The background

Several weeks ago, Virgin America notified its users and flyers that their website would be experiencing some outage, but their customer service support line would be still available. It seemed that everything was going fine until people started to call the airline’s customer service number only to experience lengthy hold times trying to get through to either do simple things like checking in to cancelling flights. It quickly mushroomed into a nightmare scenario and if you’ve been following Virgin America (@virginamerica) on Twitter, you’ll know that their tweets have been very understanding and apologetic. Unfortunately that didn’t solve any problems.

The constant communication

The above issues surrounded the fact that there were changes to the airline’s reservation system and it wound up taking longer than expected to roll out the new platform — sadly this is not surprising, but not really reassuring to those who wanted to use their brand and travel. But it seemed that Virgin America knew what they were getting into. In checking out their website this weekend, I noticed that they have updated it with an advisory on what to expect when you use their site. In addition, they’ve been pretty active in terms of social media (specifically Twitter) to get the word out about what’s happening and trying to smooth things out with their customers. Unfortunately their policies do not allow that much liberal help through Twitter, but they kept people abreast about the status of their reservation system enhancements and even got to direct message some folks in order to find out ways to better serve them. While this might not be much, compared to how other companies handled their own issues, Virgin America has still come out on top.

And this advisory that you see on Virgin America’s website isn’t one where they simply shrug things off and issue a rather bland apology…you know, the ones that say something like “We apologize for the incovenience. Please check back in a few hours and we’ll be working again.” Instead, their team understood the appreciation of over-communication and explained what the issue is and several possible steps for customers to seek redress and assistance.

So the problem:

We’ve recently made the switch to a new reservations platform – a change that will make our booking system and website stronger, faster and all-around better. Although the new Sabre platform will ultimately improve our booking system, the switch to a new platform will cause some inconvenience as we transition from the old system to the new. For those flying or planning to use our website or Call Center, read on for key details about what to expect.

And the possible redress:

We continue to work through web issues and are aware that some users are encountering errors when trying to complete bookings on virginamerica.com or check-in online. We apologize for this inconvenience and expect to have these issues addressed soon. Please note that Virgin America flights are also available for sale on Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com and Priceline.com.

In addition to these alternatives, they included some helpful “frequently asked questions” type points since it might help those who don’t want to wait several hours on the phone just waiting to ask one of these “obvious” questions, including, but not limited to, frequent flier mileage, flight cancellations and changes, gift certificates, and future flight news and information.

You might hate Virgin America today, but it’s not going to be forever

So does this reservation system issue leave Virgin America with little Klout or fans? I highly doubt it. Sure, the airline has caused some unforeseen issues with their migration process, but I don’t believe that it will result in any permanent ill-will. Why? Because of their reputation as being a customer service-friendly airline. Frankly, if Virgin Airline wasn’t known for being customer-friendly, they would probably be known along the same lines as the legacy airlines and if this issue happened in that instance, would people still complain? Probably, but I think the fact that people actually love the brand gives the airline a bit of breathing room and also gives them a psuedo-free pass. This too shall pass and Virgin America’s efforts at customer service have not slacked off or been negligent. On the contrary, the brand’s renowned customer service has continued and during this moment of crisis, has been buffered by an increase in agents at their call center (even though volume still continues to be at an alarmingly high rate), frequent contacts using Twitter, updating their website with latest information (and not letting it be outdated by more than a day) and having it in a place of prominence for everyone to see, along with some other attempts at communication.

To give you a taste of just what happened with Virgin America recently, here’s a summary of the tweets that I saw relating to this debacle:

Health care’s outlook frustrates us all

According to a recent RAND Corporation study, health care costs have risen faster than the cost of other goods and services in the United States over the past decade. As a result, Americans have been left financially worse off. The research continues by saying that, in dollars, a typical family of four saw on average a monthly income growth of $1,910 over the past decade but spent 40% of it on health care costs.

“Accelerating health care costs are a primary reason that so many American families feel like they are just treading water financially…Unless we reverse the trend, Americans increasingly will notice that health costs compromise their other spending options.”

– David Auerbach, RAND Corporation study lead author and economist

What this clearly tells us, and what I believe everyone is aware of, is that the costs are too high for most families. But what’s more alarming is a report generated by the Commonwealth Fund in 2011, which raises some additional alarming statistics:

• 45% of the adults in the survey reported that they had a hard time paying their bills, even with health insurance, and had been contacted by a collection agency or had to change their way of life in an effort to pay their medical bills.
• Approximately 50 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses.
• According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 28 percent of middle income families (annual family income between $30,000 and $75,000) stated that they were currently having a serious problem paying for healthcare or health insurance.
• Health care benefits are an important factor in either taking a new job or staying with a current job. Approximately 25 percent of employed individuals choose employment based on better health benefits. (Source: Kaiser Family Foundation)

So now we’ve established the main idea here: health care costs have risen to the breaking point and something MUST be done to help curb it. And while our politicians can debate it all that they want, there needs to be some additional help in reducing the amount of money that we spend. Aside from the unexpected occurrences, there are a growing number of third-party applications being produced that are designed to help families and individuals manage their health care expenses. One of these is Cake Health, a startup from the San Francisco Bay Area, whose stated mission is to help accomplish five things: catch medical bill errors, never let you be surprised by your health care bills, save you money, track the real-time status of your plan, and know what your costs are.

Managing your health care is a piece of cake

Started by Rebecca Woodcock and Andy Brett and launched at the San Francisco edition of TechCrunch Disrupt, Cake Health’s desire is to make your life easier and bring order to the health care chaos. What do they mean by this? Simply that they feel that your health care is being affected by the excessive paperwork that you have to fill out before you actually get any real remedy or treatment. And for anyone who doesn’t have a medical or insurance background, getting those medical bills and statements isn’t an easy job to read. I went to get a routine check-up a few months ago and when I got the bill, it was pretty difficult for me to understand what it was saying. So now I have to go back to my physician and ask them to translate it? Or what about the next time I need something taken care of? Is my first option to go to my office’s human resource director to ask if a certain procedure or medicine is covered by my insurance? Maybe I just look at what’s on Cake Health to help me keep track of everything medically relevant so I don’t have more questions than I do treatments.

What was the motivation for this application? Ms. Woodcock started Cake Health in 2010 after observing how inefficient the current health care payment system was. Her understanding stemmed from personal experience as she witnessed a friend with epilepsy wade through the swamp of bills that flowed in for medical expenses. Her friend, who had a high deductible insurance plan, quickly exhausted his benefits with hospital visits, treatments, and expensive, ineffective anti-seizure medications. It seemed impossible to keep track of all the different types of services and costs. After months of personally documenting each seizure her friend experienced, did a neurologist notice the pattern of a specific type of epilepsy and change his treatment.

I recently signed up to get an understanding for what Cake Health really is and after looking through this service, in one way seems like the health care expense management version of Mint.com. And I’m not the only one as TechCrunch blogger Jason Kincaid (@jasonkincaid) also calls it the “Mint for health insurance” – quite appropo if you ask me. The information is all there right at your fingertips. All you need to do is sign up (it’s free) and give them your insurance company and related login information. They have most of the insurance plans in there – although I can’t say if they have all, but while they call out the most “popular” ones, you can add in your own insurance plan and it will pull up that provider. Then, most likely through the provider’s API, Cake Health will import your plan, claims, and information right into their system giving you a one-stop shop to look at your information.

Now I’m sure just by hearing that you just have to give Cake Health your login information for your insurance provider’s website gives you the chills. I mean, this is very, very private information – it’s not as if you’re signing in to have your tweets or photos imported to share with everyone. Privacy is a very serious matter when it comes to health issues and insurance. So what is Cake Health doing about privacy? According to what is on their Frequently Asked Questions page, they say the following:

Is my login information stored on your servers?

If you authorize Cake Health to automatically pull in your claim information, the credentials that you provide are securely stored on our servers. We have taken the utmost precautions to secure and encrypt this information. Even an attacker who gained access to the server itself would not be able to access this information.

Do you share my information with the insurance companies, or any outside party?

Absolutely not. Your personal information is precious and sacred, and yours only. The only information we share is aggregated data to show trends for research purposes and would never be linked to your identity.

Disruptive is a good thing for the health care industry

Too long has the health care industry been the desire for change. People continue to complain seeking reform and yet there are efforts being taken right now to change it only to meet with resistance. No, it’s not a political statement – just a telling of the way things are right now. But people can no longer wait for change to happen. And that’s where Cake Health comes in…it’s causing a disruption. The insurance companies are sitting on your data and there’s no innovation to make things easier for us to manage our own schedules, appointments, claims, and paperwork to be more efficient. Cake Health, called one of the eight startups shaking up the health care industry, is doing just that. Why can’t we make things easy for consumers and patients so that they’re not spending an enormous amount of hours trying to figure things out, whether or not they’re able to pay for that operation, or keep track of what plan can do what or how much did they pay versus their insurance. It’s all there in one system and it’s going to help reduce the burden for not only the insurance company, but also for the health care provider (your doctors and physicians) and also the most important person: the patient.

Besides, would any service in the health care industry really want to take advantage of emerging technology? Maybe, and some are really making strides,  but Cake Health has given things a bit of an upheaval by also having an iPhone application that will make things more streamlined. This way you’re going to have your health insurance information right at your fingertips instead of you needing to go to a laptop and pull things up that are stored either in your email, desktop or personal files. And since it’s on the iPhone, you’ll get double the fun by being able to use it on your iPad tablet device – of course it won’t be fully optimized. It’ll even list out your plan’s benefits so you’ll never be in doubt about whether you’re covered or not. Genius, right?

As patients, we have power over our health care costs

The timing of Cake Health is appropriate and needed since costs have been soaring for the past ten years. And in a September 2011 RAND Corporation study, for those people under consumer-directed health plans, more are gaining control over their health care spending once they begin receiving a physician’s care. As part of the findings, two-thirds of the reduction in health care costs were from patients initiating care less often and the remaining third was from a reduction in costs after care was initiated.

“Unlike earlier time periods, it seems that today’s consumers can have greater influence on the level and mix of medical services provided once they begin to receive medical care,” said Amelia Haviland, the study’s lead author and a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. “We found that at least part of the savings in cost per episode reflects choices for less-costly treatments and products, not just a reduction in the number of services.”

The study continues by saying that there were three contributing factors that influenced the cost of care once the patient had initiated care: lower use of name-brand medications, less in-patient care, and lower use of specialists.

Interesting, yes? Well wouldn’t something like Cake Health help you figure out what drugs or services you’re covered for? These things would be spelled out by integrating your Cake Health account with your insurance provider and getting all of that spelled out in an easy way for you (NOT your provider) to understand.

