The biggest complaints I hear are about the relevancy of it all.  People refer to Twitter as “internet litter,” and most tweets go unread.  No one really cares when I check in at a restaurant, much less when I check in at work (where I hopefully am at 10 am on Tuesday).  People care even less about the photo albums you created with pictures from your recent vacation (well, maybe we do care, but it’s frankly the last thing I want to see at 10 am on a Tuesday sitting at my desk).  So how do you effectively use social media if most of it is just noise?

Clearly social media is moving the needle.  It’s easy to see how for things like customer service.  As social media is, well, inherently social, it’s a great way to voice your opinions and to receive a response.  If you want something, all you have to do is post on brands’ community pages.  Trust me, you will receive a response almost immediately.

Recently, different brands and public figures have been engaging communities in new ways.  For example, Jennifer Lopez has reached out to her Facebook community for an early release of her new single.  If enough of her fans “like” her page, then they will receive the song early.  Other brands crowd source from their pages and actively tweet questions and answers.

Still, how are brands supposed to know what they are doing is correct?  Clearly, when I write for my brand’s Facebook page, I cannot speak the same way I would to my friend.  That said, I also don’t want to sound like a copy writer.  What should we say? When should we say it?  Should we keep the post long or short?  Should we post on the weekend?  We have infinite questions.

Last week the New York-based start-up, Buddy Media, released a white paper answering just these questions.  While the white paper only looks at data from two weeks this winter, it analyzes some of the largest brands in the game and is a great start to unlocking the potential for brands in social media.

The even better news is that Buddy has new analytics tools coming out in only a number of days, so we can customize this white paper for our specific brands.  Clearly, I am excited in anticipation and only hope the new tools live up to my expectations.   I’ll be sure to let you know how they work and what they have to offer when I’ve had a chance to play with them.

As you all know, I am very concerned with privacy and protecting details of who I am on the internet.  However, the social networking movement goes directly against my need for said privacy.  Buzz got its act together and made the appropriate changes, Facebook is always updating its privacy defaults, for better or worse, but FourSquare is just making life dangerous.

The issue doesn’t lie in FourSquare’s code, but rather in how people are using the application.  Users check-in to different locations to win badges, so the object is to travel around certain areas.  However, by checking-in, users are relaying fairly sensitive information to the world, or at least 500 of your closest friends.

Yeah, yeah, your friends would never steal from you, but your friend of your friend checking-in from a party at your house might.

A new website, PleaseRobMe.com, is raising awareness of this issue by retweeting/posting check-ins of people around the world.  Each new person is called an “opprotunity.”  Clearly, the creators aren’t trying to incite more robberies, but they are trying to make us think twice before sharing information with the world.

At the end of the day, I don’t really care where you are .

The creators put it best:

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

How do you use FourSquare?  Do you worry about your safety?

Finally someone who is embracing branding and social media the right way.  Too many companies are getting Twitter accounts and Facebook pages because they think they have to in order to compete, and there may be a kernel of truth in that.  To me, if a brand does not have a web presence  it must either be so indie that it would ruin the concept of the brand by going mainstream or it is so out of touch the brand doesn’t know how to integrate with the internet.

However, just having the Twitter/Facebook certainly isn’t enough.  The brand must engage its fans and followers in ways that said fans and followers find compelling.  This is the challenge.  Even though PR professionals are consumers, it’s hard for them to know what will be a big hit, especially with the short attention span of the internet.

Bravo is one of a handful of brands that I believe is doing IT right.  In the past week I saw outreach efforts that I thought were very cool and progressive:

1) Bravo has teamed up with the runaway hit Foursquare.  Foursquare has been receiving lots of media attention for its partnerships with chains like Tasti D-Lite, where users get free/discounted items for checking in at the location. This provides free advertising for the company and taps into the sought after word-of-mouth effect.  Instead of giving discounts for checking in, Bravo is giving badges for users who check in at 500 (seems a little high?) Bravo locations.  These locations are chosen based on their ever popular reality shows. Thereby making the shows come alive more (and compromising its stars’ privacy more).  Consumers like to connect with a brand and what could be a better way than to actually recreate a Bravo show.  I think this is pretty neat.

