Happy FourSquare Day!

Jeromey Balderrama

Apparently 4/16 is unofficially FourSquare Day, a day celebrating the location-based service.  I’ve been playing with both FourSquare and GoWalla since January and have enjoyed it. It’s definitely interesting to see what places that you frequent, then compare it what your friends are doing.  While I’ve enjoyed using FourSquare, there have definitely been a few tips that I would offer to those who are thinking about using the App:

  • Don’t be lazy about new locations. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people create a new venue when one already exists.  The FourSquare App shoulders a lot of the blame, but users should try mixing in a search if they can’t find their venue.  I also wish that services like FourSquare and Gowalla had some kind of location reconciliation, where you could combine similar venues.
  • Don’t check in at work. The whole point of using FourSquare is to gage where you choose to hang out.  Hanging out at work and at home are not the same as hanging out at a place you socialize.  In some ways I think that checking-in at a place you work at is cheating, especially if you work at somewhere that people go to socialize. There’s a certain type of pride in being the person that chooses to go to a place – a shop, a bar or a gym – rather than someone who is forced to be there the most often.
    • In addition, don’t check in at home.  Even if you make it hidden, no one really cares if you’re “off the grid”.
  • Don’t simply befriend everyone. I must concede that in the wrong hands FourSquare is a stalker’s paradise. The degree of control, however is who you befriend.  Where I’m very caviler on Facebook & MySpace, I’m pretty reserved on FourSquare.

Lastly, people joke about the PleaseRobMe web site, which pokes fun at the fact people broadcast when they’re not home. While there is a little validity to that, it’s easy for burglars to figure out whether you’re home.  For many it’s safe to assume that they won’t be home on weekdays between 9-5, and people probably can figure out you’re not home if there are no lights on in your house.  I think the risk of broadcasting not being home is relatively small, especially if you don’t list your address in Facebook.

What are some other tips that you’d have for new FourSquare users?

The one thing missing from Rockies games

Jeromey Balderrama

Spring is here, and with the beautiful weather comes the start of the baseball season.  The Rockies had their Home Opener today (which they won), and with it I wanted to re-tell a story from 2 & 1/2 years ago and re-iterate my plea for the Rockies to incorporate an important aspect of the game day experience into their game:

Back in 2007, when the Rockies were on their historic hot-streak, we went to the last game of the season.  This turned out to be a pivotal game, which required the Rockies to win and the Padres to lose, which led to that 1-game playoff for the Wild Card.  The atmosphere was amazing, and being a loyal Broncos fan I turned to my tailgating kit to help us prepare for this game.  We brought out our well-used grill to cook some steaks, when we were approached by stadium security (who was an off-duty police officer). I was shocked to find out that Tailgating at Rockies Games are not allowed!  The officer was really nice about it, and even made an editorial statement to the effect of “I don’t agree with the rule, but I need to enforce it.”  He let us finish grilling our steaks, but made us put our tailgating equipment away.  Sure that security had it wrong, I turned to their web site for the definitive word, and sure enough tailgating is not allowed:

Tailgating is not permitted in any Rockies operated parking lot. Persons may not consume alcohol in the parking lots, including inside their vehicles.

There are a lot of high expectations for the Rockies this year. Most analysts say playoffs are a given for the Blake Street Bombers, with the possibility of going deep into October.  Rockies Management: do your part to make sure that your talented team have the passionate fans they deserve – allow tailgating for at least some games.  It doesn’t have to be all 80 remaining home games, but at least the big ones: holidays, fan-favorite rivals, the inter-league games, and the late September games – that’s all we need.

It’s not like tailgating at baseball games are unheard of. I went by the Padres ballpark a few years ago, and they had a whole parking lot devoted to tailgating – sound familiar Broncos fans?  I find it funny that if you do a search for “Rockies Tailgating” you’ll find a ton of product licensed by Major League Baseball, yet you’re not allowed to use it next to their stadium.

Seriously Rockies Front Office, let’s bring Tailgating in some form to Coors Field. If you need to rope up part of the lot and charge a little more, so be it.

Who needs the time?

Jeromey Balderrama

Just a quick hit: I’m really excited to go see Muse on Tuesday, but needed to figure out when we should probably head down to Broomfield. I figured I would go check out the show listing on Muse’s web site, but can you look at this page and tell me what time the show starts?

muse

Don’t get me wrong, this is a really cool design. Whoever’s doing their web work has some really cool things going on, but at what point was it a good idea to not list the start time?!? I thought this maybe was a fluke, but sure enough none of the other pages list their show times as well.

Normally I would go home and look at my tickets, but these tickets were using this “Flash Seat” where I simply wave my credit card that I used, and we seemingly have seats – pretty hard to print the start time on that.

It’s not like I’m squeezing the Muse concert between activities, but you’d think at some point it would be a good idea to tell people when they should make their way down.

Facebook Fail: How to ruin a year’s worth of burritos

Jeromey Balderrama

Ah, Social Media.  Every company wants to get in on the action, using tools like Twitter and Facebook, finding new ways to engage customers and drum up interest for their company.  Some companies do it well, and for others: their good intentions blow up in their faces.  I talked about Motorola’s mismanagement of their Facebook presence, the Denver-metro area Qdoba also now has an unfortunate Facebook story to tell.