Bottom line: tackle your insurance and health care costs head on. Control what you’re paying and you’ll get more sleep at night not worrying about the discombobulation of how you’ll pay your medical bills.

Piece of cake!

Photo credit: sleepyneko / flickr.com

Disclaimer: I currently work for a pharmaceutical advertising agency as a digital producer. These words are my own and were not reviewed prior to publishing. I have not been compensated for this review.

The gist about Google+ pages

So Google+ pages are here and they’re apparently quite easy to set up. But some might even say that for the most part, they’re just profiles of brands on Google+…nothing that exciting. After all, the structure of a Google+ brand page doesn’t look any different than what would you see on your own Google profile. Are there new features that would help separate a Google+ page from an individual’s page? Not really. But Google does go the effort to try and justify why brands should be on Google+:

For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.

Essentially, Google+ pages are community hangouts where brands can meet with their customers virtually and en masse and talk about what’s going on with their products, share news, and talk about issues surrounding the industry and what problems everyone is having. And believe me, there is a lot of potential for brands to have pages on Google+.

Build and connect with your community

In the screenshot above, you can see just what a brand page looks like on the social network. It’s very much like an individual profile with specific photos at the top underneath your header and description. Aside from that, the potential for brands is pretty wide open. Just what can brands do to grow their community and engage?

1. Post interesting content and solicit comments and feedback
Just like you might expect from FriendFeed, brands can go ahead and add  in content they wish to share. In the case of the All-American Rejects, they can talk about their latest concert tour, find out what people think about their album, share video interviews, or just have hangouts and talk with their fans in a more private and accessible manner. It’s more than just a status update that you would get from Facebook. In fact, you’re going to be able to share this information with millions more without having them be your friend or fan you on the network. It seems that Google+’s system and mannerisms are to make information as accessible and open as possible….well, that is, unless the brand decides to make it open to specific audiences (i.e., Circles). And that leads me to my second point…

2. Special content for special Circles
If you want to share specific content to various members, perhaps leveraging Circles would be the best move. Imagine wanting to post specific content about a tour that only those in a certain area can participate in or attend. Instead of broadcasting it out to the entire Internet (or Google+ community), some brands may prefer to have it only viewable by those in a certain Circle. Maybe those who want to be entered into being a part of their fan club could get exclusive news about deals, pricing, specials, etc. just by having the brand add them to a certain Circle.

3. Allow the community to hang out with you
One of the things that separates Google+ from Facebook are their Hangouts. For brands, this could be a killer feature that they’ll want to take part of. For bands, they’ll be able to host special musical performances virtually. For CPG, they’ll be able to host impromptu focus groups or have celebrities be interviewed or do behind-the-scenes videos of their marketing promotions and events. Media companies will be able to do live interviews and solicit questions from the masses. In fact, they’re already doing that now with FOX News inviting people to join them for a Hangout where they will allow audience members to chat with the Republican candidates. Needless to say, video opportunities to communicate with their fans are endless.

4. Connect people to more than just your page
One small, but perhaps helpful feature that brand pages have are “related links”. What this will allow brands to do are share links to other properties so that they can grow their community in other ways.

So what’s the bad news?

Right after the launch of these brand pages, Google announces that as one of the “perks”, that contests and promotions are not allowed on the pages. I suppose that goes to them wanting more transparency and authenticity. This is a big mistake that I think should be remedied because I know that for a lot of consumer-focused companies will want to utilize creative marketing on their Google pages. We’ve all seen it for Facebook pages, so why not with Google+? TechCrunch is reporting that:

Per Google’s Google+ Pages Contest and Promotion Policies section, Page admins are informed that they may not “run contests, sweepstakes, offers, coupons or other such promotions” on their Google+ Page. Instead, they may display a link on Google+ that points to a separate site where the Promotion is hosted.

So the only way that companies can do promotions is by linking out to their own sites? I believe that doesn’t have the same viral effect as having it hosted on that network since you’re going to take them away from where they’re at and increase the chance at losing their attention.

Even technologist Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) feels that there’s something wrong with Google+ branded pages. One of the things he cites is that only one person can be an administrator for these pages. Why would that be important? Because right now Google is locking in the creator of a brand page into managing the account. So if you, as the creator, happen to go on vacation, are you supposed to give your login information to a co-worker? What if that login information is for your work email? There’s some security issues there and it doesn’t emote a sense of community. Having multiple people participate in the brand page will help show your customers just how diverse the team is and there’s just not one spokesperson managing the community…the entire team has to be invested in this effort. In fact, this basically sums up the main grievance that Mr. Scoble has about Google+’s brand pages:

So, let me get this straight, only one person, working on one team, can post to a social networking account? So, if the brand needs to say something to customers in a high-touch, high-service business like [Rackspace] (we have customer service people posting and answering phones and talking on chat 24 hours a day 365 days a year) they will need to wake me up to get me to post something? Really? Google, did you really think this through?

And he does have a point…for all the interesting features that Google has rolled out for brands, one wonders whether they actually thought about the community management aspect of having brand pages or are they more interested in the 1:1 conversations that they’d like to see take place. Okay, I suppose it’s not a 1:1, but more like one-to-many ratio. However it is, who knows what the adoption of Google+ will be. Sure, many pages are being set up by folks like World Wrestling Entertainment, Mashable, The Muppets, Angry Birds, All American Rejects, Good Morning America, Citi, Toyota, and many others, but I can imagine that this is a new frontier – not like the Facebook pages of long ago…everyone is taking a “wait and see” approach before putting more investment into it.

And that puts pressure on Google to make it right. We’re still waiting to be impressed.

Image credit: flickr.com/modenadude

Understanding our veterans’ sacrifice

In honor of the holiday, digital publication Mashable published an article on eight ways people can thank the troops online. Social media has helped get us more connected with the rest of the world and allow us to share stories both personal and from strangers that can motivate people to action. One particular instance is sharing stories of our veterans in action — and that’s exactly what the Veterans History Project is all about. Their goal is to help curate, preserve, and share the personal accounts of our American veterans so that others may learn from them and understand what sacrifices they made so that we have our freedom.

Other services and tributes that are emerging include one from the search engine Google, which was set up by people related to Google employees that have served or are currently members of the military. As part of this website, Google has created a service for military personnel and their dependents that they can pass along information. For those active and retired, Google will allow you to record your military story and offer you helpful tools as they return from war and re-acclimate themselves to normal life. Just how difficult is it for veterans to readjust? Well recent employment figures have shown that the unemployment rate for veterans who have left the armed forces post-9/11 is 12.1% — more than three percentage points higher than non-vets. That’s why Google’s site, along with others, are helping to get placement for our veterans by helping them get set up professionally, whether that means creating their own business, generating a resume, tracking your investments, or other community support. And if it’s not professional services, you can also use Google’s service to reconnect with your loved ones as well as fellow veterans. Basically it’s going to be your lifeline to helping make sure you’re always in touch with those who you need to connect with.

Of course, the general public can send their well-wishes to the troops both at home and abroad through the media, like how CNN is doing with their iReport platform. According to Mashable, this year, the media company leveraged Facebook by allowing photos and videos uploaded to their platform and tagged with “CNN iReport” and those items will be shared on the Facebook page as well, making it accessible to over 500 million people.

The bottom line here: lots of great Internet sites have started to appear that offer you the opportunity to give thanks in many ways to those who have served the United States in the military/armed forces. For this, we are grateful.

Social good to help out the veterans

And while we’re talking about thanking our troops, one of the things we should do is also focus on how we can help them out. Yes, I did mention Google for Veterans, but that is not necessarily a social good cause – it’s a software that allows veterans to reconnect with their loved ones. Just what do I mean? Take a look at this tweet I saw yesterday from Plancast’s Mark Hendrickson (@mhendric):

Upon closer review, I came across the Rebuild Hope website where it wasn’t just a donation website where all money went towards a general cause, but rather one focused on specific individuals and their plight. We all know that there are a lot of veterans that are coming back and suffering and yes we can chime in and send some money to worthy organizations like the USO or veteran hospitals, but the one way we can help better is by getting to know their own individual plights and dilemmas. That way we feel a bit more invested in the cause and can think of doing something more than throwing money at the “problem”. This is what I see when I look at the Rebuild Hope website. It’s not a service like what you would get from Google’s example, but rather it”s focused on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and hearing their stories. According to the website’s mission:

Tens of thousands of U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now struggling with life-altering, service-connected injuries and psychological problems. And their adjustment to family and civilian life is made even more difficult when they must wait six months or more to receive merited disability income from the U.S. government. Even then, large numbers live below the poverty level.Through Rebuild Hope Americans help these veterans – and their caregivers and families – overcome short term financial problems and build healthier and more stable lives.

The Internet has provided us with a powerful way to share stories of not only the success, but the needs of our veterans. And while we must think that everyone comes back fine after being at war, the hard truth is that it’s not all sunshines and lolipops. In fact, there are many that are scarred both emotionally, physically, and financially and often we are not able to help them out because we don’t have a name or face to the issue. In fact, according to Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, the problem with giving statistics is that they don’t “activate our moral feelings” meaning that we simply cannot comprehend the enormous numbers in our head. But if we put a person behind the campaign, people will help out more. And this is exactly what the Internet and social good has done to help honor our troops.

Of course, if you can’t donate any money or financially help out the veterans, at least make sure you tell them you’re thankful for their service. It’s our duty to thank them for theirs.

Photo credit: NYCMarines / flickr.com

Well, there is…and it’s called Urbandig. Started up by former MySpace’er Mike Macadaan (@macadaan) and several other individuals, it’s one of the most recent startups that have emerged to disrupt the way tourism is being done online. And why is this so surprising? It shouldn’t be because if you look at the normal trend, when people are visiting other destinations, whether they be domestic or international, the one thing that they will typically have on them that can access the Internet is their mobile device. It doesn’t have to be a telephone, but it’s portable and can quickly access the Internet and serve information to help guide them on their travels.

Mobile devices and tourism

According to recent research done by Google, out of all the travel-related activities done using mobile devices, for those that travel for personal reasons, 38% have downloaded a travel-related application onto their phone. But what’s more remarkable is that 61% of the respondents said that they use their mobile device to research an upcoming trip. What these two statistics tell me is that there is an incredible opportunity to help people find where they want to go on their next adventure. And for those people who visit the same place over and over again, having this tool on hand to allow you to find and share new experiences is a breakthrough. In fact, just think of it…your device that you use to send emails, post tweets, make status updates, text and even make phone calls with, has an incredible tie-in with tourism. I think it goes without saying that the fact that we can post photos in real-time of our vacations, share videos, update our blogs with news of our trip, and even find information on exciting places to go, can all be done from a small device that fits in our pocket.

