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Are Businesses Today Learning from the Underpants Gnomes?

Posted on January 29, 2009 by ronschott

I love Southpark. I’ve loved it since the very first episode I saw, which was on VHS. My friend Kyle brought the VHS over and I’m pretty sure we watched “Cartman gets an anal probe” about 30 times.

OK, enough anal probing. The real topic for this post is how businesses are waking up to the reality that they can’t just sit back and throw messages out into the ether anymore aiming at their target audiences and hoping they get the point. They’re moving beyond the easy way of doing business with their snazzy “phase 1: collect underpants… phase 2: ?… phase 3: profit” business model and are figuring out what that second piece really is.

So, what is it? Social media.

Social media, in all its forms (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, etc., etc., etc.) offers a real chance to connect and create two-way communication while living in the brand. What’s living in the brand? It’s having a space where lines are blurring between what’s marketing and what’s real social interaction. That’s where today’s decisions are being made.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every company out there should be on MySpace and Twitter trying to create these situations… they have to ACTUALLY see the benefit in being in these situations, not creating an air of the situation, get it?

So, which companies do I think are doing this right? Here are a couple that you won’t find profiled on every social media blog:

Tatango
Get on Twitter and you’ll see these guys. Get on Facebook and you’ll see these guys. Young CEO Derek Johnson (@tatango) and his merry band of plugged-in cohorts (@tatango_alex, @adrianpike, @tatango_amiel, and @tatango_andrew) are out there, every day doing the social media legwork that’s bringing users and coverage to their product. They’re not pushy, they’re real and people can tell that. Check out their awesome tool for group text and voice messaging while you’re at it.

J & D’s Bacon Salt
While it’s not a hard sell to get me to buy something that can make everything taste like bacon, J & D’s Bacon Salt takes it to a new level. When you arrive on their homepage you kind of get this feeling that you know these guys from back in college or maybe even one of them was in your fraternity – that’s what it’s all about. You can connect with them and because of that you listen to what they have to say. Because you listen to what they have to say (on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) you live in a world where you can make your broccoli taste like bacon, man!

Who do you think is “getting it?” Let me know in the comments or hit me up on any of MY social networks.

I Live My Life 140 Characters at a Time: When Digital and Analog Worlds Collide

Posted on January 27, 2009 by ronschott

Real life doesn’t have friend requests. If it did it would be something like this.

What I’m trying to say, really, is there’s some sort of imaginary line between the digital lives we lead and those in the analog (real) world. The question is; where do we draw that imaginary line?

A while back, I made a mistake – a big mistake. I posted a couple tweets about a friend that weren’t exactly very awesome. It wasn’t that I was mean; it was more that I probably shouldn’t have been throwing this stuff out there. I had no idea this person would ever read them, but this person did. Needless to say, I felt like crap and apologized profusely, but it got me wondering…

In a day where Facebook statuses become motives for murder and hitting ENTER can send a message to all of Tweetdom, how are people really managing the coexistence between their digital and real lives?

I’ve hinted (pretty obviously) before about the lack of adoption by my friends of most social media and Web 2.0 (hate that term) technologies, but what I haven’t really delved into is how they are using the tools they actually do use.

A while back my roommate changed his Facebook status (on accident) to say he was in a relationship. Some of us knew, through actual human interaction, that he was hanging out with this girl. Immediately wall posts and comments on his status appeared from people who probably haven’t even talked to him in months. Eventually things got ironed out, but he had to wade through a lot of Facebook update e-mails to get things quieted down.

I’d imagine that most of my friends hold back when we’re out, worrying that the next stupid thing they do will be broadcast in my blog or caught on Qik, but I realize that part of that is my fault. Should I sit them all down and explain what my intentions are? Should all my friends sign a digital release form?

Thus far I’ve managed to keep most embarrassing things out off of the interwebs, or at least use pseudonyms, but I kind of feel like a fake doing that sometimes. Maybe it’s the journalist in me that keeps wanting to throw everything out there and let the world (wide web) decide what to make of it.
Until I find a definite guideline for how to manage the space where my digital and analog lives intersect, I guess I can only continue doing what I’m doing.

Perhaps, though, if my friends started adapting the same sort of lifestyle there’d be less to worry about. Changing their habits HAS to be easier than changing mine, right?

If you didn’t get the movie quote joke in the title, you should probably not be excited about this . As a note, I’m not into it at all… I just think it’s hilarious they’re making another.

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