Did Someone Say, "Road Trip?"

1,305.6 miles, door to door

300+ Foursquare check-in points

10 US Interstate Highways

8 hours today driving home

3 US States

2 casinos

2 boats

2 iPhones (don't ask)

1 epic journey across one of the most picturesque states in the Union

1 trip across the border into our fair neighbor to the north

All in all, one of the greatest and most memorable vacations of my life. Glad to have been a part of it, revisiting old memories and making new ones. Lots more commentary to come, but what really makes for a successful journey cramped in a motor vehicle is, of course, the music. Judging by the set list below, I think my travel mates and I did a pretty steller job of keeping the action lively over a fairly substantial time in such quarters.

RoadTrip 2011 Official Playlist

O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits, Disc 2 -- Aerosmith
Jar of Flies -- Alice in Chains
One Day Remains -- Alter Bridge
Born in the USA -- Bruce Springsteen
7even Year Itch: Collective Soul's Greatest Hits 1994-2001 -- Collective Soul
The Sickness -- Disturbed
The Very Best of the Eagles, Disc 2 -- Eagles
The Colour and the Shape -- Foo Fighters
Greatest Hits -- Guns N' Roses
The Greatest Hits -- INXS
The Best of John Hiatt -- John Hiatt
Remasters, Disc 1 -- Led Zeppelin
Throwing Copper -- Live
Rearviewmirror, Disc 1 -- Pearl Jam
Hit, Disc 1 -- Peter Gabriel
Hits -- Phil Collins
Meddle -- Pink Floyd
The Dark Side of the Moon -- Pink Floyd
Every Breath You Take: The Classics -- Police
Songs for the Deaf -- Queens of the Stone Age
OK Computer -- Radiohead
Californication -- Red Hot Chili Peppers
Greatest Hits -- Richard Marx
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Disc 1 -- The Smashing Pumpkins
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Disc 2 -- The Smashing Pumpkins
Superunknown -- Soundgarden
Purple -- Stone Temple Pilots
The Joshua Tree -- U2
Weezer (Blue Album) -- Weezer

To Share or Not to Share

In a digital world of endless integration, it is not a difficult endeavor at all to connect your entire life to either Facebook or Twitter. Check into that cool new Thai restaurant on Foursquare or Facebook Places? Share with your friends! Watching an exciting Game 7 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals? Broadcast it to the world via GetGlue. Take a great picture on your iPhone 4 while walking home from work? PicPlz and Instagram make it simple to post that shot to seemingly every service in the world -- Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Posterous -- with one button.

What, though, is too much information? Isn't it slightly bizarre to know so much about the minutia of the daily lives of people you haven't physically seen since grammar school 20 years ago? Or, worse, what your co-workers are up to during a night of drunken debauchery? We see complaints all of the time by Facebook and Twitter users that, in particular, relentless "check-ins" serve as the dividing line between keeping connected and TMI.

Without sharing, though, what is the point of using a service such as Foursquare otherwise? Both the popular location-based application and its more popular-culture-oriented analogue GetGlue boast tremendously improved abilities to explore venues and interests based on location and prior activity, and provide an intuitive mechanism for sharing reviews, thoughts, and more within the platform.

But is that it? I'd wager that most of us started using the programs more to selfishly (even if unintentionally) broadcast details of our travels. And, in essence, is still what business and marketers are not-so-secretly wishing we do. It's one thing to check into the season finale of House, MD -- and to leave a pithy review in the interst of being named "Guru" of the program -- but the real value is in the simple share to other platforms. Word-of-mouth marketing has become one of the new great marketing paradigms, and to a business, the value of knowing your friends are somewhere watching the latest television program (and, by implication, enjoying that show) is often just as valuable -- or perhaps even more so -- that any :30 commercial spot (certainly considering the relative lack of cost of having someone do your dirty work for you).

I know that, if I were the account manager for a top brand at some global integrated agency, I would love it when people shared their check-ins to any and all social platforms they use. So, in the interests of being a better marketer, I resolve to once again start sending more of my checkins to Twitter (for now). Anecdotally, the volume of sharing hasn't adversely affected my follower count in the past, and my more obsessive side will relish having a more detailed record of all of my activity in one place. I am such a generalist as it is, in terms of what I discuss and post online, that I doubt anyone will be adversely affected. Perhaps even someone will learn of something cool I've discovered and relish the opportunity for discovery.

Word of mouth, baby.

The Most Brilliant Blog Comment Ever?

Apologies to my five readers for the radio silence--even my Twitter feed lately has been nothing but Foursquare and GetGlue check-ins.  Just going through one of those phases where life and work prove overwhelming and its difficult to muster up the venom right now to unload on the current administration or some ridiculous marketing campaign.

So, while traffic here has crawled to a standstill, at least I'll always have the Googlebot and spammers hitting the site every few hours to keep it alive.  Speaking of, here's a comment that was dropped in an older post the other day.  When I was alerted to it, I couldn't help but be impressed by it's super-enthusiastic words of praise:

Easily, the post is really the greatest on this laudable topic. I agree with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your forthcoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the exceptional clarity in your writing. I will at once grab your rss feed to stay abreast of any updates. Solid work and much success in your business endeavors!

Well, thank you sir!  Unfortunately, a quick scan of some key phrases in Google indicates that variants of this comment have appeared all across the blogosphere, so while I sincerely appreciate the sentiment, I am going to have to file you away in my circular file, OK?

Foursquare and Twitter Up the Information Ante

Very quietly, and with seemingly little fanfare, social media services Foursquare and Twitter have made significant changes to their ways and openness of presenting the information they have about their users, and how they connect with one another.

Let's start with the location-based platform Foursquare. Now, after successfully checking into a location or venue, the confirmation screen that pops up on your mobile device provides additional information on how often you have checked in, and where you stand in your personal quest to become mayor of said venue.

One day I will be mayor of Penn Station...just you wait and see!
Perhaps these improvements were in the works long before the last week's launch of potential rival Facebook Places, but one cannot also help but observe how these changes help to further differentiate Foursquare from the social media behemoth. Whereas Facebook Places appears to be more about sharing information with friends and connecting with potential marketers (willingly or unwillingly), Foursquare's "mayor" titles add an underlying aspect of competition and urgency to its service that make it feel far more compelling to use time and again. I, for one, have been repeatedly frustrated with visiting foursquare.com while trying to figure out how close I am to gaining that coveted mayor status; the increased transparency is long awaited and much appreciated!

Meanwhile, Twitter likewise has exponentially improved the volume and quality of information contained in each "new follower" e-mail notification. Whereas determining the validity of new contacts often proved a chore -- is he or she merely a spammer? a broadcaster uninterested in conversation? a follower with no tweets? -- now nearly all the details you could ever want on your new potential contact are right there in an easy-to-digest format, including:

• Mutual connections;
• Info on if you follow the person or not already;
• Basic profile demographics (followers, following, tweets, location, bio);
• Handy links right back to the new user's profile; and even
• Information on how to use Twitter on a mobile device, if you are checking e-mail while away from the computer.

Heck, there's even a link to report the user as a potential spammer if that appears to be the case!



These tweaks take a lot of the guesswork out of the following process, and are welcome improvements. There is no such thing as too much information in this digital age, and both services should be applauded for their recent moves towards transparency and openness.