Want some other interesting statistics on the power of mobile device in tourism? Earlier this summer, TripAdvisor published a new survey that they did of more than 1,000 US respondents with mobile devices. Like Google, the trend reported shows similar usage of mobile devices in travel, but also offered a bit more specific information:

• 52% researched restaurants
• 46% read about destinations
• 45% read traveler reviews
• 42% booked or researched accommodations
• 34% booked or researched flights

As you can see, from the above research, mobile devices are important and they serve a useful purpose in travel planning as well.

Urbandig lets you be a tourist, but act like a local

So what’s the big deal about Urbandig? To put it simply, it’s a mobile application that helps people navigate around their locale to discover hidden getaways and new adventures and excursions that they might not know about or familiar with. Each city has their own set of themes curated by experts who are local residents of that city. What makes Urbandig that special compared to a regular tour guide or simply looking on a travel map? Well definitely because it will reveal things that you won’t easily find in a regular tour map. And how often do you find someone right next to you or accessible to you who will tell you the best places to go for specific themed adventure or excursion. This information is decentralized. But Urbandig brings it all back into one application and separates it by themes and useful curated bits and pieces of information.

And while there are many (and I mean many) applications out there, Urbandig has a bit of a leg up on it because instead of asking your friends for recommendations, the content is already there for you along with a map of its location, places to check out, and more. Oh, and did you know that they’ve also added a gamification process to it as well where you can share your location with others? Yes, it’s tied into your favorite social networks: Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare.

Put simply:

“Urbandig takes you off the beaten path so you can experience a city like a true local,” said Mike Macadaan, Co-Founder of Urbandig. “Because our guides are crafted by subject matter experts, who live and breathe adventure, Urbandig is able to serve up trusted yet unconventional (or one-of-a-kind) experiences that you just won’t find in any guide book or on a double decker tour bus.”

I’ve downloaded this free application from the Apple app store and here in San Francisco, some of the featured tours include:

• Salty Old Dog Bars: a tour of the best old school watering holes in the city
• Truckspotting: a tour of some of the best food trucks in San Francisco
• Getladium: city guide of the best places to find potential mates
• Burger Battle: a burger guide
• Secret City: Unique and hidden places in the city that has the best in style, food, fashion, and fun

As you can see, there are some fascinating tours on here that you might not know about…and quite frankly, I doubt that a local tour guide would focus on that. After all, if you’re here for a food vacation (and some people actually do that), then you might want to go on the Truckspotting or Burger Battle guide that Urbandig has. You’ll probably find something truly unique that you haven’t had or experienced before. And their content is still growing – it’s not a fixed amount of tours that they have there.

And there’s even an added bonus to tourism organizations as well. How? Well imagine going to a place like Washington, DC (disclosure: I used to work for the Washington, DC tourism organization) - what’s the main sights that you’ll probably want to do? Check out the monuments, White House, and some museums. But you might want to look at something different on your next trip…maybe something like what a local person would do? Well if the tourism organization of a particular destination finds a way to partner with Urbandig, they’ll be able to suggest more “like a local” type trips that will get people to be more adventurous. In fact, in looking at their tourism website, they already have experiential marketing listed. But what if they took that and applied it to Urbandig and curated that information there? People would be able to check-in and share their finds with their friends and more local and possibly mostly unattended areas would get a boost in foot traffic and subsequently, business. And all because one little app decided to take you on to the road less traveled.

In the end, what Urbandig reminds me is of the immortal Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken. Why? Because of its meaning…Urbandig is the road not taken. It’s the unconventional tourism and adventure application. You’re taking a fun-filled chance on following these guides and it will only lead to enjoyment and awesome memories. Let’s just say that after using Urbandig, the last paragraph of Frost’s poem basically sums it up:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

1000memories is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a place where you can fashion your own family tree and with each individual person, create a profile that can tell their story. In essence, you’re generating a structure Ning site, but one just around your family. The service also enables sharing to be included so that other family members who might have stories, photos, videos or other media about a specific individual can share their information easily so that the whole story is told. As 1000memories puts it best:

We help bring the albums, scrapbooks, and photo-filled shoeboxes of our lives out of the closet and into an online, shareable space where they can be remembered and celebrated, together in one place.

Here’s how it works…and I believe that this is a great way for family collaboration to happen to make sure everyone knows about their history…

First you sign up for an account with 1000memories and then you begin by building out the foundation of your family. Since you created the account, for all intents and purposes, the world revolves around you. You’re going to add your parents and then their parents, and so on and so forth. Along the way, you’ll be able to add in any siblings, their partners/spouses, children, and much more. 1000memories is quite up to the 21st century and has included options for current and former partners/spouses and you can even let the system know whether the children are from a specific individual or not. You can get as detailed as you want or not at all – it’s entirely up to you.

Once you’re done creating your family tree, the next thing for you to do is to add in details about your family members. If you remember a while ago, a Twitter account was created that repeated sage wisdom from the creator’s father and it was aptly called “Shit My Dad Says” (@shitmydadsays). Now imagine if those wonderful “sayings” were collected under the father’s profile on 1000memories. Then if the Twitter account gets deleted, at least the family will be able to recall specific thoughts from that individual. And that’s what 1000memories is looking to do. Right now, in this step where you can add details to specific family member pages, some of the types of content that can be curated include: photos, audio, videos, documents, quotes, and stories — all important things when wanting to relive the lives of your loved ones. Simply upload your materials as you would on a someone’s Facebook page and all of those family members on 1000memories will be able to offer their comments and join in on the conversation.

A couple of examples of what 1000memories is offering can be found here: Ernest Hemingway and fiction hero Bilbo Baggins.

So why is this important to the world? Because 1000memories is solving a real problem that every family has: how do you trace your roots and keep the family history intact without losing it? Technology has surely made it easier for us to keep track with one another, but it can do much more by allowing us to protect the family. And by having the service store the information in the Cloud, it won’t be lost in the event of a fire in your home, theft of your computer, old age, things getting lost in the move from one place to the next, or worse. No matter what, it will be available as long as you have Internet access. And one person won’t be the keeper of this digital family tree either because other family members can collaborate and expand it at any given time, thereby making it a true family project — because after all, we know that one person can’t know all the secrets, stories and tales of the entire clan.

And I would be remiss if I forgot to mention that 1000memories has an iPhone app available for use so that you can cultivate your family tree anytime you want. I’m willing to bet that anywhere you go, your phone will be with you. And if you happen to be going through your parents photo album or a storage unit in the next few days, one of the things you’ll want is this iPhone app where you can use the camera to capture photos and have it posted to your family tree without having to worry about finding a scanner. Like the technology that financial institutions use to record check deposits, 1000memories’ Shoebox application will make it easy for you to add old photos, stories, audio files and more to profiles and your tree.

From their website:

How does Shoebox work?
Shoebox’s edge detection and perspective correction make sure that the paper photographs you scan turn out beautifully. After scanning, you can quickly crop, straighten, rotate your photo, as well as record the stories behind the photographs by adding captions, dates, and tags.

What about the quality?
The quality of camera phones has increased so much that your handy iPhone is now as good as the clunky piece of hardware you have next to your computer, and with none of the wires or drivers. The new iPhone 4S offers a 8 megapixel camera that takes images at 2448×3264 resolution. Using Shoebox to scan a typical 4″x6″ photo produces a DPI of 550 – the same high quality recommended by scanning experts like ScanCafe.

Where are my photos saved?
Your photos are saved on your iPhone and on 1000memories where they can be shared for free with friends and family. You can also share via Facebook and Twitter. All photos on 1000memories are backed up and preserved forever through our partnership with the Internet Archive.

When it’s all said and done, if you want to take your family tree and store it elsewhere, it seems that 1000memories isn’t going to be holding your data hostage either. Their policies apparently dictate that you can simply download your information along with any photos or media content that you shared through their Shoebox application. From what that looks like, only those within your family should be the ones owning that information. But what format that can be downloaded as and whether it can be ported into a different system (if there even is one), remains to be seen.

Overall, when I set up my family tree, I think it was pretty interesting and definitely serves a purpose to the mainstream user. However, there are some lingering questions that I wonder whether they’ll be resolved:

What about other alternatives for mapping out family history? This seems to be something that doesn’t have any immediate or prominent competitors and that might give 1000memories too much leverage into thinking that they can control the market, which might affect service. And with this innovative technology, is this something that Ancestry.com will want to purchase and integrate into their system? It makes perfect sense to tie it into their platform and have it bolster the genealogy service that they offer.

Is there a way to only make your family tree private to your family or is there a way that you can control who views what information? Maybe I don’t want to have my family create a 1000memories login — maybe I’d rather give them a link where they can view the family tree, but only have my brother and first cousins be the curators and editors of this thing.

What about foreign languages? After the first couple of generations, most likely the names of family members may start to be less European and more Asian or another non-English language. I know that they accept certain European languages, but what about languages like Chinese, Japanese, or others. Do we need to take those characters and copy/paste them into the fields or can we type in the characters ourselves?

Lastly, there’s no Android app, so that might pose a bit of a problem.

But when it’s all said and done, I think that 1000memories is definitely worth checking out and paying attention to. It’ll help keep your memories safe so that they can be passed down to the next generation.

Photo Credit: hortongrou / sxc.hu

Oh yeah, you read that right…the World Wide Web a.k.a. the Internet. Sure, the history of the Internet can trace its origins back to its founding here in the United States, but I’m sure the inventors and people who have used it since then didn’t really think that the Internet would be something that only Americans would use to transmit information and leave people out in the cold, right? Well that’s exactly what didn’t happen and for the United States to enact a policy that would essentially police the Internet is a stretch of the imagination. The Internet is one of those few things that the world can claim as their very own — a global product that should not be interrupted or interfered with.

But I get what Congress is trying to do. They want to help stop online privacy so that we’re not going to be able to steal any patented technology, software, movies, songs, etc. and, in doing so, affect the welfare and well-being of artists, musicians, engineers, companies, and technology originating here in the United States. It makes sense, but is there a different way without passing another law that would basically further regulate the free-flowing stream of information? I see the Internet as a river and this Privacy Act (SOPA) as a dam being stuck in the middle to make whatever information the dam owners find acceptable to be released. We’re not China or Iran…we shouldn’t have these restrictions.

From a November 19, 2011 edition of the Washington Post:

The Stop Online Piracy Act has caused backlash from tech giants, one of which has left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest. They received some support from lawmakers as debate on the bill continues.

