking. Possibly even more fun, I earn badges (also like Foursquare) for my drinking habits, which serve no purpose other than bragging rights (and perhaps a VIP pass for an AA meeting).
Have you tried Untappd yet? Love it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments!
It’s that time of year, again: where the SXSW Interactive 2012PanelPicker is open for public voting! For those of you who are already versed in the innovative, educational treasure trove that is SXSW, I don’t think I need to expound any further. For the rest of you, read on:
“The 19th annual SXSW® Interactive Festival challenges you to envision the future of innovative technology. Featuring five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging media and scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders, SXSW Interactive offers an unbeatable line up of special programs showcasing the best new websites, digital projects, wireless applications, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer. From hands-on training to big-picture analysis, SXSW Interactive has become the place to preview of what is unfolding in the world of creative technology.” – SXSWi’s “About” page
One of the really cool parts about SXSW (you know, aside from all that exposure to cutting edge media and tech mentioned above) is the crowd-sourced component of the event’s sessions via the site’s PanelPicker. Last week, public voting opened for over 3600 very strong speaking proposals. Public voting will factor into the selection of a privileged 500 or so for the show itself. That’s right: YOU have a say in who makes it to the agenda. What better incentive to attend is there? Voting ends 11:59 p.m. CDT on Friday, September 2, so hurry up and add your two cents.
Of note, your friends at Racepoint Group and Digital Influence Group have thrown a couple hats into the ring. Check out the sessions below and if you like them, feel free to vote (and encourage your friends to do so, too).
Given that we’re checking Email in the middle of the night, is it really necessary for us to be checking Facebook while driving? It would appear so, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Email, I can understand. As noted in our last post, many of us (especially us PR folk) work in industries that don’t shut down at 5:00 on Friday, and as a result, we have grown somewhat dependent on our mobile devices that allow us to stay connected to our work at almost any given time. The need to check friends’ status updates while on the road is another story.
That all said, I’m not really sure how to address this emerging trend. Texting and driving is illegal in many states, including MA, but I know many people who disregard that law regularly. And if people aren’t texting and driving, there’s a good possibility that they’re eating, doing their makeup, playing with the radio, or checking Facebook while driving. In the WSJ article, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood compares his goals to change attitudes toward distracted driving to the efforts being made to eliminate drinking and driving. While there is definitely a heightened awareness of the dangers of the latter, we hear about the consequences all too often. It’s a long, up-hill struggle, ahead.
What do you think? Is Facebooking and driving a threat? If it is, is there really anything we can do to prevent it?
Late last night, much of the digitally connected and cable-wired world learned of the death of Osama Bin Laden. The nation learned through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, CNN, NBC, and pretty much any medium that required some form of electricity. Many of us were engaged on multiple platforms simultaneously, tweeting the President’s remarks as we tuned in to our news stations of choice.
In addition to retweets, emotional reactions and smart-alecky remarks, I noticed another sentiment in my feeds: “I wonder how many editors are ripping up the front pages of tomorrow’s paper at this very moment.” I admit, I was among the curious. However, I figured that the death of the mastermind behind 9/11 was newsworthy enough for those in journalism to pull a frenzied all-nighter.
Either my qualifications for what constitutes “Stop the presses!” are way off-base, or sometimes even the most breaking of news is no match for print media deadlines. While some publications such as The New York Times managed to keep up with the news, others, including USA Today and METRO, did not. Still others, namely The Wall Street Journal, decided not to waste trees, and printed copies with and without the headline news.
It’s not uncommon for me to read about news in Monday morning’s paper that I’d already heard about on Twitter Sunday afternoon, but this will be the first instance where my Tuesday morning paper will likely be featuring Sunday evening’s news. I’m curious to see if and how the editors will address the lag in news time.
RaceTalk was lucky enough to catch mild-mannered Tom O’Keefe (better known as the legendary @BostonTweet) in between burritos and assorted Boston goings-on and convinced him to chat with us for a spell to talk about his Twitterlebrity status, social media in Boston, and some other Tom Trivia.
Prior to our discussion, we asked the Twitter community to tweet their questions for Tom using the hashtag #AskBostonTweet. We got some great response, and have included the timestamps for each question in the video below. Enjoy!
Special thanks to Mandy Miller (@AmandaMMiller9) for her awesome, patient camera work.
1:30 Do you use other social media platforms?
2:17 How do you pitch @BostonTweet?
3:15 People can win Groupons by retweeting your tweets. If they retweet Groupon’s tweets, can they win you?
3:45 Where will @BostonTweet go from here?
5:15 Will you release a @BostonTweet-branded fragrance, a la Britney Spears and Khloe Kardashian?
5:30 What causes and nonprofits inspire @BostonTweet?
6:50 Are there @BostonTweet counterparts across the country?
7:44 How many tweets could a Boston tweet if a Boston could tweet tweets?
7:58 Aside from “I’m @Bostontweet,” what pickup line generally works best on women in Boston?
8:36 Have Twitter followers ended up crossing over to real life friends and colleagues?
9:50 After you die, will you submit your brain to the MIT Media Lab?
Earlier this week, we heard from Bloomberg Businessweek that Facebook would be offering a Groupon-inspired discount deal service. Given its potential customer base of over 500 million users, the social networking site definitely has a good starting foundation as it hopes to take advantage of the bourgeoning online-deal market.
Anyone else not surprised? Don’t get me wrong: Facebook is awesome and all, but once again, it’s taking a pre-existing idea from another social networking platform and incorporating it into its own one-stop social metropolis. Facebook has been a copycat from Day 1. Even prior to its conception, we had MySpace, FriendFeed, and several other social networking platforms that eventually floundered and or just never took off.
So what made Facebook succeed where others had failed? In short, exclusivity. Whereas MySpace was a very public platform where any creep could try to add you as a friend (Remember that creeper who was at least twice your age, lived across the country and was always commenting on your pictures for no good reason? Of course you do.), Facebook was initially a private club for college students. Only later, when it had established itself above the common man’s social networking sites, did it eventually open its doors to everyone.
Throughout Facebook’s young life, it has continued to adopt popular online tools in an effort to provide its user base with the be-all, end-all source for online interaction: in May 2007, the Marketplace launched, a lá Craigslist. In April 2009, the Facebook news feed underwent a drastic makeover that resulted in a suspicious resemblance to Twitter. In August 2010, Places kicked off, but while FourSquare doesn’t have nearly as many users as Facebook, it still seems to enjoy a higher volume of check-ins – for now, anyway. Later that year, we talked about the Facebook Deals introduction (and Foursquare still seems to be doing just fine).
Over the last six years, this social networking monolith has tried function as our online interactive Swiss army knife. Sometimes its efforts are impressive, and other times less remarkable – I actually had to see if Facebook Marketplace was still active when writing this post. While it is an enormous platform, I personally think that even the likes of Facebook won’t be able to do it all while holding everyone’s interest.
At the very least, imitation is the best form of flattery though, right? What do you think of Facebook holding the crosshairs over Groupon, or any of its other social adoptions?
Given that 