Last weekend I got ping’d by a friend on Facebook, who was taking part in a contest put on by Qdoba with the prize of a year’s supply of burritos.  In order to win, Qdoba wanted you to get your friends to “Fan” them on Facebook, then write their name and Qdoba Card # on their wall.  On paper this seems like a great way to build Facebook currency (friends/fans) and drum up buzz for your company.

Introduce the chaotic variable known as the Internet into the equation, and your contest is now FUBAR’d.  While my friend was lobbying people through his Facebook contacts, his two main competitors were packing their own ammunition.  The first is allegedly a “Professional Contest-Player”, and quickly rallied her other “Professional” colleagues on the various contest and giveaway sites (I Googled her name + her card number and got these search results:
QdobaScreen

The other competitor, has some association with ThePensBlog and his plea for help got picked up there, rallying their army and ultimately bringing him the victory.  However, along the way, the blog got wind about the “Professional Contest-Player” and lobbied some attacks in the form of: “Do you hate this bitch’s face already? Want to bring pain to her ego? After the jump, a call to arms.” Of course, when you take prideful Pittsburgh fans and pour gasoline on your story, your commenters are going to light the think of fire with hate and vitriol. Say what you will about “Professionals”, no one deserves the mud this poor girl was slung.

Qdoba’s once great contest idea was fast becoming a platform for slander, so they had no choice, but to post the following on their wall:
QdobaResponse

Of course, you can comment on anyone’s fan page, so the people who were perpetrating this slander were now acting like their candidate was the victim in all of this, and made threats about what would happen if Qdoba didn’t award the contest to him.  Ultimately Qdoba made the most of their bad situation: gave the prize, then awarded the runners up with generous prizes of their own.  Still the proponents of the winner are still whining – nothing like looking a gift-burrito in the mouth.

To be fair to the guy who won, he didn’t make any public disparaging comments about the other contestants.  At the same time, there is definitely an association of guilt, and I’ve always found it fair to judge people based on where/who they build their community.  Responsibility should be taken up, especially since the guy is now 52 burritos richer.

Ultimately I feel bad for Qdoba. We’re all still trying to navigate this social media river, and when you have something like this blow up in your face it doesn’t encourage you to get back on the boat.  They ended up giving away nearly 2 years worth of burritos, and all they have to show for it is a page full of slander and intimidation.

Companies like Qdoba, please don’t lose heart in this. I think if they were go back and do it again, they could have made one tweak to the rules and avoided much of this mess.  Simply add a rule to the effect of “No promotion or lobbying outside of Facebook is allowed. We will be running searches on the leaders and if we find any external lobbying, you will be disqualified.”  I used Google to get that above screen shot, and discovered the blog post by doing a similar search on the winner.  That way you keep your promotional efforts within Facebook (which is what you want), and ensure that your winners are using the same platform to campaign.  People may try the winner’s excuse of “I can’t control what people do”, but let’s be honest: if I wanted to win that badly I’d make damn sure people kept it as word-of-mouth.

So sorry Qdoba, I still think you’re great. Better luck next time!

Motorola – how to screw with your customers

Jeromey Balderrama

As you know I’m a Droid user, and for the most part am happy with my device.  Since the announcement of Android 2.1, us Droid users have been anxiously awaiting an update to our devices.  Google’s anointed phone, the Nexus One received the update back in February, and the Droid users have been anxiously awaiting news on when we will be updated.

2010-03-15 12.17.04

Out of the gate, Motorola said all the right things, issuing a post on their Facebook page on February 9th that the update was coming “this week”.  That was then met with refuting news a few days later on their forum.  After that. silence.  Motorola remained completely mum on the issue, both of their Facebook page, on the forum, through news sources – there was no word about when the update would happen. Motorola customers, including myself, have been complaining on their Facebook page about the lack of details.  I actually uploaded my own subtle protest on their “Motopic Monday” feature on Facebook. Finally Motorola shares the news: the upgrade will be rolled out on Thursday to a few test users, then will be going out to all customers over the new few days.

Thursday comes. and goes. It turns out that Motorola delayed pushing out the update again, reported by Engadget. Of course, Motorola’s own Facebook page has been indirect and mum on the issue. Motorola never actually comes out and says the update has been delayed, yet they allude to it with their last two posts:

Thanks for your continued patience. We aim to answer each and every question; if your post isn’t answered immediately, please know that we’re looking into your question so that we can provide the most up-to-date information as possible.
Hi Everyone – We are looking into this new update and will definitely share with you what we find. Please patient with us! Thank you!

Rightfully so, Motorola’s customers have been hammering their Facebook page non-stop with complaints and comments.  Motorola has just continued to botch this situation up – I can’t imagine how else they can screw this up from a PR front.

Motorola, I understand these technical these technical issues come up and it’s completely fine – but be direct and transparent when you’re communicating this!  This business of putting out a statement, then letting weeks go by without any word – is completely unacceptable.  It’s great they’re using Facebook as a platform to put out this information, but by not following it up with any direct announcement or posts about the problems is only confusing people more.  Also when they try to be coy with the mistake with “How embarrassing! We jumped the gun” but then offer no additional information is only infuriating.  I’d much rather appreciate “We apologize, but we mistakenly communicated the wrong date. Please look for an announcement early next week” – then actually follow up like you promised!

We’ll see how long it takes for the Motorola & Verizon to finally get their stuff together and actually be direct with their customers – it’s the least they could do.