The United States Congress may have decided due to subtle influence from a powerful lobbyist, the US Chamber of Commerce, that SOPA was needed, but did they understand the affect it would have on American jobs and companies as well? That’s what’s happening with this careless effort. Large innovative tech companies like Google, Yahoo and even the large Consumer Electronics Association, have voiced opposition to this effort, in addition to Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, eBay, and Mozilla – they even wrote a letter to express their displeasure. The sound byte from that letter? It “pose[s] a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cybersecurity.”

Why are we worrying about further regulation instead of actually trying to improve the situation through technological innovation. Let’s get our tech companies out there to find a way to make it harder for people to pirate software and movies. I think we’re making some progress on it, but we need to support these innovations and keep bringing and encouraging talent to stay in the United States to foster these innovations. By making it harder for innovation to be done, Congress is stifling an industry that is the source of developing products that the very people supporting SOPA is using to promote and produce their products.

According to a New York Times Op/Ed piece on SOPA, one of the things that they say about this bill is:

It would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. [SOPA] goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright.

I’m not really comfortable allowing some politician to judge the content on my website just simply because it might be anti-government in peaceful protest. And the fact that SOPA will allow private companies (per the New York Times article) to sue service providers for even allowing that content on the site. So in theory, if someone created a startup that allowed people to subscribe to view movies, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would be able to sue them to stop because, while they might be doing it legally, this startup has encroached on the MPAA’s market? I think things will not be on a level playing field.

And you would think that’s what Congress is planning on doing…giving these entertainment and music lobbyists more control to shutter international innovation – well it’s going to affect them. I think it’s a mater of survival for these lobbyist organizations and their members. They can’t figure out how to be creative and innovate, let alone pay attention to the amazing technology companies that can help them out, so they decide to stop anyone else from beating them to the punch. Sorry guys, but the clock doesn’t stop on innovation just because you want a “time-out”.

But bravo to Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) for holding hearings in Congress earlier this month in the House Judiciary Committee to talk about SOPA and having key people there to testify: the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Motion Picture Asssociation of America, AFL-CIO, and Pfizer. It’s important to note that all of these companies were testifying in favor (supporting) SOPA, while the lone dissension was Google. All other opposition was denied the opportunity to testify in front of the committee and when it was livestreamed on the Internet, you could see that it was all about everyone in favor of this act, but that Google offering a quiet dissension. So that must mean that no one else opposed this bill, right? Wrong…and now we’re not playing fair.

Let me leave you with this tidbit…why is SOPA being hailed as the “end of the Internet”? JD Supra, a website publishing corporate law tidbits for lawyers and executies did an analysis on its failure:

• Because it would kill jobs in the ever-expanding tech industry
• Because it would stifle innovation
• Because it effectively strips away all safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protect online service providers against copyright liability if they block access to allegedly infringing material when notified of potential infringement
• Because it would create a “Great Firewall of America” that blocks access to certain websites (almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment)
• Because it allows rightsholders to indiscriminately target websites without liability for getting it wrong
• But mostly because, as one critic puts it, it is “ridiculously bad”

Wait, the governor’s office took action against an 18 year old girl because of what she tweeted? What could she have possibly done that could have sought retaliation from the leader of the state? Clearly the tweet sent must have endangered state or national security, right? Nope. Was it threatening or harassing to the point where legal steps had to be taken? Nope. Was it defaming or was it libel in any way? Nope. So what was this damaging tweet that forced Governor Brownback’s office to contact Ms. Sullivan’s high school principal, which resulted in this girl being asked to write a written apology for?

Her tweet:

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.

Perhaps that wording was probably rude, but I think that this tweet did not warrant the state governor’s office to implement crisis control to get a handle on the situation. The fact that they collaborated with Ms. Sullivan’s high school principal to try and force a written apology from her was weak and ill-advised. Moreover, it trampled on the student’s First Amendment rights. In fact, this effort highlights a few things about how to handle social media…first, the governor’s office overreacted, which they clearly acknowledged with Governor Brownback issuing an apology today; and second, that trying to browbeat your dissenters, regardless of the industry that you’re in (politics, consumer packaged goods, non-profits, automotive/transportation, etc.), is never a good idea because it will come up and bite you in the end – you’re going to need to learn how to engage instead of trying to silence your critics.

Engagement works out better than censorship when it comes to customer relations. By making yourself feel like you’re part of the conversation and dialogue that’s taking place, you’re going to help promote your presence and your critics won’t necessarily feel threatened that you’re not listening to them. Kill their doubts with your sincerity and you’ll have a more constructive dialogue. By trying to make all feedback about your brand and products rosy and full of sunshine does nothing but to cause people to suspect that it’s not all truthful. And trying to do that through the use of social media is also definitely ill-advised. Companies should not think that they can control the message in the world of social media — in fact, it’s quite the opposite: the customers are the ones that have greater control over your message. They help interpret what your message is and whether you’re successful or not.

The next time that people decide to criticize your brand or product, make sure that you are listening to what they’re saying and acknowledge their feelings. Open a dialogue with them and try and convince them of what you think is the right course of action and how you might be able to convince them your way is correct.There’s nothing wrong with being civil with each other. What’s more, monitoring what you see online and when people say some harsh things about you, don’t try and censor what is happening as well. Social media cannot be censored as that will only enflame the situation further.

If you want respect from your customers, then find a way to earn it from them. Don’t force people to retract what they said just to make it more positive than what it really is.

No one likes a bully.

It all kicked off with a co-working “crawl” throughout San Francisco. Starting at Carr Workplace, event organizers brought Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty to speak about the effect co-working has had on his city. While disclosing his interest in the venue NextSpace, Mayor Coonerty did explain that co-working has helped bring a new change to Santa Cruz, all for the better. And just what exactly can co-working do to help cities?  Well for one, it’s an economic boon…you’re creating jobs as a startup, entrepreneur, freelancer, etc and are also by working out of a coffee shop, co-working space, or other office, you’re also giving money to nearby local businesses that you’ll be shopping at for supplies, food, etc. And supporting co-working has been a boon for Santa Cruz, as Mayor Coonerty said that with startup entrepreneurs starting to co-work in his city, it’s helped bring some needed technology credibility to the city since more venture capitalists are paying attention to the emerging markets there. A win for everyone, it seems!

So now that we know a bit about the potential for co-working, what are we to do about it? Chances are that we all know someone who may have decided to start their own business and are on the cusp of hitting it big. But what if they have a big meeting coming up? Do you think that it’s the right thing to do to have the meeting take place in their home or apartment? You’re running a business…it wouldn’t hurt to have a place that shows that you’re a bit more professional. But you’re also not looking for an entire office to rent for the next year. So what are freelancers and entrepreneurs to do?

Well that’s where LiquidSpace comes in with their service. Resembling something like the “AirBnB of venue space“, LiquidSpace is a service that will connect you, the freelancer/entrepreneur, with any available participating spaces in your city and within your budgeted rent price range. From whether you want a conference room to a desk or to an actual office, there can be a lot of opportunities for businesses to connect with other people and grow. There are over 100 participating venues from around the world that you can choose from–and these are only those that are public. It seems that LiquidSpace also offers their services white labeled to other companies so that they can use it to have their own meeting room reservation system powered through their app. An example would be a venture capital firm setting up an incubator and offering their meeting rooms up for co-working opportunities. Rather than doing it through Google Calendar, LiquidSpace would be contracted to power the platform and help collect any or all financial consequences.

Let’s face it, if you’re starting out and doing your own business, you’re not going to want to stay home to do work. It’s going to drive you mad every day of the week. Instead, you’re going to want to be in a more productive environment where people know not to bother you, but it’s also not just another office. Some people can’t work out of a nearby coffee shop or their friend’s office for the day. So why not a co-working space like Citizen Space, the Hatchery, RocketSpace, etc.? Maybe some have specific needs that will work for you–this is what LiquidSpace will help you find out. Using their mobile applications, you can search for availabilities, browse by location, size, venue, ratings, the work environment, see photos, and more…and all the transactions are done through LiquidSpace’s secure payment processing platform.

I’d love to tell you more, but then again, I’d ruin this great spontaneous interview I had with Nanci Anderson, Head of Operations, for LiquidSpace while on their “co-working space venue crawl”. They’re really offering a great service to connect people with a lot of unknown venues that have been really instrumental as a way to get people talking with others and launching businesses. In this economy, with a high unemployment, perhaps starting your own business might be a way for some people to go to try something new…and LiquidSpace gives them, and everyone else, that opportunity to discover a new working space to help facilitate business, the economy, and to better connect us to one another.

If you don’t think that there’s no future in having television, video, and movies on the Internet, then you’re sorely mistaken, because there’s a growing movement to cut all ties with cable and instead get it all through the Internet. Perhaps it’s one of financial necessity — people probably don’t see a need to pay the cable companies more money for the triple play package anymore. Instead, they’re perfectly fine paying for a cable modem and watching shows on their laptops or computers for free — and if they want, they can use hardware like the Apple TV, Boxee Box, Roku, or a laptop to connect to their television to have it on a bigger screen. Oh, and to top it all off? Just go to a retail store these days, and you’ll be able to pick up a “Smart TV” that’ll let you hook up the Internet right to your television and instantly you’ll have access to great services like Netflix, Pandora, Hulu Plus, and more! And there’s an audience already…why, just today, YouTube announced that in 2011 alone, over one trillion videos were viewed! So at the very least, that’s got to be saying something…right?

No? Well how about the research done by eMarketer.com that says in the United States, 33% of adult Internet users watch full-length television episodes online? As you can see in the chart here, the number of Americans surveyed has steadily increased over the past four years. Why, in 2011 alone, we’re already expecting about 72.2 million people to watch full-length shows online. So why should that stop sporting events like the Super Bowl from joining this trend? There’s a huge market for them to dive right into, and for the Super Bowl who saw last year’s game watched by a record US audience of 111 million viewers, there’s a high potential for millions more to participate.

Could I be wrong? Maybe, but I think that by opening up the Super Bowl across multiple mediums and making it as accessible as possible is a wise move for the network and NFL to do. Not only will it be livestreamed, but NBC has said that the broadcast of wild card Saturday, the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl will be available through both the NFL and NBC websites and also through Verizon’s NFL mobile app. Some might say that it’s not going to be that significant of a thing…take this blog post on StreamingMediaBlog.com by Dan Rayburn, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan and EVP at StreamingMedia.com, for example:

Since most people want to watch the Super Bowl on TV, I don’t expect the traffic for the Super Bowl webcast to break any records. NBC has said that they average around 250,000 viewers for their SNF games, although that’s probably total viewers, not simultaneous streams and the TV broadcast for Sunday Night Football averages more than 21M viewers. So NBC hasn’t seen any evidence that online streaming of SNF has any kind of negative impact on TV viewership. Adding the Super Bowl as a live stream makes a lot of sense and I suspect NBC will also sell online only ads during the game, so there’s also the ad monetization angle for NBC to try and cover their costs from streaming.