2) One of Bravo’s most popular shows is Project Runway, in which fledgling designs compete for the prize of funding and support for their own line.  Well now Bravo is upping the ante by partnering with Ruelala, the invite-only shopping website (like Hautelook or Gilt Group).  I received my daily email from Ruelala and it contained a promotional notice about being able to buy the winning designer’s new line immediately after the finale tonight of Project Runway.  This is seriously cool.  Even though I have no interest in the show or its designers, I am always interested in seeing new designers.  More, there are thousands of people out there who do care and will flood the website for their chance to purchase a piece of pop culture.  This helps Bravo’s branding by attaching to the Ruelala brand and helps users connect with the show in a tangible, visceral way.  Ruelala is also benefiting from the inflow of new users who will inevitably be signing up tonight.

Basically, Bravo is going to where its users already are and are engaging them in compelling ways — easier said than done.  Even though I don’t have much interest in Bravo, if I were looking for an afternoon activity, it might be fun to track down locations from the Real Housewives and it won’t hurt me to go take a look at the fashions available for sale.

Bravo, Bravo!

I have expressed my concern about FourSquare in previous posts due to safety concerns stemming from lack of privacy.  However, Foursquare has recently partnered with Harvard to create a mini-version of the popular location game.

This will be a great way for students to get to know the campus when first arriving or for local hot-spots to gain more popularity.  I can see many more partnerships stemming from this deal, like Barclay’s Burger Shack offerings deals for those who post their locations.  This is a pretty neat way to connect the campus with the larger neighborhood of Cambridge.

It also reduces the risk of scariness from geo-location.  Presumably the users will be restricted to Harvard students/employees so the risk of randos is reduced.  Also, there are only so many places one could check-in, versus the infinite spots in a larger city, which makes the game a little more relevant (and fun).  I checked-in recently in Chicago and was the first to do so at a fairly popular location, which suggests that either there aren’t many users or they aren’t going to the same places as I am.  It makes the game a little less fun.  But on a college campus, the size issue is reduced.

I wish they would bring FourSquare to my campus, I’d like to know where my friends are and what they are doing.  There is a campus full of plugged-in users waiting.  Maybe if they get hooked while still in college, they will continue using the service while away on summer internships or post-graduation.

I have been posting on and off about how to protect your privacy.  If you have noticed, I give very little information about myself on this blog.  It’s not because I was to keep my writing anonymous, it’s because I have made the choice not to have my identity implicated with this blog.  Again, its just a choice I made — unlike someone whose brand is them, mine is ‘The Acumenity,’ which is separate from me.

Ranting aside, geo-tagging or geo-location applications have become increasingly popular.  I recently put UberTwitter on my phone and made sure to set the defaults so that it would not post my location onto the tweet.  I just don’t think everyone needs to know where I am.  There should be a division.

There is also a safety issue, popular applications like FourSquare and Gowalla allow you to share your locations with your friends. These two applications are even games/contests so where you go matters when trying to accumulate points.  Twitter just recently bought Mixer Labs and is hoping to integrate the geo-location into its API.

There is a lot of potential in geo-location.  Companies could harness this for PR campaigns or interactive ads.  However, I believe the risks are too high.

We have all heard about the robberies due to status updates, saying that you are out of the house makes you more of a target.  Not that you shouldn’t trust your friends who are seeing your updates, but with the opening on Facebook and Twitter, really anyone can figure out where you are (or are not).

Even though geo-tagging could be pretty awesome, I am not one of the first adopters — then again, maybe I’m just paranoid.

Update: Fantastic guide to Gowalla and Foursquare: http://bit.ly/7qcqxa