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Category Archives: Geo Social Marketing
Fears about privacy and social media shouldn’t hold us back
How much of yourself are you prepared to reveal on the internet? Does the idea of having your movements tracked by GPS and broadcast on the web, even if only to a handful of 'friends', make you a little anxious? Now a personal question – when were you born…?
Privacy issues are always in the news – there was the great Facebook revolt back in May over members' details being made freely available to advertisers, and recently Foursquare came under attack for having default settings that inadvertently made it an ideal tool for stalkers.
Geo-social marketing: which businesses are the early adopters?
On Monday I became the Mayor of Lewes Town Hall! Not actually the Town Mayor, you understand, although I did see him there today and wanted to say 'hey, I'm a Mayor too!' Basically I seem to be the only person who has checked into the Town Hall on Foursquare. You can probably gather from this that Foursquare has a way to go before it reaches a critical mass in Lewes. I need more friends to play with!
Nonetheless, I'm really excited about the possibilities of geo-location or more specifically 'geo-social' services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Booyah and others.
Times they are a-changing – but not that fast
This week's issue of New Media Age celebrates the fact that it's been going for 15 years. There's even some discussion as to whether 'new media' is still applicable, a bit like when the word 'new' was dropped from our coinage (yes, I still remember talking about things costing "ten new pence"!)
And although, as publisher Jamie Jouning is quoted in the NMA editorial, "things change so quickly in the digital age, you have to work hard to keep up", it's also true that things move very slowly in the offline (some would say 'real') world.
Foursquare – a newbie’s first impressions
I've only been using Foursquare for a week or two, so I thought I'd share what I've learned so far, for anyone who's never tried it! My thanks go to Lucy Waters for her patience and skillful camera work, by the way …
Something I don't mention here is the integration with Twitter – the default settings mean that an automatic tweet is sent whenever you check in, get a badge, become Mayor, etc – which took me a few days to realise! Not wanting to deluge followers with my Foursquare antics, I've now turned these off.