And Mr. Rayburn is probably right, but what this could result in is more motivation for sporting events to make themselves available to Internet streaming instead of broadcast rights. Imagine soon being able to access the Olympics in real-time right from your laptop or tablet. Or what about the World Cup?

Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way? Maybe instead of looking it at NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts, we need to be looking at the industry’s bigger picture: how can non-traditional television help increase viewership of the NFL? I mean, Major League Baseball has done it over the past years. And as recent as 2009, MLB has seen its subscription base jump to 400,000 subscribers who have streamed over 127 million streams (136% more than in 2008). So the fact that it’s available may make a bit more difference for the millions of people who have to work. And what about those people in countries where the Super Bowl isn’t broadcast in? The Internet will bring the game to them and with it, the chance for many more ad impressions.

But what about those famous advertisements that everyone looks forward to during the Super Bowl? Will livestreaming the game offer NBC and the NFL an incentive to charge more for the advertisements because of the potential for increased viewership? Or will they decide to make it a tiered approach and get new advertisers to pay for exclusive online commercials only? Play the cards right and NBC and the NFL could turn this into a larger opportunity and build a better community.

Until then, let’s count it down until kick-off…regardless of how you’re watching it, the post-season will be a well-watched and accessible one.

Photo credit: bionicteaching/flickr

A social network that failed, but is trying to succeed

In case you haven’t heard about it, Path is the brainchild of Dave Morin (@davemorin), a former employee of Facebook, who started this new social network  about two years ago, who’s main objective is to make your social network more relevant to those closest to you, not to force you to share your life in public, like some of the other social networks out there. In essence, Path was geared towards making your social life private, but with some sharing enabled – makes sense, right? Well that’s what some people believed and when Mr. Morin launched the first version of Path, it didn’t seem to be all that appealing after a while. A couple of the tech blogs even cited the service as doomed to failure, such as TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb. I, for one, passed it off for a failed startup because I was wondering why I would even think of using a service that is already well-represented by the liked of Facebook, where I can control album control and have as many people as I want to view it, along with Google+, where I can again moderate visibility of my postings through who’s in the designated “Circle”. These questions were even broached with the folks at Path a while ago and I even went more in-depth in looking at the mainstream users who aren’t necessarily “tech savvy” as I am or my friends are.

So why would I use Path?

It’s a private social network, for one. What I see from Path is the opportunity for me to become more “social” with those who I genuinely appreciate more feedback from. While I can post things to Facebook and Google+ and receive comments, likes and the occasional +1, if these gratification reviews are from my close friends versus acquaintances, then I would value it more than normal. Plus, the ability for people to share it with their close friends allows them a sense of liberation and ability to go unfiltered and share whatever they want with a lowered fear of reprisal or exposure. Basically it’s like you’re sharing with a very tight-knit group of your friends in real life and you know that what happens in the group, stays with the group.

Another usefulness that Path offers people is that it’s entirely centered around the mobile environment. While prominent social networks like Facebook and Google+ have a wider audience, their sites are developed for website use first – only recently did they release a mobile application that people could access on their smartphones. Path, however, knew that the mobile market was growing and decided to create a site that would be entirely devoted to the mobile user. The point of Path is to share where you are going and what you’re doing. It’s quite frankly not sensible enough to share that through a laptop as you’re going from place to place. The developers knew that the best place to get real-time content from users is through mobile and when you did that, you automatically had an Internet plan that would allow you to share your content.

Just look at the Facebook mobile application: it’s not conducive to sharing with the granularity of privacy that you would want if you wanted to try and recreate the Path environment. You’d need to exert way more effort to make sure that only those people within specific friend lists would be able to view it, and what happens if you accidentally forget to post media/content to a specific list? Then it’s available for the entire world to see. It’s better to have more privacy and then filter it away later on – basically go from conservative to be more liberal.

So far, the reviews for Path have gotten better compared to the first iteration. Dare I say that the company underwent a bit of a mini-pivot after receiving some criticism for its application? Just last month, it relaunched and to some great acclaim.

TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis wrote:

There is something about waking up day after day to write about people who take risks; You end up rooting for some of them. This is the case with photo-sharing underdog Path.

Just over a year ago, her colleague, Erick Schonfeld wrote that Path was:

a private photo sharing iPhone app similar to Instagram or PicPlz, except that it makes sharing photos more difficult than it needs to be.

So how much different can this new iteration of Path be? According to Ms. Tsotsis:

Morin tells me that users are sharing more things on the new Path in a day then they had on the old Path in a year — at a rate of 12 moments per second. The company is seeing 30x the number of daily active users, going from 10K to 300K in two and a half weeks. Rumor has it that it’s seeing 100k downloads a day (Morin wouldn’t confirm).

So there’s been a bit of buzz about Path and it’s turnaround and now people are clamoring to try this. With a limited number of friends you can be connected to (at this time: 150 people), people seem to find it a bit rewarding to be able to separate themselves from the noise and just go straight to a signal and share with their friends, many whom they would like to stay more in touch with intimately and without having to worry about other people “butting in”.

The design is a key to Path’s usage

In looking at the Path application on my Android device, I came across Robert Scoble’s (@scobleizer) Google+ post on the service. He basically proclaims that Path is the “private personal journal that kicks ass“. Why does he think this? Probably because of the design of the application. Mr. Scoble believes that the application is well-designed and it’s subtle but “feels good through the entire product” and I tend to agree. The user interface is smooth and easy to understand how to navigate.  I believe that the service is well-organized and structured in a way that people can find information relatively quickly and without any qualms about how to find other things to do.

Path’s problems and it’s true test

One of the biggest problems that many people will have is finding a way to overcome the Facebook and Google+ paradigm for how people perceive a social network. With over 800 million users on Facebook, why do people want to leave the network to join one where they have just another network to join, add more friends, and be restricted to 150 people that they can follow – it just seems like social network overkill. As I said earlier, we’re beginning to look to find a way to de-clutter the noise from amongst our friends — we need to find something that is valuable to us instead of all the Zynga game spam and other ads cluttering up the stream. And just how will the mainstream users feel about Path when it moves past the Silicon Valley and technology hubs in the United States? One thing that gave me pause to using Path in its old form is how will non-tech savvy individuals, like your grandparents, relatives, friends, parents, sibilings or spouse feel about the service. This was one question that I posed to Path directly a few months ago and I’m still not sure what motivation that they would get from having to understand using Facebook Connect to create another login account just to download another application where they’ll have to share their content again. It seems a bit redundant for mainstream non-tech users.

Primarily, Path came out on the iPhone – perhaps the most highest selling phone in the world today, and was rightly so to begin there. Only recently with the introduction of Path 2, did the service begin to roll out a version of the application onto the Android devices. But the two platforms are not identical: on iOS, I’m able to apply filters after taking a photo with the Path application, but on Android, this is missing. There’s a similar issue with the videos as well (I’ve heard this is coming soon), and the connectivity to social networks — apparently it works fine on iOS with Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook, but on Android, Facebook is the given problem. Needless to say, the integration isn’t 100% perfect and there’s definitely room for the service to grow.

So where does Path go now? Can the service monetize itself? Absolutely, but not in the traditional sense of the word – it would totally ruin the user experience if, all of a sudden, you’re using the Path application and Google AdWord banners start to appear on the top and bottom of the screen. It just adds more clutter. However, if special features like more friends, added photo filters, new integration with other social networks, exporting of data, etc. were offered, then people may pay for them and that could lead to more users and money for the company.

And what about brands getting on board? I’m hesitant to think about this route because I believe that Path should be a purely consumer-focused and isolated service. Why? I don’t think that brands should be contributing to the noise by “spamming” their followers. People will not want to give up one of their 150 valuable spots. I’d imagine that if any company wanted to participate on Path, they’d need to be 100% understanding of the types of people on Path and know the content that’s appropriate there. What is tweeted or posted on Facebook, blogs, or Instagram are not 100% acceptable for Path users. But for those users that have accepted brands, businesses should take note that these users are probably worth considering brand ambassadors and fundamental fans since they’ve given one of the sacred 150 spots to your company.

Download Path to test it out

So don’t take my word about Path. Make sure you try it out yourself and make your own judgement about the service. It’s available for Android and iPhone right now.

Photo Credit: sardinelly/sxc.hu

But in all the time that I’ve watched House Hunters, there’s some things that I’ve noticed appear on the episodes. It could be that it’s a 30 minute episode and there’s just not enough time, or that it just doesn’t fit into the normal schema of the show, but I think to make this a well-rounded show that is kept in touch with the time and the reality of those looking for homes, there should be some adjustments made to the series–not a whole lot and not permanently, but let’s not turn a blind eye to the trends in real estate buying, okay?

In all the episodes that I’ve watched, never have I seen a couple or an individual holding a cell phone, iPad, or mobile device. Why is this important? Well I would imagine that if HGTV had a social tech savvy buyer on the show, he or she would be compelled to use their mobile device to photograph the house they’re looking at for reference, perhaps take video, or use their iPad to research the surrounding area or find where they are on Google Maps. They might also feel inclined to ask for thoughts on Twitter, Facebook, or even Google+. Now, I totally understand that these shows are not live and are taped, so that means that HGTV doesn’t want their “contestants” (for lack of better word right now), to be leaking information about the episode that their buyers are looking at. However, when you think about it, House Hunters is more like an extension of the buyer’s experience. The three houses that they are looking at are selected to be aired probably after the buyer and the realtor have combed through the dozens of listings until they find three acceptable ones that pose a chance at being bought.

I’ve looked at the reality TV show’s FAQ section for potential participants on the show and there’s currently no mention about utilizing social media to help make a decision. I’m sure it’s probably going to be a deal-breaker for someone to come on the set and out of the three choices that they have, post things on social networks to help make a decision. But it would be fun to imagine it, wouldn’t it?

I swear that Enemy of the State is fitting right now. Why? Because at the end of the movie, the lawmaker who proposed the communication bill is interviewed on the steps of Congress and when asked if the bill is dead, he replies:

In its current form, yes, but the issue is still very much alive, I can assure you, unless, of course, no one worries about national security anymore. We knew that we had to monitor our enemies. We’ve also come to realize…that we need to monitor the people who are monitoring them.

I understand that the government wants to protect American investments and its citizens, but at a risk to the way that we communicate and our freedom of speech? The Stop Online Privacy Act that is was going through the House of Representatives along with the Senate version, Protect IP Act (PIPA), are dangerous bills that should be stopped. Why were these bills enacted in the first place? Apparently because members of Congress are hearing about piracy taking place in entertainment, arts, music, and within other content structures that takes away money from hard-working Americans. Yes, I’m in favor of stopping piracy and counterfeit goods, but by giving the government, who has a political leaning automatically, no matter what they say, can very much shape the way the Internet currently exists.

Yesterday, Congressman Smith announced that he was pulling one of the most controversial provisions of SOPA: DNS blocking. Just how important is this? As noted in a VentureBeat article, if this provision were to be included in both SOPA and PIPA, it would grant the United States government the power and authority, along with copyright holders, the ability to block websites with infringing, pirating, or counterfeiting intellectual property. VentureBeat continues to explain that “One method of blocking a website under SOPA — which Smith intends to remove — includes getting Internet service providers (like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon FiOS) to block the site’s DNS record, which would prevent people from visiting those sites.“ This is absolutely remarkable that while the United Nations has declared the Internet a “human right”, the greatest country in the world feels compelled to limit access to its citizens. I’m even more frustrated by the fact that copyright holders have this control through the DNS blocking provision where they can systematically take out their competitors, vendors and partners around the world via the Internet simply by declaring that they are now infringing on their rights.

Keep up with the latest news about the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) & Protect IP Act (PIPA)? Check out my del.icio.us stack of bookmarked links curated – over 100+ articles talking about SOPA being debated now, from TechDirt, VentureBeat, Mashable, Ars Technica, CNET, and others!

 
In a nutshell, SOPA/PIPA are telling Americans that their government has the right to censor the Internet, even though we’ve told other countries not to stifle the Internet for their citizens. Although, in all fairness, President Barack Obama’s administration has come out against SOPA/PIPA because its current form doesn’t work for them. This post, penned by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at the Office of Management and Budget, Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff, and, perhaps most important, Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States and Assistant to the President and Associate Director of Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, states two great points about how the Internet should be managed:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.

Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet.

Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

So there you have it, three solid technology experts who have analyzed this information has provided a clear explanation why the current forms of SOPA and PIPA are bad and will do more damage than the intent that Congressman Smith had hoped for (no matter how good of an intent he meant). In fact, I believe that the testimony of these three experts far outweighs the testimony that was given by the supporters of SOPA in the first committee hearing, which featured members from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Motion Picture Asssociation of America, AFL-CIO, and Pfizer. These are not companies that you would necessarily associate with understanding Internet technology or ways to stop it. In fact, as I mentioned in my opinion post, I believe that these lawmakers within this committee are being fed influential data that is not educating them on how the Internet really works.

If Congress really wants to put people to work, they should not put restrictions on how business is being done. This is the 21st century and more and more is taking place on the Internet. The antiquated ways of doing business are over and manufacturers and legacy brands should learn to embrace the new forms of communication and business. In fact, you might want to read this fascinating and economic-enlightening post on about how the copyright holders are really scamming Congress. Something must be done to stop these scammers and violators of US laws, but complete Internet censorship is not the answer. I would think that for a political party that strives itself for encouraging the private sector, the Republicans, especially Congressman Smith, would be in favor of having companies develop new ways to combat these issues? Maybe instead of having a negative bill, we work on one that will encourage Americans to develop new technology to help control and minimize counterfeit technology while adopting to the behaviors that Americans are accustomed to? Let’s encourage Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and the many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to fight piracy by developing new technology to help build trust with brands and consumers so that we won’t be scammed and taken by any international website. I, for one, am glad that the House committee has decided to hear from companies that oppose SOPA/PIPA and these representatives from Reddit, Internet service provider Rackspace (who probably hosts dozens, if not hundreds, of startups on their servers), Union Square Ventures (a venture capitalist firm), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others.

While the Internet was created here in America, it is not American…it belongs to the international community and must be treated very carefully. There are no borders within the Internet so trying to legislate it should be the last thing we want to do. So if Congress wants to be hypocritical and tell us how to live our lives on the Internet while protecting big business but not bettering the world that we hired them for, then I feel further that there’s no reason to have representatives since if we don’t have unfiltered access to the Internet to speak our minds, who do we speak out to? Our government isn’t listening to us…just to brands who want to protect themselves.

One of the big things I love about being here in the Silicon Valley is the opportunity I have to learn about amazing tech products and be aware of the news surrounding it. Sure, you’ll get hit with the news via Twitter pretty quickly, but things just kind of move a bit faster outside of the Twitterverse and the online ecosystem. And I’d love to write about startups and emerging technology more and more, but never really had the major space to compose my message–until now.

Some of you already know (or at least guessed it by now), but a month or so ago, I was approached by Brian Solis (@briansolis) to take over the Bub.blicio.us blog and run it as the Editor-in-Chief. I have since accepted it and helped move it forward. Along with help from Krystyl Baldwin (@krystyl), Bub.blicio.us is going to usher in a fresh direction as being a blog dedicated to parties, tech, and the mysterious “bubble” –we’re going to keep writing about parties, conferences, events, tweetups, and whatever social gatherings you got because we think that the tech industry is alive and kicking. But we’re also going to be writing about technology, startups, and other companies that are living this “Bubblicious” lifestyle. If you got a great product and you think that it’s going to be a rockstar in the tech scene, then Bub.blicio.us wants to know all about it.

And no, I have not left my full-time job with my current employer, Kane & Finkel Healthcare Communications. It’s too good of an opportunity to pass up so I’m going to be balancing writing posts every day (if I can manage) versus my very demanding and interesting job. But I’m always looking for great people to help contribute to the site–if you got some interesting posts and ideas you’d like to share on Bub.blicio.us, please feel free to reach out, either in the comments or by using this comment form and I’ll get back to you right away!

Lots of great things are in the works and I’m really stoked about all that has happened. Make sure you check out the posts on Bub.blicio.us, add it to your RSS feed, and follow @bubblicious on Twitter–I love getting new followers! Oh, you got something you want me to take a look at, I’m open to that as well. Just drop me a line.

Photo credit: Ninjapoodles

This month, I celebrate my four-year SF anniversary. I’ve had an interesting ride over the past few years and I’ve been fortunate enough to share it with many friends, old and new.  But perhaps what I’ve been most proud of is the fact that I’ve managed to find a really great job here in San Francisco and pick up my life after a couple years of (f)unemployment. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been an interactive producer at one of the best healthcare communication agencies that I know–Kane & Finkel. Of course many of you probably know what I did better as being a “drug dealer”, which technically isn’t too far off from the truth…I’ve essentially been working on the marketing side of things taking a strategy and executing it, thereby contributing to the cause of selling more drugs for patients to get better.

Time at Kane & Finkel

Working at Kane & Finkel has been very rewarding for me and I’ve definitely learned a great deal. From stepping foot inside this small but agile agency, working with a very creative and dedicated team centered around being as invaluable to the client as they are to each other, there was no challenge big or small that we couldn’t handle. In reflection, I’m amazed that I produced four iPad applications, at least five video animations, 4-5 websites, countless emails, numerous reports, and several dozen pages worth of documentation–definitely something that will stay with me forever.

But while working at Kane & Finkel has been nothing but great to me and helped me grow professionally, I can’t help feeling that there’s something missing from my life and time here in San Francisco. I’ve been here now for four years and what people have told me is that I’d be perfect in a startup or that I fit right in the industry. Sounded bizarre to me, but the more that I heard this, the more I heard the siren’s calling and I felt that right now would be the right time to see what other opportunities lay ahead of me.

Taking the leap

So, in looking at the economy and the opportunities that were available to me, I decided that right now would be the chance to take the leap. That’s why, September 25 will be my last day as an interactive producer at Kane & Finkel. I totally don’t go into this decision lightly, but I think that the desire to keep following what’s happening in technology and with startups has become too great of a calling that I couldn’t pass up.

So what’s next for me?

Today, I’m really excited to share some great news…starting next month, I’m going to be more involved in the technology and startup community getting to know the ins and outs of what’s it like to be an entrepreneur, investor, developer, designer, and lord knows what else. Basically, I’m going to be wandering through Silicon Valley eager to know more about what’s happening in tech–eager to hear your story. With that, I’m super happy to announce that I’m the newest reporter for The Next Web. Yup, that’s right…this time I’m going to be an industry man–covering consumer technology and startups right here in the greatest city I’ve ever lived in.

For the past few years, I’ve been watching from the sidelines, usually from afar, at some of the coolest tech companies begin and grow to become some of the world’s most important facets of everyday life. Each day, I’ve found my interest grow and my passion for the tech world increase…and now I find myself having an incredible opportunity to be involved while sharing it with the rest of the world. This is definitely something that suits my style…

Okay, here’s the particulars…I’ll be staying put here in San Francisco (natch) and the official title is Bay Area Reporter where I’ll be highly interested in the consumer tech & startup space. Expect to see me roaming through the streets of this great city, as well as throughout the valley.

Big shoes to fill

I’d be quite remiss to say that I couldn’t have gotten here without the help of some great friends–too many to mention, in fact, but I definitely appreciate all the support. I step into this roll with a bit of trepidation in doing a great job…not because I’m not qualified, but because of all those that have come before me and still are having a great impact on reporting the latest and greatest in tech. Working at The Next Web will be great because I will be working with some of the brightest reporters and minds in the industry–very thankful to be learning from folks like Zee, Brad, Alex, Matthew, Jon, Hermione, and many others on the team. Lots of great stuff has been coming out from The Next Web and I’m hoping that my hunger for news will help add value to that–definitely a role I’m eager to make an impact in.

But I can’t also forget that there’s been a lot of great folks in the industry that I whole-heartedly look up to and hope to be as successful as they have been/are now (in no particular order): Kara Swisher, MG Siegler, Michael Arrington, Eric Eldon, Ben Parr, Alexia Tsotsis, Rafe Needleman, Liz Gannes, Jolie O’Dell, Jennifer Van Grove, Om Malik, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Josh Topolsky, Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Louis Gray, Jason Kincaid, Erick Schonfeld, Sarah Lacy, Michael Carney, Josh Constine, Drew Olanoff, Lance Ulanoff, Kym McNicholas, Owen Thomas, Ryan Block, Anthony Ha, Dean Takahashi, Adam Ostrow, Pete Cashmore, Adam Hirsch, and probably like a billion more names that I don’t have the space to list out–but there are definitely big shoes for me to fill…

The drive is there…I hunger for knowledge and to learn. So let’s do this…October 1, it’s game time.

Photo Credit: A writer’s tools via bloodylery/sxc.hu

I wanted to follow up on my last post about my new adventures with this update…a day later, I suddenly realized that I had left something really important out of my big announcement–the drive and the support that helped get me to become the next Bay Area Reporter for The Next Web.

As most of you probably know, I’ve been writing as much as I can recently for this cool tech blog called Bub.blicio.us, started over six years ago by one of the most well-regarded and smart people I know, Brian Solis. But did you also know that I was contributing for the site for over the past three years covering events and using it as a platform for me to showcase my photography and writing? I think it was because of Brian and Bub.blicio.us that I have gained a foothold here in Silicon Valley and without that, I don’t think I would have been recognized as much as I am now–not that I’m well-known now, but let’s just say that it was because of Bub.blicio.us that I’ve been put on the proverbial “map”.

I started writing here on this blog because I wanted to be recognized for being a great marketer who had some intelligent insights to share with people about the emergence of web technology. It’s been my main microphone and never expected someone to ask me to write for them. As my writing progressed, I’ve been fortunate to produce content for Network Solutions, which was an absolute great opportunity, but it was Bub.blicio.us that got me more recognition here amongst my peers and the tech community and for that, I’m ever grateful to the Bub.blicio.us team.

My success today is because of the enormous belief that Brian had in me and my writing ability to give me a chance to write for his blog. Then, he further demonstrated this trust by basically giving me control over Bub.blicio.us in naming me Editor-in-Chief…something, to this day, I’m humbled and ecstatic about. Thank you for helping me to realize my dream of becoming a writer…and for giving me the inspiration to now do that full-time at The Next Web.

So to that, I want to personally thank Brian, Krystyl, and everyone on the Bub.blicio.us team for their support in me and the amazing opportunity to work with them. I learned a lot and definitely enjoyed working with everyone there. Of course, my many friends and colleagues over the years have also played an important part in where I am as well so I don’t want to also forget mentioning them…you folks are the reason why I’m always so interested in what’s happening in the world. So thank you too.

No word yet on what’s going to happen to Bub.blicio.us in light of my new move, but you should definitely go check it out.

Social media engagement is certainly a program many brands and publishers have included in their marketing and public relations arsenal. However, for some, finding the right balance to create a proper environment that is seamless and native can be rather difficult. Does a business seek out developers to find ways to bring in feeds from available APIs? Should community managers be resigned to operating in a relative silo by managing all conversations on the respective services? Yes, there are useful dashboards to aggregate communications like with Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, but it’s still separated from the major brand product itself: the website.

For marketers, being able to tie everything back to a website is an important thing. It’s there where they have complete control over the brand. It’s the digital billboard and by not having the conversation situated there could give some the impression that the complete brand strategy hasn’t been thought through. Fortunately there are services out there that make this possible, such as Livefyre, Spredfast, Chute, and Echo. It’s the last one, Echo, that this post will be focused on. The company has been heavily involved in the social media curation side of things, but until today, it required its customers to utilize a developer to help make the integration — it had the means to compile the data, but there was some assembly required, so to speak. Today that all changes, as the company debuts its Experience Studio.

The Experience Studio

This is Echo’s biggest update in the past three years. Other updates have included new SDKs, products, etc. Case in point, back in 2011, the company debuted E2, its real-time stream server designed to “make it easier for developers to build powerful real-time apps.” Now it’s time to evolve the platform once again. These aren’t really incremental changes either — Echo originally was a competitor to Disqus where it functioned as a commenting service, but as the conversation expanded to other medias, the company needed to thinking bigger.

But while the Experience Studio offers a simpler way of aggregating content to be integrated into websites and other online/digital properties, the fundamental difference here is that the process by which someone collects the data has been streamlined. You won’t necessarily have to pay a developer to create the output engine. Echo says that this release will make it “as easy to use as Apple Keynote.”

“What if we focus less on the widget, and more on the end-to-end process of crafting an experience for Brands, Agencies, and Communities.”

Here’s the details

Customers can log in using one of four social network logins: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Yahoo. But for those in companies where an account is managed by multiple people, or if you just don’t want to provide your personal login information, Echo says that there’s a Google Docs-like workflow whereby users can invite other team members to help edit and manage projects.

Regardless, once you’re in the service, you’re looking at your dashboard. You can review/create projects, explore all the different services that Echo offers, like moderation, analytics, along with its cloud services (StreamServer, DataServer, BackplaneServer). When you want to create a project, the interface has some similarities to Storify, the social storytelling startup acquired by Livefyre in 2013, where you just drag and drop modules onto the canvas and when you publish, the data magically appears.

Once you’re in the project creation space, the interface may seem a bit overwhelming, especially for marketers, brand managers, and social media folks who may not completely understand what’s going on. Yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but the power behind Echo can be frightening. The best thing is to come to grips with the potential one has through this interface. Although, it would be pretty helpful if Echo did include some more instructional assistance (there are some already included) when non-developers are using this service for the first time — in my opinion, if could be a tad simpler of an interface.

Among the many things that a user can add to their project are:

• Social: comments, streams, pinboard, live blog, and maps
• Stats: tag clouds, historical volume, social sources, recent participants, content velocity

Users have quite of bit of customization at their disposal and once you’re done, you can click on the publish button and receive a sharable URL or Javascript code that can be embedded onto any webpage. And the service has been tuned so that these “experience” pages work across all all mediums, no matter whether you’re viewing the page on Web or on a mobile device.

Brands, marketers, publishers, and the lot may be wondering why this is relevant to them. Make no mistake: Echo isn’t the new kid on the block — it’s just been flying under everyone’s radar for the past few years, but it certainly has worked with some significant customers. Among the notables include ESPN, WWE, NASDAQ, Sony, StumbleUpon, WebMD, Slate, The Washington Post, and the Food Network.

And Echo has tapped into social media in a pretty substantial way. While it hasn’t released any new figures this time around, in November 2013, the company announced that its platform processes 85 billion API calls and 4 billion real-time streams on an ongoing basis.

Let’s get back to talking to each other

As alluded to earlier, Echo’s mission with this release is to put less emphasis on the tools and instead on the communication between brand and customer. Yes, it has done well producing social widgets, but that’s no longer the name of the marketing game — we’ve evolved to one where people just want to talk to their customers without having to worry about the tools that they have to choose from and the logistics behind it.

Echo’s Experience Studio could ease the stress that marketers have in wanting to keep track of social media discussions around their products and brands — no longer will they need to scope out detailed specs to provide to developers and pray that the APIs work out exactly how they want. Now, they can produce the page themselves through a WYSIWYG (“What you see is what you get”) type interface and then simply provide the code to their team to be integrated into the brand website. Or you can take advantage of the managed hosting offering, but you’ll have the URL be brandproject.echostudio.co.

Presto!

So what can this be used for? According to Echo, journalists can create a feed of what’s happening around breaking news, a company executive could use it to sell creative media experiences, brand managers may be able to run social media campaigns, and of course, events.

Customers can use Experience Studio for free, but will have hosted pages with Echo branding. It’ll come with moderation tools, analytics, and forum support. It’s a subscription service so for 1 active embed and additional features, that’ll cost you $99 per month and for those in the enterprise space, it’s $950 per month.

However, while this is certainly good for Echo and brands that it counts as customers, how does it help elevate the company so that it better competes against the likes of Livefyre and Spredfast — two companies that have rather dominated the news in the past year or so. It’s going to be interesting to see how customers resonate to the launch of Experience Studio, but while there’s certainly going to be drawn comparisons to Livefyre’s Storify, could it be that Echo is focusing more on the ease of use and the bundling of products under one system in order to show that its platform is better for brands?

Needless to say, the social media curation/storytelling space is certainly crowded as is and companies in this field need to further separate itself from the rest in a meaningful way. While it’s not entirely clear how these companies will distinguish themselves in the eyes of their end users, there’s certainly something about Echo to help heat up the marketplace. Certainly don’t count Echo out of the mix — as I mentioned at the beginning of the year, there’s something about this company that you should keep an eye out for…in the age when conversations are taking place practically on every social network, the one with the most connections will be the victor. Is Echo in a position to dominate?

Photo credit: CC0 Public Domain/Pixabay

In my short, but rather busy life as a reporter for The Next Web, I’ve had many encounters with people involved in the public relations game. And while there were certainly good ones, sadly there were a small group that wasn’t up to par. Now, I’ll admit that I’m not a seasoned veteran like many of the other members of the tech press corp, and there’s certainly quite a few questions that I have around the press-PR professional relationship.

Thankfully there’s a new book by Jason Kincaid entitled “The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide to PR” to help lay out the law of the land. If you’re not familiar with Kincaid, he was one of the first writers to joint Michael Arrington at technology publication TechCrunch. He has spent four years of his life hearing pitch after pitch, attending events and conferences, and looking for the next big thing. Thousands of articles later and he calls it quits.

What happened? He got tired of the whole thing…mostly because of the pitches that he’s received. And now he has imparted his wisdom and lessons learned in a 157-page book written for PR professionals on how to approach journalists. But what makes “The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide” even more useful is the fact that it’s a great teaching guide for new and up-and-coming reporters who want to know how to play the game. Kincaid drives through all the different things everyone involved in the news business should know, such as: embargoes vs. exclusives (!!), what the job of a public relations professional should be, on-the-record vs. off-the-record, how to approach press when launching a product or company, and much more. Truly insightful stuff (seriously).

Need for vengeance, but also to teach

As many of my former colleagues could probably attest to, journalists are often approached by people asking the best way to send them news (a.k.a. pitching). And while most of this knowledge is provided via word of mouth, Kincaid has transcribed this onto paper so that everyone benefits. What’s more, he’s offering useful examples to help prove his point.

For example, here’s how he explains whether you’re going to be on-the-record, on Background, or off-the-record:

Rule #1: If you’re talking to a reporter and don’t want to see something printed, make sure you are both clear on what the terms are; don’t assume you think they mean the same thing.

Bad

You: Can we go On Background?

REPORTER: Sure.

You:*Spills the beans, gets burned*

Good

You: Can we go On Background?

REPORTER: Sure.

You: You can paraphrase this and say it came from “someone close to the company”, okay?

REPORTER: Can I say you’re an executive there?

You: No, I’m too close to it. Can we stick with “someone close to the company”?

See, it’s not just vague tips and advice. He includes personal anecdotes and other examples to help guide readers so that they don’t make a fool out of themselves.

At last months’ TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Kincaid debuted “The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide”. The reason why he wrote it? It was out of a need for vengeance. Not in any violent sort of way, but as a means of retribution and for telling PR professionals exactly the type of hell they put him through during his four-year stint at TechCrunch. Yes, we’ve heard these tales before — when one reporter announced their departure, they were rather candid about their relationship with PR folks. However, Kincaid’s book is, while cathartic to him, is a form of constructive criticism to help make better the relationship between two symbiotic industries: those that are journalists and those that are the gatekeepers to the news (e.g. public relations experts).

Perhaps a great deal of this book is devoted towards improving PR and press relationships, but there’s one part that appears early on that may cause some consternation among folks: you don’t have to pitch the press. Well, more specifically, don’t set high expectations that a publication will generate fantastic page views, sign-ups, etc. An article may not establish your status as a market leader — Kincaid says that in some cases, you might get a better buzz and impact by approaching influencers and industry thought-leaders — those people who understand your market and product needs.

Someone had to say it

What I loved best about Kincaid’s book is that he is able to say some of the things I’m not fond of during my time as a reporter. Specifically:

• Always include the date, time, and time zone whenever you are discussing the embargo.
• If someone does screw up the embargo, immediately call and email every other reporter and tell them they are free to publish (while apologizing profusely).
• Do you research on reporters to find out who will be more receptive with your pitch: who writes stories that you actually finish reading? Who covers companies similar to yours? etc.
• Find creative ways to pitch your story if a competitor gets ahead of you in the news cycle.
• Big news tends to break in the morning, so consider late morning an early afternoon, Pacific Time.
• Keep an eye out for press events. Some, like news at big conferences AND for large and bigger companies, are easily avoided; others are last-minute and bad luck.

Not a one-sided debate

While “The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide” appears to be an attack on the public relations side of things, it’s really not. There are useful tips and insights that journalists can also derive from as well. One of the key points from the book is this: we’re all human and need to treat each other with the appropriate respect. Everyone has a job to do and some do it very well, but at the end of the day, we must be respectful with one another.

As I referenced earlier, in my past life as a tech reporter, I’ve had my fair share of pitches, some that I’ve ignored and others that I’ve been so intrigued to find out more. And yes, there are those instances where PR professionals have encroached on one of my pet peeves (e.g. calling my personal phone number without permission, emailing my personal accounts, etc.). And of course, I’ve put some PR firms in the proverbial “dog house” when they’ve crossed the line. But I’ll admit that I was a bit naive back then — I hadn’t done a reporting role of this caliber before and had I read “The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide”, it could have better prepared me for the role. And no, I’m not hyping up this book to the extreme — this really would have better acclimated me for life as a journalist.

Startups and those looking to bring on board a public relations firm should also pick up this book to read, as it’ll be useful in understanding the ways of dealing with not only media and the press, but also to help ask the right questions and strategies of your hired guns. It’ll shed some light on questions about product launches (do you do an exclusive or offer it up as an embargo?) and tips on what could happen in the event of a crisis like a cyberattack, DDoS, layoffs, and more.

No promises of a victory

“The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide to PR” has a great deal of advice to pass along, but what isn’t included is a guarantee. Kincaid can’t promise you that if you take care and embrace what he’s written, you’ll have a successful PR strategy. There’s no way that something like this could be promised. So don’t think that by following the tips provided in this book, you’ll be respected by all the journalists in your industry and find extensive coverage to your heart’s content. Sorry, it’s just not going to happen.

But what is probably close to assured, is the fact that you’ll be better equipped to deal with interactions with members of the press in a way that won’t irritate them and cause you undue stress. It’s all about preparedness and understanding the rules of the game.

This way you won’t get burned (out).

Photo credit: CCO Public Domain/Pixabay [1], [2]

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Email, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tumblr, WordPress, and YouTube … all tools belonging to the world of social media. For marketers and those in the communication space, these are services that we’re looking out for because it’s going to help spread our message to as many people as possible. But for a few marketers, the idea isn’t about actual impact, it’s about following the same marketing behaviors time and time again. We’re swept up in the age of technology and trying out the next shiny object that we’re oblivious to what actually matters: human relationships.

Bringing humanity back

In a new ebook, digital analyst and author Brian Solis lays it out that amid all of the hoopla marketers bestow on the latest and greatest service, one thing that we need to be focused on is the relationships that we have with our customers, partners, and shareholders. This “manifesto”, as Solis calls it, seeks to take back the “P” in PR and infuse in it new energy centered around not about dealing with the press or media, but rather about just forming engaging and life-long conversations with the people who are interested and might give a damn about what you’re selling.

What If PR Stood for People and Relationships? sounds pretty straightforward, but it’s also a bit bold in its approach. It’s focused on the individual, not the industry. In a way, it’s different from his previous book “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“ that was released in 2009. One could consider this ebook to be more about preemptively teaching marketers how to break bad habits before they’re even formed. In this 39 page document, Solis goes on to somewhat chastise the current paradigm where people are flocking to marketing automation services, leveraging mass personalization platforms, becoming enamored with the latest thing social media-related (looking at you, Ello). and more. The world has become more about the technology than it has about the people! It’s almost like we’re in the Matrix where the people fuel our need for more and more technology.

Well time to put the kabash on that world.

“Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value.”

This quote from Albert Einstein is referenced in Solis’ ebook and is a great summary of his point. There was a reason why a marketer became a marketer: you’re good at understanding people and relating to them. But it’s not the tools that you’re using that’s going to get them to appreciate your conversation or even buy the product (just because you have a Twitter account doesn’t mean it’ll lead to sales). It’s the content that you’re producing that will have an impact. Content isn’t technology.

As alluded to earlier, “What if PR Stood for Public and Relationships?” isn’t an industry-focused publication. Instead, it’s centered around empowering marketers and anyone who is involved in external communications to be more human in their efforts. It involves taking time out of your day to go through the motions and make sure the mass email you’re about to send is personalized (not a flat “Dear Sir/Madam” salutation), or that every piece of marketing collateral is sent out with some care.

Act like you give a damn

While not explicitly stated in the ebook, I’m guessing that “give a damn” is probably one of the underlined messages Solis was trying to get across. It’s a short read and this “manifesto” could be considered to be the legacy that he’s trying to impart on the world, shaking things up so that we’re not letting technology overwhelm us, but that we’re empowered to make a difference in our companies so that our team members remember that humans connecting with humans can lead to positive results.

The machines haven’t taken over the world yet … don’t let them. Humans rule.

Fresh off its $100 million Series C fundraising round, Revel Systems has announced a new partnership. At a soiree in San Francisco on Monday, the point-of-sale (POS) maker company’s co-founders disclosed that it is now partnering with Intuit and unveiled its new online iPad POS solution called QuickBooks Point of Sale powered by Revel Systems. It won’t be ready right away — Intuit says that it will be available in early 2015.

Intuit made the most recent move to form a more solid partnership. A deal was previously in place where data was shared between both systems. However, now this new offering will automatically sync sales, payments, inventory, CRM and payroll data right to QuickBooks, Intuit’s accounting platform. In doing so, retailers will now have a more holistic view of their financials and its impact on their business. The QuickBooks Point of Sale powered by Revel Systems (boy, is that a mouthful) won’t be limited to customers in the United States — businesses can purchase it from anywhere in the world, but must make the buy directly from either Intuit or Revel Systems.

“This is all about giving retailers maximum flexibility to accept payments and manage customer relationships anytime, anywhere, while staying grounded and confident because they can always access an up-to-date and accurate picture of their books,” says Intuit’s senior vice-president for payments and commerce solutions Eric Dunn.

Here’s some of the features that the QuickBooks Point of Sale offers businesses:

• “Intuitive” iPad interface: Both companies say that the POS system will allow users to focus more on their customers instead of having to spend hours training new employees and hidden customer management tools.
• Seamless integration with QuickBooks Online: All sales and payments data is automatically entered and categorized in QuickBooks Online. This feature will be available for both new and existing QuickBooks Online customers.
• Advanced inventory and reporting: retailers can get real insights into their inventory and payments data, including detailed sales numbers, product sales reporting, item discount tracking, and comprehensive history of all orders.

I had an opportunity to speak with Revel Systems’ co-founder Chris Ciabarra at the event who told me the partnership with Intuit will help his company make in-roads into new verticals. It currently has “thousands” of customers, with many of them in the restaurant industry. When prompted for more specific numbers, he wasn’t as forthcoming, nor was he when asked about the breakdown of fees that both Intuit and Revel Systems will make through this endeavor. However, last year, it was reported that Revel Systems had deployed over 5,000 POS terminals. Intuit can certainly tap into the food and beverage industry easily with Revel Systems, while also potentially sharing some of its retail customers — very much a symbiotic relationship.

What’s the cost to businesses for the QuickBooks POS? That will vary depending on the needs of the business. It appears that the real legwork resides with Revel Systems. An establishment can purchase an iPad POS system and get set up with all the other bells and whistles needed (i.e. infrastructure) and then use the Revel Systems software as intended. Intuit’s QuickBooks just offers the additional integrations and support needed.  As mentioned earlier, existing QuickBooks and Revel Systems customers can take advantage of this partnership as well.

As Ciabarra and fellow co-founder Lisa Falzone get set to take the company public (which has yet to be publicly announced), Revel Systems needs to show what it can do beyond just the restaurant space alone. Clearly the logical place to install a POS system would be in a restaurant since that’s where it’ll get the most use (it is a $683.4 billion industry in the US with 990,000 restaurant locations alone). But why not also take on another highly active industry as well: retail? And that’s where the Intuit integration becomes critical — it opens doors. Revel Systems does most of the work but wins out in the long-term.

But it’s fascinating to see Intuit set up shop with another point of sale solution. After all, it does have its own powered by (what else?) QuickBooks. Intuit doesn’t appear to have any desire to eliminate its own POS so the Revel Systems deal will help further the reach of its accounting platform making it more accessible. It’s been doing that for at least the past couple of years — in February 2013, QuickBooks Online became available on the iPad and seven months later, Intuit launched a refresh of QuickBooks Online for the Web.

Revel Systems sees itself as a disruptor in the commerce space, perhaps more so than Square and PayPal (although Revel Systems does support PayPal on its terminals). I asked Ciabarra about the competition and he saw his company going after legacy solutions like Aloha and Micros. This is a phenomenon that many are witnessing with tech companies who are coming onto the scene and making a definitive impact on the market share of incumbents. Companies like Revel Systems allow businesses to use modern-age technology with a Cloud-based payment and data processing platform at perhaps considerably less cost. And let’s not forget that they can innovate faster — Revel Systems was one of the first to accept Apple Pay on its terminals.

Right now, Revel Systems offers businesses a complete sales stack (so to speak). This includes barcode scanner, iPad, receipt printer, software, and more. With the $100 million that it just raised, it’s looking to expand into new territories and improve its product line. And you can bet that Intuit isn’t going to be the last company that Revel Systems is striking deals with — the commerce scene is a big space and there’s plenty for the taking.